You can't add a panel that does not exist.  What are you trying to acomplish with the description panel?

THere is a metadata panel, a keywords panel, but no description  panel.  If you want to add description to each image you can add this line of metadata in edit/preferences/thumbnails.  Click on down arrow in box and scroll down to description.

I think Frank means the content panel from the metadata workspace, and he is right to expect that option there but as many of the default workspaces it is next to useless

You can not enter the description field in this workspace because it is just (yes I know, it sounds unbelievable but sadly enough this is true...) not in the list and not possible to add.

Also adding a column in this workspace is far from easy. In short, the concept of this Metadata workspace is brilliant, the result a disaster...

Guess you understand screen shot better than written descriptions (post#4).  So here is Description field added to Metadata Panel.  Or is this not what you were looking for?

 

This is the screenshot of the Metadata Workspace with the Content Panel (not Metadata Panel). As you can see it shows Name, Label, Keywords etc. but it's not possible to show Description in that list as a column.

I still agree that it would be a big bonus if you could alter this workspace with description field (even with more lines etc) but what Curt shows you might be an alternative. I couldn't help noticing that you have not created your own custom workspaces.

Try and play with this. You have the option to divide the window in 3 columns max but you can create different panels as a row in 1 column.

Grabbing a tab and move it to a new location until a single blue line appears (between the borders, a bit tricky). A vertical blue line means as a column and a horizontal line means a row. A surrounding blue line means same panel but adding as a tab. You can rearrange the tabs by dragging to left or right. under the menu window you can select which panels are visible or use right mouse click menu on top of a panel to choose.

Sadly enough only 3 columns and only one panel of it's kind per workspace, but you can resize the panels also to your own workflow needs.

In Bridge preferences you can change the colors for background in the general tab and in the metadata tab you can select what info to view in certain sections. Personally I have set my IPTC to view only description, keywords, date created and a few other subjects.

That is the nice thing about Bridge, creating custom workspaces, save them and being able to recreate them without problems :-)

I attach some screenshot of my daily workflow (with the luxury of having a 30' screen) but there are plenty of other options possible, don't forget to name and save your workspace.