Alarming trends, and why ‘urine' makes for great PR

I've scanned thousands of press releases during my career and surprisingly few of them contained the term "urine-filled plastic containers."

One, actually.

I mention this by way of giving budding public relations professionals a bit of advice which I doubt they're getting in their college courses.

If you want jaded newspaper editors to read your missives, make sure you include "urine-filled plastic containers" somewhere. Put it right up in the first paragraph if you can manage it.

The release doesn't even have to be about plastic containers, urine filled or not.

Your job is to pry people's attention away from the bewildering mix of messages that bombards them, and I assure you that referring to any type of urine-filled receptacle will get results.

I'll concede, though, that dispatches which not only mention, but actually concern, urine-filled plastic containers make especially compelling reading.

This is the case with an e-mail the Oregon State Police sent to me, and to dozens of other journalists across the state, on Thursday morning.

The release aims to hook the reader right off. The second word is "alarming" — the sort of adjective you'd expect in the opening paragraph of a mystery novel.

"An alarming noticeable increase in urine-filled plastic containers disposed along a short section of Interstate 84 in Eastern Oregon is causing concern. . ." the release begins. ". . . a litter crew picked up an estimated 200 to 300 urine-filled plastic bottles in a 25-mile stretch of Interstate 84."

That's plenty alarming, all right.

Except I'm not sure which part of the above paragraph alarms me most.

If 200 to 300 urine-filled bottles constitutes an increase that's both "alarming" and "noticeable," then what's considered a normal complement of urine-filled bottles on that stretch of freeway between Huntington and Ontario? To put it another way, at what point do we insist that we won't tolerate even one more urine-filled bottle on the roadside?

If you've traveled many miles on rural interstates you've probably seen such bottles — the liquid has a conspicuous hue that exerts a powerful pull on your eyes. You might even know that the substance is known as — and whoever came up with this is someone I'd love to buy a beer for — "trucker lemonade."

What might surprise you, however, is that an Oregon law not only prohibits people (and not just truckers, who, according to OSP, are the main, but not the only, offenders) from discarding trucker lemonade and other related substances, but the law actually deems such action a misdemeanor. If you're convicted the state could fine you $250 and even put you in jail.

I'm gratified that our state takes a harsh view of people who have barely more modesty about their personal habits than does an infant.

But it seems to me that the legislators who passed the law went off course a little in proscribing the punishments.

If they truly want to discourage drivers from fouling freeways they ought to boost that fine some, say to an even thousand.

In most cases the threat of jail makes for a persuasive deterrent.

But I don't see how the prospect of a night in a cell is apt to frighten someone who has problems of a continency nature.

In jail you usually get your own toilet.

Jayson Jacoby is the editor of the Baker City Herald.