Tuesday, May 27, 2014

First Ledes: Some Strong Examples

With basic summary ledes, we want to be able to get to the central point, end result and ultimate outcome of the story right away, without the need to read anything else to know exactly how things ended up, and/or what made a story most relevant, interesting and useful.
I think the following ledes meet that standard. Take a look, and compare them to your ledes:
A recent study from the Centers for Disease Control revealed 43 percent of American marriages result in a divorce within the first 15 years of marriage.


... and ... 

East Lansing public school officials announced a new program that will offer housing mortgages with below-market interest rates for teachers and administrators to combat low salary wages.


... and ... 

With new one-story stations coming in the future, the Kalamazoo Fire Department will no longer continue its 100-year-plus tradition of sliding down a pole to reach the fire engines.


... and ...  
Detroit officials announced Monday two more Kennedy High School students have picked up tuberculosis from a classmate, testing positive for the deadly disease during last week’s 170-student inspection.

Please notice how they are written in a simple, easy-to-understand style; how they get to the point in a succinct manner; and how they cite the most telling statistics and/or facts.

I'm happy to say that in this exercise, many of our ledes were similar to these. Really good job the first time around, folks. 

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