Leads "I want stories to startle and engage me within the first few sentences, and in their middle t

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Leads"I want stories to startle and engage me
within the first few sentences, and in their
middle to widen or deepen or sharpen my knowledge
of human activity, and to end by giving me a
sensation of completed statement."John Updike,
Former New Yorker magazine staffer
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5 Coaching Tips

• Keep leads short less than 35 words.
• Place the key words at the beginning or end of
  the sentence for emphasis.
• Write a focus sentence at the top of your story.
• Avoid suffering nut graph first, multiple leads,
  or wait.
• Dont invent your lead. Base it on the backup in
  your notes.

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Getting Started

• Imagine the story while you are reporting it.
• Work from your Nut Graph.

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The Lead

• Teaser or foreshadowing.
• If you havent got material to support your lead,
  you have the wrong lead.

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How to Find Your Lead

• Reader Interest
• Memorable Item
• Focus on a Person
• Descriptive Approach
• Mystery Approach
• Build On a Quote
• Contrast
• Problem/Solution
• Narrative Storytelling

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Hard News Leads

• AKA Summary Lead.
• One or two sentences.
• Gets directly to the point.
• Usually answers 5 W and H.

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• Hudson, Fla.A 13-year old girl shot and slightly
  wounded her stepfather with a BB gun after he hit
  her mother on the head with a frying pan Saturday
  afternoon, according to the Pasco County
  Sheriffs Office.

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Nut Graphs

• AKA Focus Graph.
• Paragraph that explains the point of the story.
• A Summary Lead often takes the place of a Nut
  Graph.

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Soft Leads

• AKA Feature Lead or Delayed Lead.
• Can be several paragraphs.
• Delays telling reader what story is about using
  description or storytelling.
• Should still include Nut Graph within the first
  3-5 paragraphs.

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Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service

• San Jose, Calif.A nervous flight attendant was
  having trouble taking a urine drug test. So she
  drank a glass of waterand anotherand another.
• After guzzling three liters in three hours, she
  still couldnt urinate. But hours later, the
  40-year-old woman staggered into a Burlingame,
  Calif., hospital, her speech slurred, her
  thinking fuzzy.
• The diagnosis she was drunk on water.

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Soft Lead or Hard Lead?

• Significance of the news.
• Timing.
• Proximity.
• Subject Matter.
• Editors Preference.

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The New York Times v. Los Angeles Times

• Page 124 of Rich.
• NY Times written before breeding law was passed
  and was intended for a national audience.
• LA Times written immediately law passed and it
  affected people in the papers circulation area.

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Summary Leads

• Can be cumbersome sometimes if you jam the 5 Ws
  and H into the lead.
• Sometimes you save some info for 2nd or 3rd
  paragraph.

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Who, What, When, Why

• Tallahasse, Fla.A Florida law student was held
  Tuesday on a charge she hired a hit man to kill a
  secretary who found out the student had stolen an
  exam, police said.

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Who, What, Why

• Washington (AP)The Federal Aviation
  Administration said Tuesday it would hire 12,500
  new air traffic controllers over the next decade
  to offset a wave of looming retirements.

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Jamming it all in 68 words

• Page 125 of Rich text.
• NY Times article.

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SubjectVerbObject Order

• Who did what?
• Buffalo, N.Y.A radio station programmer has been
  fired for breaking the stations rules against
  taking gifts from business contacts, a station
  executive said Wednesday.
• The firing of Dave Universal from Entercom
  Communication Corp.-owned WKSE-FM comes amid
  increasing scrutiny of the relationship between
  the recording industry and the broadcasters who
  play their songs.

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Order of Information

• Who
• What Happened
• When
• Where
• Why
• How
• Page 127 of Rich Text leads that emphasize
  different info.

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Active v. Passive

• Passive is preferable mostly in sentencing
  stories.
• A former employee of the University of
  Pennsylvanias Van Pelt Library was sentenced to
  seven years of psychiatric probation yesterday
  for the theft of 1,798,310 worth of rare books
  and documents.

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Where to Say When

• University officials agreed to raise tuition by
  100 Monday.
• University officials agreed Monday to raise
  tuition by 100.

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Delayed Identification

• Who is not a well-known person.
• Identify by location, age, occupation or other
  modifier in 1st paragraph.
• By name in 2nd paragraph.
• Two Minneapolis meter monitors have been charged
  with stealing an estimated 35,000 worth of
  nickels, dimes and quarters from parking meters.

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Updated Leads

• Princeton University officials have placed a cap
  on the number of As that professors can award in
  an effort to crack down on grade inflation.
• Students at Princeton University wont be
  receiving

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Impact Leads

• Explains how readers will be affected.
• Answers the so what right from the start.
• Southwest Missouri State University must release
  its campus crime reports to the public, a federal
  judge ruled Wednesday in a case that could affect
  colleges across the nation.

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Fact versus Opinion

• An 88-year-old man died Monday afternoon when
  fire spread through his second-floor apartment at
  the Wellington Arms Apartments in north St.
  Louis.
• An 88-year-old man died in north St. Louis County
  Monday afternoon, apparently after he started a
  fire while smoking in bed, authorities said.

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Accusations

• A person is innocent until proven guilty.
• In crime stories accusatory statements must be
  attributed.
• A 38-year-old paroled murderer has been arrested
  in St. Croix County, Wis., for allegedly
  kidnapping and raping two 16-year-old girls in
  Minneapolis last month.

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Quotes

• Partial quotes are best to avoid confusion.
• The committee concluded that the professor was
  not guilty of research misconduct as defined in
  school policy. However, the committee concluded
  there were lapses of judgment and failures of
  communication in the experiment.

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Soft Leads

• Dont strain to create a lead.
• Pull from the story, not from your head.
• Can build curiosity for the reader.
• Can painful and tedious.

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10 Soft Leads

• Descriptive
• Anecdotal
• Narrative
• Focus-On-a-Person
• Contrast
• Teaser
• Mystery
• Build-On-a-Quote
• List
• Question

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Descriptive Lead

• Describes a person, place or event.
• Skippack farmer John W. Hasson stood ankle-deep
  in mud, pumping milk into a wooden trough as his
  pigs, squealing and grunting, snouts quivering,
  climbed over each other to get to their feed.

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Anecdotal Lead

• Starts with the story behind a person or event.
• Late one spring night, after drinks at a bar and
  a bit of protest, Elaine Hollis agreed to her
  boyfriends desire to capture their passion on
  videotape.

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Narrative Lead

• Tells the story with enough dramatic action that
  the readers can feel as if they are witnessing
  the event.
• Police officer Juan Cabrera felt the barrel of
  the gun against his head.
• Im gonna kill you, a voice from behind said.

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Focus-On-a-Person Lead

• A little story about the person or show the
  person in action.
• Nita walked slowly down the narrow hall, deftly
  guiding her tottering 11-month-old son around the
  abandoned baby walkers, strollers and toys.

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Contrast

• Stories about conflict and unusual circumstances.
• William Pearce, known to his patients as Dr.
  William J. Rick, was charming and slick, say his
  former associates and police detectives.
• He came to town with medical degrees, numerous
  national board certifications and myriad other
  qualifications.
• But the real Dr. Rick died in 1986, police say.

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Teaser Lead

• Uses element of surprise.
• This is no ordinary public library.
• For one thing, there are only four books on the
  shelves. For another, you wont fund any of
  these works, or the many that are expected to
  join them soon, at other libraries or bookstores.

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Mystery Lead

• Sets up the story like a mystery novel.
• They know who you are, what you eat, how you
  procreateand where to find you.

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Build-On-a-Quote Lead

• Build your lead around a quote.
• Melinda Easterbrook knows exactly how long it
  took for a tornado to blast apart her comfortable
  home while she and her husband huddled in the
  basement.
• It lasted five Hail Marys and two Our Father,
  but you have to say them quickly, she said
  yesterday.

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List Leads

• Few brief examples (usually no more than three).
  Make sure you have same subject-verb-object
  order.
• Boston College has an assistant dean for alcohol
  and drug education. Rutgers University sets
  aside dorm rooms for recovering student
  alcoholics. The University of Nevada bars
  students from leaving sports events to make
  alcohol runs.

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Question Leads

• Reader needs to be interested in finding out the
  answer to the question.
• What are the odds of finding your true love by
  placing an ad with a telephone dating service?
• About one in 40, according to Terry Ehlbert.

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Leads to Avoid

• Good News/Bad News
• Crystal Ball Leads
• Nightmare Leads
• Plop-a-Person Leads
• Weather-report Leads
• Stereotype Leads

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5 Coaching Tips

• Keep leads short less than 35 words.
• Place the key words at the beginning or end of
  the sentence for emphasis.
• Write a focus sentence at the top of your story.
• Avoid suffering nut graph first, multiple leads,
  or wait.
• Dont invent your lead. Base it on the backup in
  your notes.