“Two Missouri vacationers won’t be charged in a girl fight in The Villages,” Villages-News.com reports in the lede of a Saturday article credited simply to “Staff Report” in the byline.

Cops in the vast Floridian retirement community responded to the May 6th “girl fight,” and arrested 31 year-old Katherine Northrup of St Peters, Missouri and 28 year-old Gina Danforth of Fenton, Missouri, the two presumably renting a home in The Villages while visiting Disney World, with the police report mentioning screaming, spitting, pushing, punching and hair pulling, in a dispute over a golf cart rental and tickets to the world-famous amusement park. Sumter County prosecutors last week declined to pursue misdemeanor battery charges against the two “girls” for the altercation.

Great for them but we still have questions about the editorial decision-making process that led to the words “girl fight” being used to describe the brawl. Was there some pushback in the newsroom on an earlier draft that said “cat fight” and “girl fight” ended up being the compromise? The use of “Staff Report” does at least appear to be standard operating procedure for crime reports at Villages-News, as every article we’ve seen this morning says the same in the byline. Probably smart considering that other Villagers might seek violent retribution against local media for correctly reporting on their punching old women and peeing on lawns. The “girl fight” between grown women is just weird and whoever wrote that needs to get out of The Villages for a while to clear their head.