Ledes and Story Framing

Someone (Jaz???) mentioned “writing creative ledes for routine stories.” This DQ is about that, and everything else related to ledes.  A good lede FRAMES A STORY. Start off on the wrong foot, and the story gets lost.

Questions:

-- Have you written a great/ good/ effective lede lately?
-- Can you share an example of one from a colleague or your paper or the wires that shows how strong ledes FRAME stories?
-- Aside to April and Derek: How have you framed a photo in a way that BETTER shows the way into the story (i.e., lede)? 
-- Anyone have any great lede tips?

-- Anyone have a particular trouble with lede-writing/ story framing/ photo framing?

This is a discussion. Share ideas, examples, and feedback. Deadline—end of the week, or, of course, earlier. 
(Aside to Adolfo: you haven’t started yet but please join in. We need your feedback! Quit vacationing!!!!)


REMEMBER: to click on “email alert\” below so you know when your colleagues have posted. 

Disclaimer: I hate feature ledes.

It doesn’t make sense because I love reading some feature stories and really like in-depth coverage of important issues. But more often than not, I find that writers take too long to get to the news of a story and get wrapped up in the cute stuff. By the time I filter through what usually are poorly written and forced narratives, I’m over it. I know everyone says policy stories are boring, but those are generally the kind I like—when they’re done well.

That said, my editors seem to love to throw the hard-news driven intern the stories that really need humanizing.

http://www.statesman.com/search/content/news/stories/local/05/27/0527planecrash.html

I’m also looking forward to a story that will likely run this weekend that’s a lot less depressing, but I think is a better example of a narrative done well.

juanasummers - 09 June 2009 05:22 PM

Disclaimer: I hate feature ledes.

Juana et al: Great points. Agree with above, tho’ modified: We hate “feature ledes” that are done badly. And there are many. Question—why? Why do so many reporters go off in ice-skating mode when it comes to writing feature/ narrative?

Just for fun, here is one of my all time favorite “narrative ledes” (But notice it gets right at the news) from the NYT story on the 1969 Moon Walk:

Men have landed and walked on the moon.
Two Americans, astronauts of Apollo 11, steered their fragile four-legged lunar module safely and smoothly to the historic landing yesterday at 4:17:40 P.M., Eastern daylight time.
Neil A. Armstrong, the 38-year-old civilian commander, radioed to earth and the mission control room here: “Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.”

woulda been dumb to say, “Neil A. Armstrong looked out over the endless and vast moonscape that lay before him, thinking about his home town of Columbus, and wondering whether his dog Sasha knew what was about to happen...”

but, yeah, people do....

Ledes are a bit different when it comes to photo stories (I’m assuming you wanted Derek and I to address photo stories?).  I think that they’re often different from a written lede because they don’t always tell or reveal to the viewer what exactly the story is about in the very first photo.  But like a written lede, they must pull the reader into the story or spark enough curiosity for the reader to want to continue looking at the story.

Effective photo story ledes must be strong photographs.  It doesn’t matter if it is a detail shot, an overall, or medium shot, as long as it is visually interesting and engaging, enough to make the viewer want to continue looking at the story.

Here is a good example I found:  http://mediastorm.org/0015.htm

(I’m pretty sure this is a good example because as I was scrolling down the homepage of Media Storm, Jamie was peering over my shoulder and said, “Wait, go back! Was that a picture of a tiger and a man in an office? What was that?” Thanks for supporting my post Jamie!)

acgregory - 11 June 2009 10:23 PM

...enough to make the viewer want to continue looking at the story.

Here is a good example I found:  http://mediastorm.org/0015.htm

APRIL—thanks for this great foto ... and I think you hit nail on hed here (Thanks, Jamie) .... when someone says, “Wait—go back-- what was that!!!” you KNOW it’s good, it works, it does the job. Interesting that this tiger-in-the-office foto tops the post that begins with, Animal trade is second only to guns and drugs. That statement, preceded by that picture, makes a totally compelling story. Ya wanna read (and see) more.

This is my favorite lede I’ve written in a really long time. Also a good example of what I’d like to do in the future. I want to do legislative reporting but be able to relate the broad issue back to the reader by using real life examples.

I like the lede because I think, as my editor said, right off it takes the politics and turns it personal.

Anyway, here’s the link : )

http://www.sctimes.com/article/20090612/NEWS01/106120001&referrer=FRONTPAGECAROUSEL

Writing a lede is something I always get stuck on. I mean you have to get it just right otherwise the story goes nowhere. Well what I’ve always been told is that I should organize the story first and then worry about the lede. That way you know where your story is going and you don’t have to worry too much about what lede needs to say. In my opinion this is easier said than done because you can always have a hard time putting your story together.

Writing a lede also has a lot to do with what type of story you’re writing as well as what audience will read it. Of course if it’s a policy story you don’t want to get wrapped up in a city manager’s sweaty forehead and animated hand gestures, but if you are writing a solid feature, and I’m using Jamie’s story as an example, you wouldn’t write something like Heidi Aldes and partner Nicole encounter struggles in a same-sex relationship.

In order to write an effective lede, we need to first establish what would work best for the story and for readers.

JamieHughes - 12 June 2009 10:49 AM

I like the lede because I think, as my editor said, right off it takes the politics and turns it personal.

Heidi Aldes became a parent April 23 when her son, Kaleb, was born.

But Aldes doesn’t have any legal rights to Kaleb and she won’t unless a judge approves her for a second-parent adoption July 30.

Jamie—wonderful! Guys—this is what like to call a one-two-punch lede. Starts off with a happy thought, kids comes into life of parent, then—wham-o .... she doesn’t have any legal rights.

In a weird way, this is similar informationally to April’s foto post of the tiger in the office ... surprising, conflicted, one-two-punch.

Andres - 12 June 2009 11:48 AM

In order to write an effective lede, we need to first establish what would work best for the story and for readers.

Andres—nicely put. My “tip” on that point is: “Does the lead do the job it’s supposed to? That is, is it 1) clear, 2) accurate, 3) highly focused? Does it either clearly tell or clearly telegraph the story?” (I, for one, have never been able to write a lede first and then the story… always have to mulch around in the story first before the lede emerges… not good or bad, just the way my particular brain works)

FYI, Ask the Coach question on News v. Feature ledes: http://www.chipsquinn.org/skills/ask/ask.aspx?id=823

Ledes in a photograph? That’s a good question. Introducing the word “lede” into the photography world is a little awkward for me to wrap my mind around. But it can be done in a few ways.I agree with April in her comment of choosing a strong compelling photograph as a lede for a photo story. The first photo should spark your interest and curiosity into wanting more.

Leading lines in a photograph and creatively framing your center of interest with objects in the environment is a kind of lede. They are both techniques to move a viewer’s eye through a photograph. Framing with the foreground can also add a layer of information and insight.

Ledes certainly breathe in the world of multimedia. We all know about that. How should we start the story? How should we tell the story? How can we grab someone’s attention? These are all questions we were familiar with last month. (Shout out to all my Chipsters!)

A neat example of a lede in a multimedia piece is in Dai Sugano’s multimedia piece called Chasin Nooch. He is a photojournalist at the San Jose Mercury News. A few years ago he and video game columnist Antonio Antonucci covered the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Santa Monica. I have watched it a few times and hope you guys take a look at it but I think it’s cool how he started the multimedia piece following the arrows, as if he was in a video game himself.
http://www.mercurynewsphoto.com/blog/2007/07/14/chasin-nooch-part-12/

dereksijder - 15 June 2009 03:31 AM

Leading lines in a photograph and creatively framing your center of interest with objects in the environment is a kind of lede. They are both techniques to move a viewer’s eye through a photograph. Framing with the foreground can also add a layer of information and insight.

and LOVE the Chasin Nooch piece. You guys should look. Agreed—the arrows at the beginning are a wonderful “lede”!!

Everyone is posting some great comments about ledes. For some reason, I have to write SOMETHING for a lede before I can get my juices flowing with the rest of the story. But I have found myself going back and changing it once I’ve written more. I have not had to write any government stories (council meetings,etc.) so I have not had the particular challenge I spoke of originally--yet. I know I will though and I’ll keep all of your comments in mind (Andres, you had some real words of wisdom). To the photographers, I had never even thought of a lede from a photography stand point but there is a story told there just like in the text.  And Derek, that multimedia piece you posted was really good. Yes the producer took an interesting approach to draw people in.

O, ledes, how I love thee. (And, I’m particularly bothered when it’s spelled l-e-a-d. There’s history behind the spelling. Anywho, I digress.)

My high school journalism teacher stressed the importance of the lede. If it’s too long, you loose the reader. If it’s too complex, you loose the reader. If it doesn’t mention something important, you loose the reader. How stressful? I typically come up with my lede and nut graph first and then flow from there. Here are some key points I’ve stolen from professors, mentors, etc.:

1. In the first three words, you need to draw the reader in with either an intriguing word or thing of interest. If you’re writing about a notable figure, put it first. Readers will recognize that and keep reading. If there isn’t a notable person in your story, use colorful language (ex: A legislator scoffed...; The kid towered...) Even something as simple as “A new agency..” would work because the reader cares about new.

2. Don’t use official bureaucratic names in the lede. You don’t have to say “the Illinois Department for Family Support and Services.” Simply “an Illinois child welfare agency” is more functional and telling.

3.  Please, o please, don’t go over 35 words. Any longer is too long.

4. You don’t have to fit ALL the info in the lede. Save some for the nut graph if you have to.

5. When faced with a straight feature story, give a quick off-key anecdote.

6. Always think that your story is being run in the print edition, below the fold, with only the lede before the jump.

One of my favorite ledes:

Five-year-old Kip Talbot tied a dish towel around his neck, climbed a 10-foot shed and took a deep breath.
“I was going for it,” he said.
His grandmother and parents caught him before gravity taught him he was not, indeed, the Man of Steel. But the fascination with superheroes never ended. Talbot, now 44, has a room in the basement of his Roanoke home to hold all his action heroes. With a floor mat, two movie posters, two life-size cutouts, board games, 17

It’s a bit lengthy, but informative.

The perils and pleasures of anecdotal leads

Darius Rucker used to be Hootie of Hootie and the Blowfish; now he’s a country star, so Nashville-based entertainment writer John Gerome arranged an interview. Gerome remembered something the ex-Hootie had mentioned at a recent TV appearance, and asked him to elaborate.Rucker recalled checking into a hotel where he’d stayed in the past. “There’s a new clerk back there and she’s looking at me and staring at me and I’m expecting, `Hey, aren’t you Hootie?’ or `Aren’t you the guy from Hootie and the Blowfish?’ And she looked at me and said, `Aren’t you Darius Rucker the country singer?’”

Bingo, Gerome thought: “I knew immediately that was my lead.”

We do love our anecdotal leads, and with good reason. They give us an opportunity to write about human beings from the get-go, and we know that people like to read about people. We know also that people like to read stories, and what are good anecdotes but miniature stories, told in full?

But it is possible that we love them too much. We use them when the anecdotes are not good enough – they’re either inappropriate or thin or just plain boring. And we use them when we shouldn’t, when other types of leads would serve the stories better.

Take, for example, the hard-news story with an anecdotal lead. The risk here is that in our desire to humanize the news, we bury it instead.

Heidi Vogt had an AP Impact story from Kabul in April. If she had gone the anecdotal route, it might have read something like this:

KABUL (AP) – At the Mir Bacha Kot school for girls outside Kabul, there is no sixth-grade English class, because there are no sixth-grade English texts. Working in one of the tent classrooms scattered across a field, students pore over worn-out fifth-grade books instead.
“It’s like we’re starting out a building with a bad foundation, and we’re going to end up with a leaning, crooked structure,” said Reza Adda, the education director for Bamiyan province, which she said didn’t get 40 percent of the books expected last year.
It shouldn’t be that way.
Millions of new textbooks promised and paid for by the U.S. and other foreign donors have not been delivered to schools in Afghanistan, The Associated Press has found. Other books were so poorly made they are already falling apart.

In fact, her lead was that last graf – as it should have been. Compare the impact of a lead about a single school in Kabul with one that breaks the news of a systematic problem involving millions of textbooks across Afghanistan. There was news in this story – there was impact – and it was important to report it right up front.

Anecdotal leads can adversely affect a story’s play. Most Web surfers just move on if they feel a story doesn’t get to the point. And imagine that you’re an overworked editor and you have little time to review wire stories; you might not get to the fourth paragraph. Or that you share the impression, erroneous or well-taken, that readers’ attention spans are too short to wade through an anecdote. Or that you have just so much room on the front page, and the anecdote pushed the gist of the story to the jump.

Which is not to say that there is no place for anecdotal leads in stories that break news. The anecdote must be well told and brief, and it helps if the material is dramatic. Chicago-based medical writer Carla Johnson’s AP Impact story from earlier this year is a terrific example:

CHICAGO (AP) _ Ivory Jackson had Alzheimer’s, but that wasn’t what killed him. At 77, he was smashed in the face with a clock radio as he lay in his nursing home bed.
Jackson’s roommate _ a mentally ill man nearly 30 years younger _ was arrested and charged with the killing. Police found him sitting next to the nurse’s station, blood on his hands, clothes and shoes. Inside their room, the ceiling was spattered with blood.
“Why didn’t they do what they needed to do to protect my dad?” wondered Jackson’s stepson, Russell Smith.
Over the past several years, nursing homes have become dumping grounds for young and middle-age people with mental illness, according to Associated Press interviews and an analysis of data from all 50 states. And that has proved a prescription for violence, as Jackson’s case and others across the country illustrate.

The anecdote is a punch in the gut, and directly connected to the story at hand. Read the first three grafs, and you’ve got to ask: What is going on here? The nut graf answers that question. And later in the story, Johnson comes back to the sad tale of Ivory Jackson; he’s not just a device used to get into the story.

Unfortunately, too often that’s not the case. How many times have you seen stories that read something like this:

ANYTOWN (AP) – Jane Smith never thought that she would be reduced to doing her neighbors’ laundry, but times are tough and the 41-year-old Anytown woman needs to put food on her family’s table.
“I know some people would think it’s drudgery, and it is pretty embarrassing, but you do what you have to do,” said the mother of three.
More and more Americans like Smith are finding themselves de facto domestic workers, as the recession rages on …

And that is the last we hear about Jane Smith.

Ms. Smith is not a human being; she is barely a stick figure. If we care enough to lead with this woman, we should care enough to go into her story at some greater depth at some point. But of course, maybe we don’t care – and that should tell us something. Just as Jane Smith is not really a full-fledged human being, the anecdote isn’t really an anecdote at all. It’s a situation with no payoff, except for a pretty lame quote.

You can almost hear the writer thinking: “Lead anecdote? Check.”

this is the end of that email.

Instead, the writer should be asking these questions: Is this anecdote a good story, something that I would tell a friend independent of the story I am writing? Is there more to the lead character than a name, a situation and a quote? And should I use an anecdotal lead at all, or am I just appeasing my inner novelist?

If all the answers are yes, the proper reaction is not “check.” It’s “bingo.”