Someday soon an earnest graduate student will sit down and write a doctoral thesis titled "The Rise of the Penis in American Journalism." Ever since June 23, when Lorena Bobbitt tossed her hapless husband's manhood onto the lawn of the Paty-Kake Daycare Center in Manassas, Virginia, journalists have been falling over each other to be more explicit about the male sexual apparatus. Bland euphemisms like "member" and "organ" quickly got lost in the shuffle. A computer search of the first half of 1993 revealed only a paltry twenty articles mentioning penises. But after the Bobbitt case surfaced, the P word popped up in more than 1,000 stories.

By the time the Michael Jackson scandal broke in August, and his supposedly speckled penis became the focus of international scrutiny, there seemed to be no limits on genital reportage. Journalistically speaking, the penis has arrived.

Nor does it show any sign of withdrawing soon. On January 21, The Associated Press, in its usual understated style, reported that Cynthia Mason Gillett, a twenty-eight-year-old resident of Canton, North Carolina, had been placed on probation for dousing her husband's penis with nail polish remover and setting him on fire. The report, which came on the heels of an AP story about a California woman accused of cutting off her husband's testicles, drew gasps as it quickly ricocheted on e-mail among reporters who thought they had seen everything.

That the AP, which broke the Bobbitt story nationally, has turned into a clearinghouse for sexually explicit stories has not escaped the notice of management. "We had a run of penises on the wire, didn''t we?" says AP managing editor Darrell Christian with a chuckle. "The stories existed before, but they didn't get to our level." (Making up for lost time, the AP took up its new beat with gusto. During Lorena Bobbitt's trial, it transmitted photos of her husband's severed penis. There were no takers.)

Howard Stern, the self-proclaimed "King of All Media," was positively giddy at the spectacle of better-behaved broadcasters like Katie Couric and Barbara Walters intoning the word "penis," which he regards as his trademark property.

Headliine writers frolicked like slap-happy urologists. "Phallus Interruptus," joked The Nation. "Sex, Lies, and an 8-inch Carving Knife," announced Vanity Fair. (The knife expanded or contracted in length, depending on the publication.) BOBBITT CASE? AW, PUT A ZIPPER ON IT, urged The Washington Post. Many headlines seems designed to jangle male nerves: SEPARATION ANXIETY (Men's Health); SEVERANCE PAY (People); SLICE OF WIFE (The Washington Post).

At Time and Newsweek, feminists were trotted out to survey this latest skirmish in America's gender wars. While some men might have expected -- or feared -- a more gleeful tone, both women were rather affectionate toward the male appendage. Columnnist Barbra Ehrenreich opined in Time, "Iadmire the male body and prefer to find the penis attached to it rather than having to root around in vacant lots with Ziploc bag in hand." Across town, Cynthia Heimel told Newsweek readers, "Some women find a penis distasteful, others can take penises or leave them, but many of us find penises rather vulnerable and endearing. It's the rest of men that scares us."

The legacy of the Bobbitt case is likely to be a reduction in the gap between what journalists talk about in the office and what they pass along to the public. (For a glimpse of true-to-life Newsroomspeak, check out The Paper, an upcoming film about a Manhattan tabloid. Michael Keaton, who plays the editor of the New York Sun, complains about the illustration for a series on penile implants: "Can we get a better dick drawing next time? This one looks like a map of Florida.")

It remains to be seen how far journalists will take the new Peter Principle. After all, give them an inch . . .

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