Awful Halloween leads

I think you answered that question yourself:

The goal is to give readers as much information as you can, as clearly and concisely as possible. Therefore, even one mention of superfluous things takes away from that goal. Will readers get the information anyway? Probably. But you certainly didn't make it easier for them to do so.

In a traditional journalism model, "reporting" trumps "writing" every time.

That's probably because it IS. If it's not, you're probably doing it wrong.

 

What, how to impress posters at sports journalism message boards?

There's a lot that journalists great and small can learn. At best, avoiding holiday references in ledes is a dizzingly minor point. At worst, it's literally fixing nothing because outside of a very small core of critics—the mass majority of which will never read your story—it's not an issue whatsoever.

 

You can absolutely get bogged down in the weeds of overwriting, and for sure you have to balance a fine line no matter what direction you're going, but not every single thing in a story has to be purpose-minded. It's sports. There's room for latitude, within reason. It doesn't have to be the public advisory from the National Hurricane Center.

 

Whenever I wrote a story, I tried to find a way that this story could be different from all the other stories just like it.

One way to start, would be to avoid doing the cheap, easy and obvious lede that you could repeat every year.

Plus, as a reader, if I see a writer going with a holiday lede, I assume that the writer isn't bringing much to the table.

(BTW, if you can impress the denizens here, you probably done real good.)

 

I'll just say that, in my experience, that latitude rarely led to a better product.

If you can pull it off, here's to you. But you are in an extreme minority.

 

I don't think you should repeat easy ledes either, but that's an indictment of one's laziness and possible plagiaristic tendencies, not of holiday references in and of themselves. That said, if one slips through and everything else scans OK, I think your average reader will deal with it just fine.

But you're not a reader. You're a writer who's reading. That's a distinction with a difference. A chef at a Michelin-rated restaurant will never be especially impressed with what Applebee's or TGI Friday's has to offer, but for plenty of people who want easy, accessible and, occasionally, tasty food to sate them come dinnertime, they'll buy in every time. Because they know their audience and work to impress them, not to a theoretical ideal eater.

Speaking as an occasionally regular poster here for the past 11 years: Meh.

 

Makes sense, and I'd still zap most cliched ledes. It's all been done before.

If the writer can get it past me, it's good to go. But he still has to get it past me.

 

Put it this way: If you decided to dedicate your life to being a chef, would you want to warm up the chicken tenders at Applebee's or do something a little tastier?

 

At least aim for In-N-Out. Nothing else compares!

 

Depends on where I'm working. If I'm at a nationally respected restaurant with a clientele that expects cutting-edge cuisine and is willing to pay handsomely for the honor, then I pull out all stops. If I'm at Applebee's, my clientele wants their chicken tenders or baby back ribs or buffalo wings, and since I'm working at Applebee's and not The French Laundry, I do what my role requires me to do.

 

I remain unconvinced of the counter-argument, which so far seems to be we should allow cliched ledes, well, just because.

I'm sure I have both written and allowed clunkers, whether because of deadline pressure or someone's lack of creativity. But the end goal should be coming up with something semi-original that might either draw someone in or hold someone's attention.

I am not sure why that goal would be thrown out.

 

If baby back ribs isn't a good enough answer, I don't know what is.