I'm happy to say that everybody did no worse than pretty good in this assignment, which in the past has been an ungraded piece of classwork. This year I'm going to give you some credit, though: you all get a boost to your overall quiz grade that's equivalent to 10 out of 10 on a single quiz. Which some of you could really use.
On this first assignment, it was far less important that I grade you and more critical that you get used to writing in a journalistic style and under a newsroom-type deadline before it starts counting for something.
Still, I think you're right where you need to be. Let's look at some of the ledes I thought worked well:
Couples who live together when they are younger are more likely to break up or divorce later in life, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
It identifies the most telling statistic, highlights it and provides a source for it. Nice work. This one collects a variety of factors:
Religion, age and wealth all factor in whether marriages last, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
Next is this:
Mayor Datolli plans to introduce a panhandling ordinance offering a one-way bus ticket out of town to homeless people at Tuesday's city council meeting.
It has who: the mayor who is acting, and homeless people being acted upon. It has what: the city council wanting to boot the homeless out of here. It has when: as soon as Tuesday's city council meeting. It has how: one-way bus tickets for the homeless. Four of six W's are covered here, and in only 25 words.
Next is this:
A victim of a lightning strike at a city swimming pool is suing the city for his injuries, citing neglect by the lifeguards to warn him of the storm.
Again, it sums everything you need to know in a simple, straightforward way. This next lede went a step further, and honed in on context:
Erik Barsh was going to be a senior tennis star until last summer when he was struck by lightning. Now he is in a legal volley with the city.
This is a more complex type of lede known by various terms, including a delayed lede (where the lede sets up a following nut graf that reads more like a basic lede) and an anecdotal lede (where in this case you are humanizing the subject a bit before plunging into the reason why this particular human is worthy of news coverage).
I didn't plan for you guys doing anything beyond a basic lede for this exercise, but it's fine that you did. We'll talk about alternate ledes and as the term goes on I'll encourage you to try more complex forms of story-telling. But if you want to fall back on the basic lee structure for now, that's perfectly fine. What I want to see you demonstrate for now is proper identification and fact selection. And a basic lede does that just fine.
Cynthia Lowe was arrested today for grand theft and defrauding an adoption agency after faking a pregnancy to receive money.
Very clear and concise. You know who did it, you know what they're charged with, and you know why they've been charged.
Another way to handle it would be to use a generic description of the woman instead of her full name in the lede, since she isn't anybody in particular that readers can expect to know by name, like Britney Spears or something. This lede took the generic approach:
A woman was arrested and charged with grand theft and fraud after faking a pregnancy to receive payments from an adoption agency.
Both these fraud ledes would have been further aided by the introduction of a telling fact that would take little space but say a lot: the exact dollar amount. Take out money and payments and instead put in $20,000. Doesn't that add so much more to the lede, in the same way saying whether a plane crash killed 2 people or 200 would say so much?
Look for those telling specifics that amplify the lede, and use them!
Now, there are some things missing from these and other ledes, like proper use of the word allegedly, and proper attribution use and style. But since we haven't learned those things yet, you weren't docked. And we'll get to learning those things very soon.
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