Every once in a while when I covered the day-to-day Baltimore police beat, a story came along that made me wish I worked for a tabloid. It made me sad when I couldn't write the cops busted or nabbed a crook, words that would get us beaten by the Copy Desk.

 I had to say, police arrested a suspected bank robbery who allegedly ...

Boring, but for the most part, appropriate. But it's always fun to see how others do it. A book I read a long time ago on the media had a quote from a New York Times editor defending reporting a scandolous trial by saying, in effect, when the tabloids do it's sensationalism but when The Times does it it's a sociological study.

Today, both the New York Times (stodgy broadsheet of record) and the New York Post (the fiesty and fun tabloid) covered the same traffic accident. A man driving an SUV called police and told him he had hit somone in Queens. He stopped, got out of his car but couldn't find a victim. Seconds after he hit the person, another driver in a van had run over the victim and dragged him 20 miles to Brooklyn.

(To give you an idea of the differences in papers, the accident story shared a page with "The Recession Takes Down a Yacht Club" in The Times and "24-carat hobo scam" and "Temps just a tease" in The Post.)

Here's how the scrappy New York Post played the story: Page 1, large headline: "20-MILE HORROR" with a map, a photo of cops and a tease to turn to Page 7 for more info. There, readers can find another large headline: "CAR-DRAG HORROR ALONG 3 HIGHWAYS," another photo of the van and body under a white sheet and a 22-paragraph story titled, "Victim's 20-mile trail of blood."

The story by three reporters and two contributors contains nearly every crime cliche you can imagine. The victim wasn't just killed, he was "horribly killed"; it wasn't just an accident, it was a "gruesome accident"; and the as if the trail of blood in the headline seemed understated, that same sentence concludes with, " ... leaving a 20-mile trail of gore."

Here's how the New York Times covered the story: page A23. It's not even teased on the front page (they used that to lead readers to the more important story on the page -- "Uncovering the perks of Albany's fallen GOP." (they did, however, put a link to the story on their home web page).

Here's the NYT head: "Queens Driver Unknowingly Drags a Body Nearly 20 Miles" Not exactly a grabber, but still gets your attention. The lead is straightforward but known in our business as a feature opening: "A few minutes after 6 a.m. Wednesday, the driver of a black sport utility vehicle ... "

The Times saved the word "gruesome" for the second sentence of the third paragraph. But I have to give The Times kudos for detail and adhering to what journalism teachers drill into students -- show, don't tell.

While The Post hammers home that this accident is horrific and left a trail of gore, The Times actually describes the horror and the gore and leaves it up to the readers to decide how to characterize it.

The Times describes the 19.8 mile journey and the van "dragging the torn-up corpse" who was "hooked through his sternum" and "afixed to a steel plate that was part of the van's undercarriage." The story goes on, "The body tissue, including the back of the legs, buttocks and back were worn, basically, off, in the extreme" and notes that police have yet to identify the victim but found his broken iPhone, a Western Union receipt and blue vinyl jacket in the westbound lanes of the Belt Parkway. It even notes his shoes are still missing.

Here's my take: The Post oversold a story that provided little information beyond repeating the screaming headlines. The Times undersold a marvelously detailed tale that didn't need adjectives to explain the horror.

Anyone who bought The Post to read about the accident should be disappointed because they learned nothing beyond what they could've read for free at the newstand. And they wouldn't even have known that had they spent an extra 50 cents on The Times, they would've gotten the best version of the best read story of the day.

Hype your product to make money but leave your customers unsatisifed? Stick to sound jouranlistic reasoning, lose money but still give your customers the best product? Those of us who practice serious journalism hope that readers will understand that the best story will be found in papers like The Times and buy them without needing to see the word "horror" in a box six blocks away.

That said, I have to come up with a "grabber" headline for this blog that will get the attention of search engines. I'll stay neutral and use the one adjective that both New York papers used: gruesome.