worst leads you have seen

No kidding. To think they could have just struck your original lead. Then they piled on. Tough break, but that's why I try to keep stuff as simple as possible.

 

Yeah, well, clearly he learned something from the experience, now didn't he?

 

On the APSE site right now:

http://apse.dallasnews.com/sji/021308sjiclass.html

Embarrassing.

 

CLASSIC!

 

They take a lot of heat, some of it deserved. But they also have no time to get it done, and when I'm reading a story and just want the basics in a blink, I'm actually well-served by, "Johnny Bench slugged two home runs and Jack Billingham scattered 10 hits over seven innings..."

 

I wish our stringers would write more like that than, well, the stuff we've seen in this thread.

 

He/she would have been better off with the old standby:

"I've seen two rodeos and a goat-fuckin' and I've never seen anything like that."

and, like manna from heaven, I give you the lede from a basketball advance in one of our sister papers in today's edition:

Dynasty: 1. A succession of rulers of the same
line of descent. 2. A powerful group or family that
maintains its position for a considerable time.
— Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary

 

The hard thing to figure with that lede for me, Steak, is exactly what the writer feels he or she is accomplishing. OK, you've given us the definition of "dynasty" (leaving aside the fact that the first definition is totally irrelevant). So what? We all knew what a dynasty was. And if the next graf is about a local team that has become a dynasty, I would say many of the readers are aware of that, as well.
So the point of the lede is ????

 

Here's one from today... not sure it qualifies as a ``worst'' by any stretch, but it ain't going in the Hall of Fame either...

In the nine days that represented the final stretch of the Preppy High boys hockey team's regular season earlier this month, the Pirates traveled more than (insert name of favorite NBA player here).

 

Sad thing about the AP lede, in my shop everyone thinks that's the way to go now, and nobody reins them in, so we get this feature lede on almost every story, and then the game score is buried down there in the fourth or fifth graf.

I was taught to get that score up high, every time, whether it's a feature lede or a straight news lede, but I guess that's out the door now. I don't like it, but it falls on deaf ears now.

Sometimes the game score comes after the jump. How sucky is that?

 

That should never happen. If the writer has such a delayed lead that the final score is on the second page, that's now the editor's responsibility to move that sucker back up where it belongs.

One of my co-workers has started these long-winded, Tolsoy-like leads and it's been driving most of us nuts in recent weeks. We don't need flowery language, rhyme and alliteration, buddy. You're not writing a poem. You're writing a game story here.

EDIT: Spelling error.

 

I use feature leads on gamers all the time. I don't like to do hard news leads on a game story unless it's late and I'm on deadline. Games and sports are fun, so in my mind, the stories should be a little easier on the brain than a hard news story.

But the score coming after the jump? No way.

Even in my most delayed game lead, I don't think the score has been below the third graf. Usually, it's still in the first or second.

It's the score. It's the most important thing there is.