The other factor is a powerful undertow of emotion, which I will discuss in relation to meanders. Meanders can also structure an article, but they carry a risk: A train of thought that sways back and forth, back and forth, can seem aimless, even meaningless—an autho- rial high crime. As readers, we get uneasy if we feel the writer has no plan, no reason to tell us this rather than that. We avoid a writer who cannot navigate his own mind, much as we’d avoid a guide in Venice who cannot find Saint Mark’s. In the name of “fair” reporting, news magazines commit many a meandering story.You’ll find an object lesson in al- most any issue you care to sample, with a train of thought roughly like this: The subject is X. On the one hand, this. On the other hand, that. When thatians say That, thisians reply