A black fence encircled the Washington Monument, the obelisk most visible among memorials to American leaders on the National Mall, the day after a 5.8- magnitude earthquake centered in Virginia rocked the capital. (via)

Is identifying the Washington Monument as the most visible obelisk around really all that useful? Who is the audience that’s familiar with relative obelisk visibilities in DC but doesn’t know what a writer means when they refer to the Washington Monument?

That said, I’ve always suspected there’s some wire-service code mandating long unnecessary parenthetical comma phrases in the first sentence of every article.