How to write the lead of your news story?

NASA is proposing another space project. The agency’s budget request, announced today, included a plan to send another person to the moon. This time the agency hopes to establish a long-term facility as a jumping-off point for other space adventures.

The budget requests approximately ten gazillion dollars for the project. Two other terms common in editing are hed and dek or deck. Hed is used to denote an article’s headline or heading. Dek refers to a quick blurb or article teaser.

You write your stories like you eat ice cream cones literally and figuratively, from the top down. Like that first delicious taste of ice cream, the reader savors your story from the top down.

The lead is the key to any story. The converse is also true have you ever tried to read a story with a confusing or inappropriate lead, given up on the lead, and tried to read from the middle of the story to the end? I would assume you rarely do that.

Most readers don’t. If you don’t capture the reader at the top of the story, you lose that reader. The lead of any story sports articles or any other beginning attempts to accomplish at least six points:

• The lead draws the reader into the story.

• The lead educates the reader.

• The lead informs the reader about the story.

• The lead entertains the reader.

• The lead establishes the tone of the story.

• The lead establishes the expertise of the writer.

That’s a lot to cram into the top of your stories, but it can be done. How long should a lead be? In general, the lead of a news story is about three paragraphs. The lead of a feature story should be no longer than about one tenth of the complete story.

If you have a 10-screen (10-page) story, then the lead could be up to about one page long. If you have a five-screen (five-page) story, then the lead could be about one-half page.

If the lead is too long, you risk having a reader ask, mentally, “What’s this about and why am I reading this?” No matter what type of lead you have, it should come to an obvious conclusion. The more you know about types of leads, the better you will be as a writer, because you will have considerable choices of methods of beginnings.

Many sports writers who cover a game in progress a university football game, for instance-will write the game as it progresses, on a laptop computer in the press box. When the game is over, they will scroll up through the story and “top” the story, by then adding the lead.

The lead will usually come to them as the game progresses and “topping the story” is an easy method of adding the appropriate lead. In all cases, the story dictates the lead, not vice versa.

There are at least 25 recognizable types of leads appropriate for sports writing. They are discussed in the following sections of this chapter. When you are comfortable with all 25, don’t forget they can be combined. In writing leads, you are limited only by your imagination.