Meeting: Ledes

Ledes got a bit choppy in this exercise.

 I suspect a large part of that came when you didn't have one dominant idea to hook your lede upon; instead, one approach many of you took was to have a lede with multiple angles, which is one legitimate way to do it.

Problem is, in doing so many of you reverted back to old habits and overlooked some basic lede rules.
 
Let's look at some hypothetical ledes on this exercise, which included multiple items worth writing about. First, there's this one:

The Grand Ledge School Board discussed several issues at its meeting Monday night.

That lede doesn't have any errors, but it doesn't say anything. That's the problem, readers don't know what they were doing. It would be like doing a sports lede that read like this:

The MSU football team played a game Saturday night.

Not a lede that works, right? So let's evolve the school lede to include what those issues were, like this:

The Grand Ledge School Board discussed its budget, evolution vs. creationism in textbooks and summer school at its meeting Monday night.

That's better, but it's still short in that it doesn't go to end result; that is, what ended up happening. Again, let's do a comparable sports lede:

The MSU football team played Notre Dame Saturday night.

Again, a lede you would never write. So let's now add ultimate outcome to the school lede, like this:

The Grand Ledge School Board approved a new budget and voted to keep evolution-based textbooks and summer school at its meeting Monday night.

Now, readers know what was discussed, and what happened, And the football lede will now do the same:

The MSU football team beat Notre Dame 63-0 Saturday night.

When working on ledes, think about ultimate outcome and end result. Think about bringing up what happened, and not just that something happened. Be specific and conclusive.