Drowning -- A Reminder

Some of you weren't here Monday, so you may or may not have seen this item in the blog. It's important that you read this and know this if you want to avoid fataling the rest of teh way out. Here we go:

Some of you are still penning ledes that are way too long. Ledes that are mushed together with nut grafs. Ledes that are waaaaay over the 32 words or so we're trying to maintain for now.

So, here's a new rule. It's in caps and bold-faced so it's unmistakable:

ALL LEDES FOR PRACTICE STORY AND TEST STORY EXERCISES MUST BE NO MORE THAN 32 WORDS UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE!!!

ANY LEDES IN A PRACTICE STORY OR A TEST STORY THAT EXCEEDS THAT LIMIT WILL BE CONSIDERED A FATAL, AND YOU WILL RECEIVE A ZERO ON THAT EXERCISE.

I'M NOT KIDDING, FOLKS!!!

I'm not doing this to be an ass. But ledes are supposed to be brief and to the point. A lede that's 40 or 50 words is neither brief nor to the point.

And a big part of journalism is decision-making; that is, sorting through endless information and prioritizing and summarizing for the reader what is most important. If I allow you to do runaway ledes, you won't develop good decision-making habits. And that will catch up with you at some point; maybe not in this class, and probably at a time when the stakes for you will be much higher.

So we're not going to let that happen. We're going to work out your bad habits and instill some good habits. And that's gonna start with a 32-word cap on ledes.

(For some of you, it's not even a question of needing to develop a lede; you already have a good lede, but it's mushed together with the nut graf and a supporting graf. We just need to make sure you know where to find the "return" key on your keyboard. Here's a good rule of thumb: if you have a lede -- or any paragraph, for that matter -- that's more than one sentence, take a look and see if it's one unit of thought or one piece of information supporting that unit of thought. If it's more than one unit of any of the above, then split it up into separate grafs.)

If anyone needs ANY help in developing ledes, let's schedule some office hours to work on it. I don't expect you to figure this out on your own, but I do expect you to identify what you're having problems with and seek the appropriate remedial help.