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Table of Contents

[11] Before reading this chapter, the student should examine the style book in the Appendix, particularly that part dealing with the preparation of copy for the city desk.

100. Instructions from the City Editor.—Before beginning the story, the reporter should stop at the city editor's desk, give him in as few words as possible an account of what he has learned, and ask for instructions about handling the story, about any feature or features to play up. The city editor may not offer any advice at all, may simply say to write the story for what it is worth. In such a case, the reporter is at liberty to go ahead as he has planned; and he should have his copy on the city editor's desk within a very few minutes. The city editor, however, may tell him to feature a certain incident and to write it up humorously. If the reporter has observed keenly, he himself will already have chosen the same incident and may still proceed with the writing as he planned on the way back to the office. A careful study of instructions given reporters will quickly convince one, however, that in nine cases out of ten the city editor takes his cue from the reporter himself, that in the reporter's very mood and method of recounting what he has learned, he suggests to the city editor the features and the tone of the story, and is merely given back his own opinion verified. Not always is this the case, however. One reporter on a Southern daily—and a star man, too—used to say that he could never predict what his city editor would want featured. So he used always to come into the office armed with two leads, and sometimes with three.

101. Two Kinds of Leads.—The story, technically, is [A]made up of two parts—the lead and the body. The lead is easily the more important. If a reporter can handle successfully this part of the story, he will have little trouble in writing the whole. The lead is the first sentence or the first group of sentences in the story and is of two kinds, the summarizing lead and what may be called the informal lead. The summarizing lead gives in interesting, concise language the gist of the story. The informal lead merely introduces the reader to the story without intimating anything of the outcome, but with a suggestion that something interesting is coming. Of the two types the summarizing lead is by far the more common and may be considered first.

102. Summarizing Lead.—The summarizing lead may be a single sentence or a single paragraph, or two or three paragraphs, according to the number and complexity of the details in the story. A brief story usually has a short lead. A long, involved story made up of several parts, each under a separate head, often has a lead consisting of several paragraphs. Sometimes this lead, because of its importance as a summary of all the details in the story, is even boxed and printed in black-face type at the beginning of the story. Then follow the different parts, each division with its own individual lead.

103. Contents of the Lead.—What to put into the lead—or to feature, as reporters express it in newspaper parlance—one may best determine by asking oneself what in the story is likely to be of greatest interest to one's readers in general. Whatever that feature is, it should be played up in the lead. The first and great commandment in news writing is that the story begin with the most important fact and give all the essential details first. These details are generally summarized in the questions who, what, when, where, why, and how. If the writer sees that his lead answers these questions, he may be positive that, so far as context is concerned, his lead will be good.

104. Construction of the Lead.—In constructing the lead, the most important fact or facts should be put at the very first. For this reason, newspaper men avoid beginning a story with to-day, to-morrow, or yesterday, because the time at which an incident has occurred is rarely the most important fact. For the same reason, careful writers avoid starting with the, an, or a, though it often is necessary to begin with these articles because the noun they modify is itself important. The name of the place, too, rarely ever is of enough importance to be put first. An examination of a large number of leads in the best newspapers shows that the features most often played up are the result and the cause or motive. Thus:

Result

As a result of too much thanksgiving on Thanksgiving Day, Prof. Harry Z. Buith, 42, 488 Sixteenth Street, a prominent Seventh Day Adventist, is dead.

Cause

Just plain ordinary geese and a few ganders held up a train on the Milwaukee road to-day and forced their owner, Nepomcyk Kucharski, 1287 Fourth Avenue, into district court.

Cause and Result

Because Harry A. Harries, 24, 2518 North Avenue, wanted two dollars for a license to marry Anna Francis, 17, 4042 Peachtree Avenue, his aged mother is dying this morning in St. Elizabeth Hospital.

Sometimes, particularly in follow or rewrite stories, probable results become the feature.

Probable Results

That immediate intervention in Mexico by the United States will be the result of the Villa raid last night on Columbus, N.M., is the general belief in official Washington this morning.

Another feature often played up in leads is the means or method by which a result was attained.

Means

A sensational half-mashie shot to the lip of the cup on the eighteenth green won to-day for Mrs. Roland H. Barlow, of the Merion Cricket Club, Philadelphia, over Miss Lillian B. Hyde, of the South Shore Field Club, Long Island, in the second round of the women's national golf championship tournament at the Onwentsia Club.

Method

Working at night with a tin spoon and a wire nail, Capt. Wilhelm Schuettler dug 100 feet to liberty and escaped from the Hallamshire camp sometime early this morning.

Often it is necessary to feature the name:

Name

Cardinal Giacomo della Chiesa, archbishop of Bologna, Italy, was to-day elected supreme pontiff of the Catholic hierarchy, in succession to the late Pope Pius X, who died Aug. 20. He will reign under the name of Benedict XV.

Name

President Wilson and Mrs. Norman Galt have selected Saturday, Dec. 18, as the date of their marriage. The ceremony will be performed in Mrs. Galt's residence, and the guests will be confined to the immediate members of the President's and Mrs. Galt's families.

Even the place and the time have to be featured occasionally.

Place

New Orleans will be the place of the annual meeting of the Southern Congress of Education and Industry, it was learned from a member of the Executive committee to-day.

Place

Chicago was selected by the Republican National committee to-night as the meeting place of the 1916 Republican national convention, to be held June 7, one week before the Democratic convention in St. Louis.

Time

Monday, Sept. 20, is the date finally set for the opening of the State Fair, it was announced by the Program Committee to-day.

105. Form of the Lead.—The grammatical form in which the lead shall be written depends much on the purpose of the writer. Some of the commonest types of beginnings are with: (1) a simple statement; (2) a series of simple statements; (3) a conditional clause; (4) a substantive clause; (5) an infinitive phrase; (6) a participial phrase; (7) a prepositional phrase; (8) the absolute construction.

106. Leads with Short Sentences.—The value of the first two kinds is their forcefulness. Often reporters break what might be a long, one-sentence, summarizing lead into a very short sentence followed by a long one, or into a number of brief sentences, each of which gives one important detail. Such a type of lead gains its force from the fact that it lends emphasis to the individual details given in the short sentences. Note the effect of the following leads: