worst leads you have seen

I don't mind if you tighten my lede or write something better. But if you insert a cliche into my writing, shit will hit the fan.

A reporter for the other paper in my group once called our office (production facilities for both papers are in my shop) to ask if the lede his editor inserted into his story could be removed. It was a really snarky chiched lede. I happened to field the call and I happened to agree with the reporter. Luckily, the page hadn't been sent so we just spiked the editor's lede.

 

so what lede appeared, forever?

a third or did you revert back to the writer's?

 

"If the object of the game would have been Chinese water torture, the patient would have already bled to death." - inept sportswriter attempting to describe an overtime H.S. girls' field hockey game.

No, it didn't run.

But it was world-class in its suckitude.

 

I reverted back to the writer's.

 

wow, dude. and what did the se say?

 

He didn't say anything. His lede added nothing to the story.

 

wow.

 

That's what happens when you leave the shop early on deadline night...

It's not a practice I normally would do or I'd normally condone.

 

revert back is a redundant form of repeating yourself.

 

Jogged my memory about one I saw one time:

"If OLD RETIRED COACH was alive today, he'd be rolling over in his grave."

Talk about your mixed metaphors ...

 

I can't. Nor will I try.

 

In one of my first feature efforts for the mighty college daily, I wrote about a tennis player at our school who was recruited both by our school (we'll say the mascot was the ground hog) and Alabama.

Alabama is of course, the Crimson Tide, but they sometimes use an elephant as a mascot, for reasons I don't quite understand.

Anyways, I tied myself and the keyboard in knots and came up with a lede something like this:

``When a ground hog battles an elephant, it isn't often the ground hog wins.''

The copy desk changed it, of course, then posted a remade version on the paper's front door. The former recruit in question was from Norway, I believe, and the new version went along the lines of this:

``When a ground hog and an elephant roll around in close physical combat in a glistening fjord, you don't often expect the furry little rodent to rip the elephant's trunk off and emerge victorious...''

Just the memory makes me turn red.