Leads- hook into story; grab readers

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Leads- hook into story grab readers attention
often first paragraph (25-30 words)

• SHS Courier

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The Hard Leadalso called...

• AP summary lead
• Summary lead

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The Hard Lead

• usually short (25-30 words)
• tightly written
• covers the 5 ws and H
• uses strong, active verbs

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Sample Hard LeadEight foreign aid workers,
including two Americans, held captive in
Afghanistan for three months for preaching
Christianity were airlifted to freedom Wednesday
by U.S. military helicopters.
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The Soft Leadalso called...

• Novelty lead
• Feature lead

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Types of Soft Leads

• Setting
• Anecdote
• Question
• Quotation
• Zinger

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Setting Lead

• uses vivid descriptive detail
• uses concrete nouns
• uses strong, active verbs
• followed by a NUT GRAF-paragraph w/in intro that
  captures the heart of the story an internal lead.

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Sample Setting Lead Jack Walden paused in the
middle of a stand of dense brush, sweat soaking
through his shirt and staining his leather
shoulder holster. He looked up at a roaring
helicopter just a few dozen feet overhead. A
crewman leaning out the front door with a
videocamera jabbed a thumb to the left. There,
in a tiny clearing not five feet from Walden was
the target of all the commotion A single busy
marijuana plant.
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Sample Setting Lead (cont.) ...For Walden, a
detective with the Portage County Drug Task
Force, it was a good ending to a long day. The
task force, made up of officers from the Portage
County Sheriffs Department and the Ravenna, Kent
and Aurora Police departments, confiscated about
80 plants Wednesday. The total street value At
least 100,000. (This is the NUT GRAF to follow
the first grafs of the lead.)
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Anecdote LeadLike a story, it has...

• lots of descriptive detail
• strong, active verbs
• concrete nouns
• sometimes, dialogue
• is followed by a NUT GRAF

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Sample Anecdote Lead Oh, there must be another
memorial here, the woman said as she came upon
the police barricade. There was no surprise in
her voice, just acceptance. She looked up to see
a milling crowd of firefighters in dress blues
outside the grand St. Patricks Cathedral. The
cop at the corner held out his arm to usher her
through, and she continued up toward Central
Park.
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...Two months after the attacks here, mourning
has settled into the rhythm of the city. As the
woman continued on her way, others were stopping
in the bright blue midtown Manhattan morning,
finding a place on the sidewalk to watch somberly
as yet another service began to unfold under the
towering Gothic spires of the fabled cathedral
near Rockefeller Center. (This is the NUT GRAF
to follow the first grafs of the lead.)
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Sample Anecdote Lead For Josh Witsaman, tying
his shoelaces at school Monday was about as easy
as knotting two strands of slippery
spaghetti. With his hands encased in a white
sock and bound with masking tape, the 10-year-old
from King Elementary School in Akron fumbled
awkwardly at his simple task. His tongue would
stick out and lips twist in excitement as he
neared finishing a knot, only to see it fall
apart in a tangled heap on his tennis shoe. Oh,
brother, Josh sighed in frustration.
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Sample Anecdote Lead (cont.) ...His teacher,
Diana Koltnow, wasnt being a sadist, even though
she bound the hands of her entire health class
and challenged them to button a shirt and tie a
shoe. Instead, Koltnow and Hope Carr of the
Association for Retarded Citizens were trying to
make the frustrations of the disabled real for
the fourth-grade class. (This is the NUT GRAF
to follow the first grafs of the lead.)
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Question Lead

• use sparingly -- journalists answer questions,
  not ask them

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Sample Question Lead Ever heard of William P.
Barr? Americas taxpayers provide a car and
driver to take him to work and back home, trailed
by a wagon of armed men to protect him.(In a
story about taxpayer money wasted on bureaucrats
no one ever heard of.)
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Sample Question Lead Yes means yes and no means
no. Yes? No.(In a story about the tricky
wording of election issues.)
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Quotation Lead

• Should use sparingly
• Must be absolutely spectacular quote
• MUST be short and to the point

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Sample Quotation LeadThree months of making
new friends, taking new steps, learning about a
different culture and learning about
yourself.This is how Dillon Banerjee describes
the Peace Corps training and overall experience
in his book, So, You Want to Join the Peace
Corps.
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OSU graduate Alison Blosser found Banarjees
words to be true when she served the Peace Corps
recently in Turkmenistan. She shared her
experiences with the Journalism I classes Nov.
5.(This is the NUT GRAF to follow the first
grafs of the lead.)
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Zinger Lead

• grabs readers with a snappy or clever phrase
• sometimes uses a play on words (pun)
• particularly effective in highlighting the
  unlikely or seemingly absurd
• MUST be kept short

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Sample Zinger It was dinner time at the
Coliseum -- about 5 p.m. or so Wednesday. And
beefcake-on-the-hoof was the dish du
jour.(story about tryouts for American
Gladiators t.v. show)
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Sample Zinger Ramona Williams died Oct. 9 in a
two-car crash in Willoughby. The 18-year-old
was 21 weeks pregnant. Her baby is due in
January.
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Sample Zinger

• TABLOID MARRIAGE SPAWNS
• SIX-HEADED MONSTER!!!
• (Story about the merging of two supermarket
  tabloid publishers, each with three publications.)

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Sample Zinger and Nut Graf First, it was breast
enhancement, then shaping up those thighs, and
now its putting some plumpness back into the
product. Were talkin turkey, here! Professors
at the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development
Center in Wooster have been working more than 30
years to produce a more meaty turkey, said Karl
Nestor, professor of animal science.
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Lead writing DOs

• Keep it short
• Keep it simple
• Use only familiar names in the lead
• Use everyday language
• Be concise
• Use strong, active verbs

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Lead-writing DONTs

• Dont use a full direct quote for a lead -- not
  enough context for it to make sense
• Dont use cliches (overused expressions) or trite
  phrases
• Dont editorialize (show opinion)
• Dont write about what is NOT write about what
  IS
• Dont write a label lead -- says something
  happened, but doesnt say what