ABOUT US
WHO WHAT WHEN WHERE To nominate a lede, please send us the lede, the writer, the publication and the date of publication — no links. And you can join us on Twitter @greatledes. Please do.
WHY One more thing: In journalism school, they teach you that a good lede should be only one sentence and never begin with the word “there.” Pish. Good ledes can break all rules but one, and it is this: Employ no clichés. Otherwise, you risk turning a story about a babushka-wearing grandmother beating a robber with a price scanner into just another B3 yawner. It happens. This was the lede on that (real) story, the name of the writer and newspaper withheld to protect the guilty. When a robber barged into a (city deleted) convenience store around 1 a.m. last Thursday morning and demanded cash from the register, he never expected a 75-year-old customer to stand in his way. Except for the 75-year-old part, this is pretty boring, and “stand in his way” is cliche. The readers didn’t learn about the babushka and the price scanner until later on in the piece. That’s the real crime. So yes, when we are overcome with horror by a needlessly bad lede, we may share it here, although we’d rather exalt the good. We know that behind every bad lede may be a writer who was on his or her fourth story of the day and had less than 5 minutes to compose it.
Who are we? We are writers and editors in the U.S. Most importantly, we are lovers of great stories.
What’s a lede, anyway? It’s the first paragraph of a news story — the “leading” information — if J-school students could spell. In journalism school, they teach you that a lede is the who, what, when, where and why of a story, in 25 words or less. Competently written, it bites the reader and won’t let go; it compels him to read the whole story.
Every day, we choose a Lede of the Day and trumpet it here. We love it and pet it and call it George. Well, maybe not George. And maybe not every day. We’ve discovered that it’s a lot easier to find bad ledes than great ones. But that makes it all the more important to have a place to salute the great ones when they turn up.
Where do we find these ledes? Well, everywhere. Small-town weeklies. Big-city dailies. Blogs. E-zines. Anywhere journalism is committed. Please email us to nominate a great lede … but show some class, and don’t nominate yourself. We promise we won’t.
Because newspapers change, but great writing doesn’t. Even in the 24-hour news cycle, in which reporters don’t just write but blog, Tweet, Tumbl and film, there remain stubborn, graceful wordsmiths who craft elegant invitations to read: great ledes.