Tuesday, September 27, 2011

More Ledes: Flipping The Lede

Quite often, we want to emphasize not who is a source of a story, but what the story is; the actual action taking place. In this lede the action is the new charge:

Today East Lansing city officials announced that new arrestees will be charged $25 for mug shots and finger-printing services, in an attempt to trim expenses.

While the action is the new charge, you start the story with attribution; that is, from whom you're getting the information. By simply flipping the sequence of action and attribution you can emphasize the action, like this:

New arrestees will be charged $25 for mug shots and finger-printing services in an attempt to trim expenses, East Lansing city officials announced today.

Notice here I am using the exact same words you used in your lede. All I did was flip the attribution from the front of the lede to the back, and in doing so I moved the reference to today from the start of the attribution to the end.

The difference is that readers don't have to work through, "officials said blah blah" before getting to the gist of the story. Look at where you place attribution in a lede, and consider whether a flipped lede can help emphasize the main point.

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