Is this a good gamer lead?

I know we writing snobs have our standards, but I used to work with a guy who routinely wrote some of the most painful leads I had ever read and I would just as routinely run into people around town who told me what a great writer he was and how exciting his stories were.

We get all concerned with ingredients like haughty chefs, but sometimes people just want to eat a greasy cheeseburger covered in raw onions and wash it down with a peppermint-flavored milkshake.

 

Where's the band?

 

It's a really horrible lead. We've all written really horrible leads. Does this have to turn into whiny moralizing?

 

Props to Devin for being such an a-hole to blast a fellow scribe. Way to go guy. Keep up the good work.

 

Same here. Well, except for the part about having copy editors. People apparently let my predecessor alone and assumed I wanted the same, so I didn't get much help copy editing except for the incredibly obvious stuff (such as mixing up "to" and "too" or "there," "their" and "they're."). Otherwise, they all assumed they wouldn't understand all the "sports lingo" and didn't touch my copy at all.

Didn't help being the one-man band, either, so I didn't have anyone to bounce ideas off. Most of the advice I did get came from the sports editor at a similar shop from mine who had a habit of reading the other papers in the area.

And, yeah, year one was full of stuff that embarrasses me now but there was no other way to learn and get better.

 

Journalism as a whole has been watered down to where it is non existent. The internet bloggers and tweeters would rather get things out first instead of correct. Everyone has something to say and these tools give them an avenue to say it.

 

The date on the link indicated this story ran five days after the game, though maybe I misread that. Don't you have to do something different five days later?
I've written worse or equally bad ledes and I amazingly am not spending my days asking, "Would you like fries or a shake with that?"

 

Wow.

Saturday, Oct. 16, 2010 will be forever logged in Jackson State University football history because of three lead changes in the last 38 seconds that finalized a frenetic xx-xx home victory over Southern.

--- that is what I would have cut it down to, but glancing at the rest of the story, it needed a lot of editing as I am sure my correction does as well.

Try not to use "greatest" as well. Didn't Walter freeking Payton play at JSU?

 

Absolute GOLD!