Drowning -- Peanut Barrel Rule

On Monday, I told you that this was an exercise that's usually tripped up previous 200 classes.

And this one did the same here, but not in the way I expected.

In the past, people had trouble with the concept of ledeing with the latest news and properly backgrounding the story so that readers had sufficient background info, which is defined as this: enough information with which to make sense of the latest news.

You aced that. But where many of you went off the rails was in identifying what was the latest AND biggest news. I didn't expect that.

Many of your ledes were like this one:

East Lansing police this morning released the name of the man who drowned yesterday in Nichols Lake in Lakeside Park.

. . . or like this one . . .

The name of the unidentified man who lost his life attempting to rescue a young boy from Nichols Lake Sunday has been released today by the East Lansing Police Department.

Let's lean on the Peanut Barrel rule: what are you most likely to say first? That the name of the dead rescuer was released? Or that the boy he was trying to save died today? What do you think?

I'd say the latter is clearly more impactful and newsworthy than the release of a name. The latter (a death) is clearly a more momentous happening than the former (the release of a name of someone we already know is dead and isn't a particularly well-known public figure of any sort).

So I liked this lede much better:

Edward McGorwan, a boy who was in critical condition overnight related to a drowning accident, has died this morning, according to Dr. Catrina Lowrie, a physician at the Regional Medical Center.

Of course, the best lede would try to incorporate BOTH latest happenings, while giving preference to the death over the naming. That's what this lede did:

A local boy was pronounced dead today after he was pulled out of Nichols Lake unconscious yesterday, and police released the victim's name who drowned while trying to save him.

. . . and so did this one . . .

A doctor announced this morning that Edward McGorwan, the boy rescued from Nichols Lake yesterday, is now dead. His attempted rescuer has also been identified.

One thing about that last lede: I think it would have been better if you had flipped the lede to put the new up front and the attribution second, like this:

Edward McGorwan, the boy rescued from Nichols Lake yesterday, is now dead, a doctor announced this morning. His attempted rescuer has also been identified.

See how that cuts to the chase better?