Avoid the obvious

This X 1,000.

Just another Friday night in my world.

 

So does this mean No mention of turkeys for those of us covering games Thanksgiving or Thanksgiving weekend? You guys take all the fun out of sports writing. I think I'll just put a bullet in my head and end it all.

 

You need to find a new line of work.

 

This debate makes me happy I haven't given a whisker of a thought to prep sports in a long time.
That said, it's a fkin gamer- the woolly mammoth of sports writing- that is often loaded down with non-seasonal cliches.
My old rule of thumb was that if I've heard anything close to it on the telly, it doesn't go in my final copy.

 

Everybody at the Herald covered a Thanksgiving Day game every year, as every school in Mass. plays in one. I was there for 20 years, not only did I never use Thanksgiving in the lede, but to the best of my recollection neither did anyone else. Holiday ledes, unless you are a super writer, are not fun, they are lazy. You wouldn't use church in a lede on an NFL game just because it's Sunday.

 

Doc, I shudder to think of what your lede might be on Martin Luther King Day.

 

Yes. That's one of the worst offenders.

Turning in shitty copy is the fun part?

Here's a pretty good summation of shitty ledes one should always avoid:

http://www2.copydesk.org/hold/words/clicheleads.htm

 

I do have to say, MC, if every one of those rules is followed, a lot of writers will have nothing left in the toolbox.

 

I'll be damned if I'm ever subservient to the rules of a site that calls itself "CopyDesk.org."

 

The larger issue here is with the focus on ledes, generally. It's been a few years since I've written a gamer, but even when I did, I put very little thought or effort - by design - into breaking off a snappy lede. You're telling the story of what happened. When you internalize that task, lede writing is a breeze. It's by far the easiest part of the process for me. It's sustaining through the middle that's difficult.

I don't mind mentioning holidays in a gamer, whether in a lede or elsewhere, because it's almost inevitably part of the story of that day. But I think that's different than what people are warning against here.

 

Except straightforward, concise news reporting.

That's kind of the point.

 

No Halloween references in our freelancer football copy, as far as I saw. But we did have an Election Day lede. It sorta worked, but with terms like "trending," it could just as easily been about social media.