Awful Halloween leads

This is exactly why, when reporting on a game or event that happens on Halloween, we always try to use an All Saints' Day-themed lead.

We tried going with Day of the Dead as a theme, but we kept getting "This is America, damn it!" letters.

 

What's the purpose of any lede outside of an AP-style inverted pyramid lede? To set a scene, to paint a picture, to create a context for the story you're about to read. The day or season that a game takes place is an element of it. Sure, if you're all "derp, it was halloween yesterday and people dressed like gi joe and my little pony and oh yeah, there was a football game too" you'd have a point. But unless it's actually obfuscating the message of the story, then it's a classic case of no harm, no foul, except to the high lords who hold tight to the sacrosanctity of the gamer.

"Christmas came early" isn't a bad lede because of Christmas. It's a bad lede because it's been done to death. Unless Rakeem Christmas is traded a few days before Dec. 25. Or is caught with a prostitute. Then there you go.

 

No, but having arbitrary standards that do nothing but puff yourself up for the pleasure of your coworkers and writers you want to be more like is absolutely straining at gnats. If I'm an editor who gets a strong, clean story with good quotes, I'm not going to shit all over it because the holiday reference doesn't meet my criterion for acceptable imagery.

 

Used to work with a writer, who was a great reporter, knew everyone, turned in a ton of stuff.

But he wasn't someone who would craft a story and would rely on cliche ledes often.

When questioned his ledes because of the cliche, he'd say, "It's used a lot because it works!"

Good times.

 

If the quarterback or head coach is wearing a costume, then it would be important to set the scene with a Halloween lead.

 

I guess I'm not following your rationale here. Primarily, I'm not sure how avoiding a lede that 650,000 others have written is being "more like" coworkers and writers. If anything, we are striving for something different by avoiding that type of lede.

Does that mean the result will be a masterpiece? No, but the chances are slightly higher.

 

Mentioning something completely irrelevant, like it being Halloween night, DOES obfuscate the message of the story. Unless the Great Pumpkin suited up as a fourth-quarter sub and scored the game-winning TD.

 

So pretty much all cultural references, high and low art alike, should be banned from gamers? If it didn't happen on the field or to someone on the field, it can't possibly be used?

 

If I'm your editor, yes.

If it's not directly relevant to the news of the game, it's getting deleted.

 

Cliched ledes should be avoided if possible, but it's also not something over which you stop the presses. If your reporter hands you a "Christmas came early" or, stepping outside of the holiday theme, an "It was a tale of two halves" lede with three hours before deadline, then you talk it over with them and see if they can't do something a little more artful. If there's time. If it's coming in 30 minutes before deadline and it's otherwise clean and accurate, I'm not losing sleep over it, either.

My point, I guess, is that we get worked up over the lede as though it's the story's raison d’être, the reason for the season. Those who have an outsized interest of knowledge of the craft are attracted to it first and foremost. But the overwhelming majority of your readers, the people who pay the proverbial freight, aren't going to care. They have a transactional relationship with most news; they get out of it what they want, which is information. They don't pick up the paper wondering what sort of artistic wizardry will come flowing from John Doe's pen; they just want to know who won the game last night. Outside of the columnists, they rarely go looking for a reporter's byline to determine what they're going to read that day.

I've written stories with what I thought were the most witty, cerebral and transcendent ledes that I could muster with the tools I have, and they came and went without a flutter from masses and masters alike. I've also written stories that made oatmeal look and tasted like Jägermeister, mustered through it best I could in hopes I got everyone's name right, and I get plaudits from multiple places for them. Sometimes, there's just no accounting.

A holiday lede is not going to make or break a story. The lack of a holiday lead won't, either.

 

So who, other than the posters at sports journalism message boards, will benefit from your action? Do readers thank you for sparing them from turkeys in the lede of Thanksgiving weekend gamers?

 

And maybe the writer learns something ....