"Don't worry," says the news editor. "It's getting dark. Something is bound to turn up".
And it does. A shooting. Within minutes a reporter and photographer are dispatched to the scene; the headline writers are already at work. Normality returns.
As has happened almost habitually for as long as most journalists can remember, the paramilitaries have crawled out from under their stones at dead of night to claim a victim and set the news agenda for the coming morning.
Is this how things really were in newsrooms?
Is there a journalist in Belfast city who could put their hand on their heart and deny that they have not witnessed a like scenario? Cynical? Extremely so, when viewed from outside the environment of newsrooms accustomed to feeding their dependence with a daily fix of terror.
It is not that reporters and editors wanted people to be killed. Far from it. In the twilight hours after newspapers have been put to bed and bulletins laid to rest, many a tear was shed by experienced journalists who have intruded into the sorrow of others in the line of duty.
When the IRA triumphantly announced a ceasefire in 1994, we all wanted to believe the killing had ended. Did not the Belfast Telegraph proclaim it as so, by emblazoning the legend "IT'S OVER" in huge capital letters across its front page?
It wasn't, of course. Not for the people of Omagh, or for any of the other victims of organised terror attacks in the four years since. But just like the people on the streets who emptied the news-stands of papers and devoured the headlines on that day, disbelief was temporarily suspended.
Almost immediately, editors began to ponder how the pages would be filled and the circulation maintained if it was true, as Thomas Hardy once said, that "war makes rattling good history, but peace is poor reading".
We need not have worried. The political roller-coaster which broke its chains on ceasefire day provided an equally compelling story to replace the violence. And when the ceasefire was shattered, hardened hacks shared in the dismay that spread like shock waves from London Docklands.
I was in a hotel bar in Houston in the United States when the dread news broke.
A stetsoned Texan, broad as a mountain, wandered into the lounge and announced in a weary drawl that the Canary Islands had been bombed by the IRA. By the time I contacted the office, they were already on auto-pilot, gathering pictures, news, reaction and analysis the way ambulance drivers collect bodies and fire-fighters douse flames.
It has been a feature of journalism in Northern Ireland that we cover the big stories well, and responsibly. Which is to say that we allow the tragedy and the drama to speak for themselves, because we are part of it, and resist the sensationalism indulged in by our peripatetic colleagues who would fly into the province for a day or two.
In that respect the Northern Ireland media have earned their stripes. The job has been done well and properly.
But now the war really might be over and the agenda will have to change.
To be fair, there has always been a determination to report the normality of life, even to add an extra egg to the pudding, through the darkest days of the Troubles. Offsetting coverage of shootings, bombings and riots with tales of everyday life was always considered an important if somewhat perfunctory duty.
When it was all too easy to fill page after page with the doom and gloom that so often embraced us, it was recognised that people needed constant reminders that those determined to accelerate the descent into anarchy and chaos were coming up against the quiet resistance of ordinary people determined to live their lives as normally as possible.
The resistance fighters in the Northern Ireland conflict have not been the IRA or the UVF, but those from every walk of life who craved normality and who succeeded to some extent in living their lives as if immune from everything bad that was happening "out there".
Thus it was entirely possible that on the day 10 readers would call a newspaper to vent displeasure at the editorial line on the hot political potato, 20 would lift their telephones to complain about a mistake in the crossword.
But when it came to the big story, shootings and bombings invariably provided newspapers with their biggest circulation catches, the broadcasters with their strongest viewing and listening figures. The danger is that, in their absence, the media will present every drama as a crisis, as we lurch from one political logjam to the next.
Placing present difficulties in their proper perspective is one of the most demanding tasks facing senior journalists and editors in the immediate future.
Among many inquiring journalists there has always been a suspicion that the media's preoccupation with violence has provided a comfort zone for those in every corner of society who deal in duplicity, corruption and intrigue.
Certainly there is sleaze in Northern Ireland: it's just that not much of it has as yet been uncovered, and those who benefit from it have yet to be exposed. I don't know for sure, but I'd be pretty confident that if I was a dodgy politician, a corrupt businessman or a rip-off merchant, I'd stand much less chance of being rumbled by an investigative journalist in Northern Ireland than in many other places in the world.
As normality beds in, the new challenge for the media here is clear. It is to examine the entrails of our society, to shine a light into its darkest corners. Elsewhere this has become a vital function which has precipitated change in the South and led to the fall of governments the world over.
Turning our attentions to issues which have been meat and drink to the media elsewhere will place us in the vanguard of change. The catharsis is more possible now than it ever has been during my working life.
Take, for example, this week's joint editorial, the third in our history, between the News Letter and the Irish News. It was not about solving the Drumcree impasse, or calling on the gunmen to down tools.
It was about building a hospice for Northern Ireland's 700 sick children who will die before their time from life-limiting illnesses.
It turns out that the North is the only region of the UK not to have a hospice for children within easy reach. Now that's a disgrace, and one which the two morning newspapers have taken it upon themselves to put right.
Geoff Martin is editor of the News Letter