story lead
CANBERRA, Australia -- GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba -- The prison sentence of an Australian detainee who pleaded guilty to providing material support for terrorism would be limited to seven years under terms of a plea bargain, a military judge at Guantánamo Bay said Friday.
This particular lead, found on the Miami Herald website friday morning is a summary lead. The lead answers all of the important questions (who, what, where) immediately and does not fluff up the sentence with any other information that the reader is not in immediate need of. The writers use of language is clear and correct. I feel that summary leads should always be the way to go when writing a news story unless you have come across enough information in your interviewing to make another sytle of lead acceptable. In using other leads, some writers stray from the idea of what a lead should be. A summary lead cuts to the chase and from it the reader can easily decide whether they are interested in continuing to read the story or not. I thought this particualr lead was very well written and hope that after this class I will learn to cut the fluff from my own writing and become capable of writing a proper summary news lead!
This particular lead, found on the Miami Herald website friday morning is a summary lead. The lead answers all of the important questions (who, what, where) immediately and does not fluff up the sentence with any other information that the reader is not in immediate need of. The writers use of language is clear and correct. I feel that summary leads should always be the way to go when writing a news story unless you have come across enough information in your interviewing to make another sytle of lead acceptable. In using other leads, some writers stray from the idea of what a lead should be. A summary lead cuts to the chase and from it the reader can easily decide whether they are interested in continuing to read the story or not. I thought this particualr lead was very well written and hope that after this class I will learn to cut the fluff from my own writing and become capable of writing a proper summary news lead!
posted by Danielle at
7:54 AM
6 Comments:
I agree with you 100% that a summary lead is the best way to go when writing a news story. It gets right to the point and allows the reader to decide if he wants to go on. It also gets the most important information out right away. Good review
I agree that this lead does a good job of presenting the who, what, where and when. Therefore, it has accomplished the main goal of a summary news lead: to briefly introduce the topic of the story without giving away the entire thing. As a result, I think most people will continue reading the article to learn about the remainder of the story.
I also agree that a summary lead was the best way to go in this story. It's the kind of story that personally I don't find all that interesting, so I just want to get to the main point right away.
I agree that the summary lead was the best choice for this particular story but I can't say I agree with you that it is the best way in all cases. Some stories deserve more feeling and a lead that can accomplish the incredible feat of putting the reader in the scene.
-Nick
The summary lead was very affective and I agreed with most of what you were saying about the lead.
I want to point out the use of attribution in the lead, which occurs in many summary leads.
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