More info please!

Last night, as I did laundry at my parents house like the freeloader that I am, I picked up the paper and leafed through. One headline in particular caught my eye -- something about ghosts and dowsing written by Kathryn Skelton from the Lewiston Sun Journal. Here are the first few grafs:

Paul Knoll lay in bed knowing that something was making him sick, so he dowsed in the dark.

Was it something he ate? No. Drank? No. The new insulation? No.

It took five minutes to nail down the culprit through a kind of energy checkup, quizzing himself while using one of his hands to try to pry apart two fingers on his other hand. If the fingers stayed pinched together, that was a yes. If they came apart easily, that was a no.

Finally, through enough trial and error, he body-dowsed to the answer: Fabric softener had gotten mixed in with the sheets.

Seems dowsing isn't just looking for water underground anymore.

Ooooh I thought. What the heck is dowsing? I was anxious to find out. I read the entire article. Confused I went back and skimmed it again. WHAT THE HECK IS DOWSING!? I never found out.

How annoying! I complained to my father who was napping on the other couch. Of course HE knew what dowsing was -- because he's in his 50s. I, in my 30s, did not.

According to Dictionary.com "dowsing" means: –verb (used without object)
1. to search for underground supplies of water, metal, etc., by the use of a divining rod.

My sister and I used to pretend to look for water when we found a "Y" shaped stick. That was dowsing? Anyway -- the story was about body dowsing, not dowsing for water, so what does body dowsing mean?

If you've ever been to a baby shower and someone held a pencil attached to a string over the pregnant woman's belly to find out if it's a boy or girl (depending on the clockwise or counterclockwise way the pencil turns) you have witnessed a body dowse. The dude in the article did something funky with his fingers. No clue about that -- and I've run out of time and patience to look it up online.

Why do I pontificate about this? Because as journalists we need to take a step back from our articles and find out if we are adequately describing complicated issues to our readers. Sure Skelton might have known what body dowsing was, but her readers do not. Sometimes we get so close to our stories that we forget what the regular person knows and doesn't know -- and it's always better to explain than to leave questions. A reporter is supposed to answer questions ... not create more.

When I am dealing with a complicated topic I always let someone outside of the issue read my story -- usually my sister or my mother. If she doesn't understand something I know I need to include more information. Just because you are a writer/reporter/journalist doesn't mean you can't benefit from a little layman editing. I do it all the time!