Blog 2-Good Leads, Bad Leads

In Thursday, April 17th's Columbian, I looked through the A section in search of both a good and a bad lead.

I found a good lead on page A3, in a story titled "Shiites fought in two areas of Iraq". The lead reads: "Clashes with Shiite militiamen flared in two cities Wednesday as a U.S. drone fired two missiles in Basra and U.S. backed Iraqi troops battled in Baghdad's sprawling Sadr City slum." This is a good hard-news lead because it goes straight to the point. While it's a bit long, it's not wordy, and there's no way to shorten it without sacrificing valuable information. I liked the fact that it gives the reader Who, What, When, and Where. The Why is covered in the article's body text, as well. This lead immediately sets the scene and does so effectively.

In a story on the front page titled "Plug to be pulled on chinook season", the lead reads: "The hottest spring chinook salmon angling in the lower Columbia River in decades comes to a close Monday to avoid exceeding the sport-fishing allocation." This is a poor lead due to the fact that it's very wordy, and uses a lot of fishing jargon that many people don't recognize or understand. I had to read it 4 times before I figured out what the writer was actually saying, and if someone set it in front of me and told me to tell them what was happening, or why the season was ending, I would have a difficult time telling them. The lead was simply not very concise, and I'm sure it didn't make a lot of sense to a large portion of the Columbian's readership.