Have you ever wondered how reporters are able to turn out a dozen or so news articles day after day, year after year, and still keep their copy so fresh, so vital, so alive? It's because they know The Ten Magic Phrases of Journalism, key constructions with which one can express every known human emotion! As one might suppose, The Phrases, discovered only after centuries of trial and error, are a closely guarded secret, available to no one but accredited members of the press. However, at the risk of being cashiered from the Newspaper Guild, I am now going to reveal them to you:
Number ten is: "roving bands of Negro youths"
I always thought it was funny, but certainly not something taken from real life, until I Googled the phrase.
Time Magazine, Sept. 09, 1966:
Roving bands of Negro youths roamed through the Negro section of Dayton—looting, stoning buses and breaking store windows—after a Negro man was fatally wounded by shotgun blasts fired from a passing car containing three white men.
The Lewiston Daily Sun, March 25, 1964:
Roving bands of Negro youths are reported responsible for rock throwing, beatings
Reading Eagle, July 21, 1966:
roving bands of Negro youths staged scores of hit-run fire-bomb attacks as Cleveland's racial turmoil spilled into its fourth day
New York Times, April 6, 1968:
President Johnson ordered 4,000 regular Army and National Guard troops into the nation's capital tonight to try to end riotous looting, burglarizing and burning by roving bands of Negro youths.
And so on. They seem to be from the 1960s.