The shortest story ever filed?

What must have been the shortest story ever filed to a leading UK "pop" (the papers I was recommended to read rather than The Guardian on my first arrival at 85 in 1962 by the unforgettable Jack Allen) must have been on the murder of the West German ambassador by kidnappers in Guatemala in 1971. My then no. 2 in Mexico City Uli Schmetzer was on the spot when government troops found the envoy's corpse in a village just outside the capital. His vivid and rather gruesome story, phoned via home base, was a major scoop for Reuters. The dead envoy was promptly removed to a morgue and no other foreign journalist got to see it. On return to his hotel in the evening, Uli found a batch of Fleet Street and German correspondents waiting in the lobby to get his story. An hour or so later, back in his room, Uli heard one of the boys from the Street of Shame shouting his story down a shaky phone link to a London copy taker. "I stood today over the body of the murdered West German ambassador," the hack dictated. Then a pause before he added: "For the rest, take in Reuters." ■