This lede could went like this:
Two children were found dead after firefighters responded to a 911 call Saturday evening on Maldren Avenue.
I think a big question people would like answered right away -- as it does go directly to end result and ultimate outcome -- is why? Why are they dead? Why did the firefighters get called there?
Because of a fire, right? So, let's say, Two children were found dead after firefighters responded to a 911 call of a house fire Saturday evening on Maldren Avenue.
If you're wondering if you have the right amount of 5 w's answered in your lede, ask yourself this: do you have the bare minimum of what people need to know about the gist of the story, without reading any more of the story?
If so, then your lede is probably sufficient. If it's missing a major W, then fill in the blank.
We can use the 5 W's and how as sort of a checklist to see if we're missing an important element in our work, and especially our ledes.
Like here:
Former county treasurer Vernon Sindelair pleaded guilty to charges of
embezzling more than $1.7 million in tax receipts, claiming he put it toward
his late wife’s medical bills.
We have the who (former county treasurer Vernon Sindelair), what (pleaded guilty to embezzlement), why and how (he embezzled, to pay his wife's medical bills).
Missing is where, but that's probably not critical for the lede. In this case, the plea could have happened anywhere; it really wasn't central to the main point of the story itself.
When, however, is almost always important. A plea today is newsier than a plea three months ago. We needed to say when; in this case, Wednesday.
Does this lede say what we meant to say?
A pregnant woman, her husband,
and their 3-year-old daughter were struck by a train while crossing on Michigan Avenue.
I would say it does not.What we say here is that three people were struck by the train. But that wasn't the case; they weren't hit by the train; the SUV in which they were riding was hit. (If they were hit, they'd be squashed like bugs, right?)
Keep in mind, someone reading the lede of a story don't know anything yet about what we're writing about, so they are going to take your words as being literal. That's why we have to be precise in our writing, and especially when writing ledes.
What we meant to say was, A sport-utility vehicle carrying a pregnant woman, her husband,
and their 3-year-old daughter was struck by a train while crossing on Michigan Avenue.
Say what you mean, and mean what you say.
We can use word order to shorten passages. Like this one:
... according to a study done by sociologists at the
University of Florida.
Anytime we have heavy use of "to a" and "by" and "at the," we probably have room to get rid of such terms by moving around word order, like I did here:
... according to a University of Florida sociologists' study.
That turned a 12-word passage into just eight words. Not a ton of words, but critical in making a lede and brief and succinct as possible, while at the same time retaining the exact same meaning as before, with no loss of content.
In this assignment, I didn't grade you for adherence to AP Style, since we're still in the process of going over it. While soon you will be graded based on AP use, in this one I still cited proper AP Style in your evaluation, so we can start getting used to it.
And some of the rules include:
It's 911 call, not 9-1-1. So says AP Style, under the heading of 911 call.
It's $1.5 million, not 1.5 million dollars. Under dollars: Use figures and the $ sign in all except casual references or amounts without a figure.
When using addresses, there's lotsa little rules to follow. Let's start looking at a few of 'em.
First, is an address 1840 Maldren Ave. or 1840 Maldren Avenue?
From AP Style, under addresses:
Use
the abbreviations Ave., Blvd. and St. only with a numbered address:
1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Spell them out and capitalize when part of a
formal street name without a number: Pennsylvania Avenue. Lowercase and
spell out when used alone or with more than one street name:
Massachusetts and Pennsylvania avenues.
Spell
out and capitalize First through Ninth when used as street names; use
figures with two letters for 10th and above: 7 Fifth Ave., 100 21st St. So in this case, it's 1840 Maldren Ave.
And if you referred to the intersection of Michigan Avenue and Wayne Boulevard, that would be the correct reference, not just Michigan and Wayne or Michigan Ave. and Wayne Blvd.
I don't mean stories. A mean a grammatical article, like a, an, the.
Like here: 5- and 3-year-old brother and
sister die in house fire after playing with matches when smoke detector doesn’t
function and babysitter fails to rescue them.
It should be, A 5- and 3-year-old brother and
sister die in a house fire after playing with matches when a smoke detector doesn’t
function and the babysitter fails to rescue them.
When
it comes to writing for news, what messes us up regarding articles are
newspaper headlines, which usually drop articles in favor of brevity.
While that is true of headlines, that is not true of the actual stories
under the headlines. Articles need articles.
If you're
not sure if you have articles, read your story out loud and ask
yourself if it sounds like you've formed complete sentences (e.g., do you sound like a robot talking -- must bowl now -- or a human being -- I must bowl now?). If not,
it's usually because you're missing an article.
There are various types of ledes (which is what we call the start of a news story).
The most basic type of lede is called the summary lede.
It's a lede that answers at least one or two of the most important
questions among the five W's and one H of journalism (who, what, when,
where, why and how). Such ledes get straight to the main point of the
story. These are the easiest ledes to write, and a default you can
always rely upon with any type of story. And this will be the kind of
lede I want us to concentrate on as we start this semester.
In deciding what to put in your lede, you need to ask yourself several questions, including:
What is the most important information?
What's the story's central point?
What was said or done about this topic?
What happened, or what action was taken?
What are the most recent developments?
How did things conclude?
Where are things now?
Which facts are most likely to affect or interest readers?
Which facts are most unusual?
What are the facts that a reader absolutely needs to know about this story, if they read just the lede and nothing else?
The
structure of a lede should be a single sentence, if possible. So you
really do have to drill down to just the essential part of the story in
your lede. You can't overload it.
There are several points to consider in writing effective ledes, the first of which is: be concise.
Make it easy for the public to read and understand. Avoid being wordy,
repetitious, and choppy. Eliminate or delay the use of unnecessary or
less necessary background information until later paragraphs.
(The
proper length of a lede widely varies between news organization and
even between different stories. For the purposes of this class, a lede
should be no more than 32 words. That means before writing, you need to
make decisions on what information is most important for the lede, and
leave out other info until later in the story.)
Be specific. Use interesting details. Offer details that allow readers to visualize events. Avoid cliches.
Use strong, active verbs in the ways we discussed earlier.
Emphasize the magnitude of the story, e.g., note the number of people affected or possibly affected by something (e.g., More than 300 students were hospitalized this week after drinking rotten beer, police said), or the dollar cost or percentage increase or decrease of something (e.g., Tuition will increase 1,000 percent for incoming freshman this fall at Michigan State University),
or note any telling statistical measures of what happened (e.g., inches
of snowfall in a blizzard, how many feet high was a tsunami wave, the
number of cars involved in an accident, ect.).
Stress the unusual, such as deviations from the norm (e.g., A 2-year-old boy who can't yet speak piloted the space shuttle during its launch into space today).
Localize and update. Emphasize your community's role in happenings, whether regional or global (e.g., An MSU student was among three people who stole a hippo from Potter Park Zoo this morning). Emphasize the latest happening or development in a story (e.g., Five more students appeared in court today for their roles in last week's Cedar Fest riot).
Strive for simplicity. Don't overload a lede with too much info. Again,let's keep it to 32 words or less.
Begin with the news,
when possible. What I mean is, try to avoid beginning a lede with
attribution (the source of information). For example, it's better to
lede with, The dog died, police said as opposed to, Police said the dog died,
so we can put what happened (the dog died) ahead of who said it
(police). The news most often is what happened, not necessarily who said
it. But if the source is big enough, then that rule is relaxed (The president said he would okay an invasion of Canada is okay to lede with the source, since the source is making the news by flexing his or her power).
Emphasize the news.
Do not necessarily follow chronological order in telling a story.
Rarely are the first events in a sequence the most newsworthy. Decide
which facts are the most important, interesting, relevant or useful, and
write a lede emphasizing those facts, regardless of what occurred first.
(For
example, what's most important at a football game; how things started,
or how things finished? It's the latter, of course. That's why we lede
with who won or lost. Same thing with a city council meeting; the news
is what they ended up deciding. That's the material for your lede.
Likewise, what's more important: the item the city council first voted
on, or the item that most interests or affects residents? It's the
latter, so you should lede with the latter.)
Avoid agenda ledes, which
are ledes that place too much emphasis on the time and place at which a
story occurred. News generally is what happened, why and how moreso
than to whom and when.
(For example, in a football
story the most important news is who won or lost, and not that a
football game was played at a certain time and date. And with a city
council story, the most important information is what the council
decided, and not that a city council meeting was taking place at a
certain time or date.)
Avoid label ledes, which
are when you mention a topic but fail to reveal what was said or done.
Ledes should report the substance of what happened, and not just the
topic. (It's not news that the football team played a game or that the
city council had a meeting; it's who won or lost the football game and
what the city council ended up deciding to do at the meeting.)
Avoid exaggeration. If
a story is weak, it's weak. You're better off doing additional
reporting to see if you can find an angle that's more interesting within
your topic, than hyping something that just isn't worth the hype.
Avoid misleading readers. Never sensationalize, belittle or mislead. A lede should accurately set the tone for the rest of the story.
Remember your readers.
Ledes must be clear, useful, interesting and relevant to be of use to
your audience. That's who you're writing to inform. Again, journalism
isn't about personal artistic impression; it's about representing the
facts in a useful way for your audience to understand.
Rewrite ledes. Writing in and of itself can help focus writing ideas and insights. Don't be afraid to tinker repeatedly with ledes.
(Quite
often in my professional career, I would be stuck on writing a lede.
What I would often do is start writing the rest of the story, without a
lede or with a BS one I knew I'd change. The process of writing the
story and laying out facts would often help me crystallize in my mind
what the main point of the story was, and once I could articulate a main
point, that became my lede.)
Don't be afraid to break some of these rules!
Use your imagination. Try to find something different, as long as it is
factual and contextually on par with the facts of your story. If it
works and best serves the readers in an accurate and contextual way,
then it's okay.
