Missing: The News Is The News

News isn't that something happened or took place. It's what, exactly, happened or took place.

Let's consider this pretend lede from a football game story:

MSU played Notre Dame in a football game Saturday.

That lede doesn't work, right? That's because the news isn't that a game was played; it's what happened at the game, something like MSU beat Notre Dame 84-0 on Saturday.

In the same way, this not-pretend lede doesn't work, either:

The U.S. Department of Justice reveals the statistics of Michigan residents once reported as missing.

The news isn't that the justice department revelaed statistics; the news is what those statistics were! So a better lede would have said something like, The U.S. Department of Justice found more than 57,000 Michigan residents were reported missing last year.


What you're missing in each case is ultimate outcome and end result: who won or lost the game, and by how much in the former; how many people are missing in the latter.

So if you're covering a city council meeting, for example, the news isn't that there was a meeting, or even that they discussed a specific issue at the meeting; it's what action took place regarding the issue at the meeting.

Let's be sure we're hooking our stories and our basic ledes on what happened, and not just that something happened.