Worst lede ever

shit, i kind of like that one.

 

We may have a new winner, fresh off today's presses. The names of the guilty have been redacted. I don't know what's worse, the lead, the writing or the piss-poor editing. All are heinous, but I'll go with the editing. Just lazy:


The XXX High School field hockey team was a little too late for Labor Day, but still too early for Columbus Day.
Whatever the cause of the mix-up, YYY made XXX pay for taking a long weekend on Monday.
“I hate Monday games, basically,” said XXX coach XXX. “It's just like, you give them two days off on the weekend, it's just really detrimental.”
The solution?
“We'll be having Sunday practices for the next couple of Monday games,” XXX said.
Although the XXX controlled play in the YYY end for an overwhelming majority of the time, XXX came out on the short end of a 3-2 final score.
“I think there are strong drives going in, but there's just nobody there to tip in,” said XXX in trying to explain why XXX, although dominating possession, ended up falling to 0-3-1.

 

At a previous stop in my career, one of my favorite high school football leads had to do with a game in which many, many passes were thrown. It read, as follows:

"The air was busy over Podunk Field on Friday night."

 

From the Richmond (Ky.) Register, circa 1995:

"When EKU coach Roy Kidd seen his 1995 schedule, he literally had a heart attack."

Not sure which was worse: "seen" or "literally." Worse still, I think it made it into print.

 

Many years ago, wire service golf writer began a story, ``Darkhorse Lee Elder...''

 

Anyone who uses a Webster's Dictionary Lede should meet his end by firing squad. And any editor who has to rewrite it gets to shoot first.

 

Just had this doozy come across from a stringer: "Baseball is certainly a game of inches, but so is football."

 

From a college newspaper story on an apartment fire...

There's no place like home -- until it burns down.

 

Oh, come on, I like that one! LOL (Yes, I really did laugh out loud)

 

From the TV news side...

Years ago I had an intern from Hillbilly U, about 150 miles away. Her J school professor told us she was the best writer he had in his 20 years of teaching.

A guy was mugged outside the Dairy Queen. I asked her to write a 30 second story on it. Her lede, which I remember vividly 16+ years later:

"Ice cream and lemonade are fine summertime treats, but a man had a bad experience outside a local establishment."

I tried to explain to her why that didn't work, and she just sat there and smirked like she thought it was cute that I was criticizing her copy. She ended up having a very brief internship.

 

i thought it was the best lead i ever read until i realized they don't even sell lemonade at dairy queen. ... hope that took the god damned smirk off her newbie fuckin' face ; )

 

Would it have worked if she had written, "Ice cream and lemonade are fine summertime treats. Good thing, because those are the only foods one local man will be consuming for a while after getting punched in the face at the Dairy Queen."