4.2: Straight news leads

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): BBC News Front Page. (Pexels free-to-use license; alleksana)

The lead is the most important part of a news story. It should grab the reader's attention and hold it. This was true when print media dominated news consumption habits, and it is even more important now when many readers come to news pages through social media portals and do not necessarily have loyalty to news sites. 

Roughly 50 percent of U.S. audiences say they consume news on social media "Sometimes" or "Often," according to this survey from the Pew Research Center. It is likely that news consumption on social media will continue to grow. Thus it is essential that social media posts get readers to "bite," i.e. click on the story, and that news leads "set the hook," to continue with the fishing metaphor, and keep readers on the page.

A goal of every newswriter for everything they publish should be to write leads that invite readers to become loyal consumers of their content. Whether they find your story through a search engine, a link on social media, or by browsing your site, they should feel rewarded for joining you and encouraged to spend more time with your content.

Lead with strength

The key to writing a good straight news lead is to have the information in hand first. Straight news leads are also called summary leads.

Definition: Summary lead

A summary lead is the first sentence of a straight news story and covers the essential information while prioritizing among those facts which should feature most prominently. Essential points are selected from the Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How of a story.

In order to have a story to tell, you need to gather all of the 5 Ws + H. You may have multiple entries under one of category. For example, if two city leaders get into a fist fight in City Hall, they would both fall under the category of Who and would both probably be named in the lead. Likewise, if a police chase starts in one city and ends in another, there might be two cities to list under the Where category. What matters most is covering all 5 Ws + H thoroughly so that no important, verifiable facts are missed.

Newswriters must consider professional information gathering to be the first step of good newswriting.

After diligent info gathering, when it is time to come up with a lead, identify the most important Who, What, Where, When, Why and How elements of a story. Then, determine which among those is the most essential and make sure that that element is featured most prominently. Most straight news stories tend to focus on the Who and What, but there are times when the Where or even When, Why, or How is the most important element. The Art of Clarity at the end of this chapter includes examples of each.

For now, focus on the Who and What. The following is an example of prioritizing the What over the Who in a summary news lead:
An SUV crashed into the Little Italy restaurant in Anytown Monday night causing an estimated $50,000 in damages.

Of course the SUV had a driver, but imagine in this case that the driver was a citizen of no particular prominence. Here the primary What is an "SUV crashed." The Where is "the Little Italy restaurant in Anytown." The When is "Monday night," and the story includes an additional What, which is "causing an estimated $50,000 in damages." For this example, the Who is left out of the lead, and the Why is not yet known. You might mention in the story that the cause of the crash is unknown, but you would not include that in the lead.

Now let's look at how the lead must change when new information is learned.

Hypothetically, let's say instead of a random citizen it was Anytown Mayor Steve Vibes who crashed his SUV into the restaurant. The mayor of a city has prominence, at least for readers in that city.

To play up the prominence element, put that information first:
Anytown Mayor Steve Vibes crashed his SUV into the Little Italy restaurant Monday night causing an estimated $50,000 in damages.

This lead puts the Who element front and center while covering the same What and Where. Again, you might mention that the Why element is not yet known, but you would include that information later in the story and make a note to follow up and try to gather that information at a later time. If the mayor was drunk or high, that might be the key element in another story.

Writing good summary news leads comes down to honing your skills at recognizing key elements and connecting them in concise, logical ways. With practice and with a well developed set of personal and organizational news values, selecting a priority among news elements becomes almost second nature.

When you follow these guidelines to write summary leads, you can address a specific news value with the first few words of any straight news story. This will give you the best chance to hook your readers' attention and pull them in.

Good leads

In addition to finding facts, taking note of key 5 Ws + H elements and prioritizing among them so that your lead aligns with key news values, newswriters have identified a few other key guidelines for writing straight news leads.

More guidelines for straight news leads

• Stick to the facts. Straight news is about what the writer knows and can verify, not what pundits and social media keyboard warriors are speculating.
• Put the most important information in the lead. Trust that if you "set the hook" readers will stick with the story to get the rest of the necessary information.
• Keep your summary leads to 15-25 words. This will visually tell readers that this story is not complex. Remember, any story worth telling can be summed up in a few words. These news leads describing monumental, historical stories all come in under the limit:
  • Terrorists hijacked commercial jets and crashed them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon earlier today, killing thousands.
  • The Space Shuttle Challenger exploded just over a minute after takeoff this morning, killing all seven astronauts on board.
  • Two American astronauts landed safely on the moon today and were the first to walk on its surface as millions watched on live TV.
  • A gunman shot and killed President Kennedy just after noon today as his motorcade passed through Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas.
• Write in the active voice. This paints a picture of action in the mind's eye.
• Use verbs that capture the action. Instead of writing, "The mayor was a no-show for his court appearance Tuesday," write, "The mayor failed to make his court appearance Tuesday." The first version uses a "be" verb and forces readers to think for a bit about what it means to be a "no-show." The second version clearly paints the picture of someone actively failing to do something they were supposed to do.

Beat the block

Newswriting often happens on deadline, so it is important to develop methods for getting past writer's block. Even with good info gathering skills and solid guidelines for writing leads, it can be difficult to come up with a summary lead. Newswriters are often pressed for time and have many facts, figures, and quotes in their head that they want to remember to include in the story. This can cause confusion and writing paralysis. When you get stuck, consider the method of "writing boring and translating to interesting."

In K-12 English and Language Arts (ELA) classes, teachers will try all sorts of things to get students to move past the thinking stage and to start writing. They might suggest freewriting, i.e. writing down whatever comes to mind. They might try word association exercises, etc.

The following newswriting practice is more structured than those examples but still encourages writers to start writing even when they don't know where to begin.

Starting a rough draft by "writing boring"

"Writing boring" is straightforward. Take the Who, What, Where, When, and Why and mash them together in a sentence or partial sentence. The purpose is to get the ingredients for a good lead onto the page. It is in rewriting that most newswriters really cook. 

Example:

• Who: City of San Clemente
• What: New storm drains
• Where: Near Cyprus Shore, south part of town
• When: Next week
• Why: Landslides took out old ones in 2021

Writing boring: San Clemente is putting in new storm drains in the south part of town near Cyprus Shore starting next week because they were destroyed by landslides in 2021.

This version basically takes the 5 Ws and connects them with prepositions. It uses the passive voice. It is wordy. This is definitely not the final form, but this is something a writer can work with. Now, the writer can prioritize the information, add an action verb, and highlight the most interesting element.

Rewriting straight news leads by "translating to interesting"

Translating to interesting example lead: Three years after landslides destroyed storm drains, the City of San Clemente will break ground to install new ones near Cyprus Shore starting next week.

How is the edited version more interesting? The new version of the lead focuses on the When because it enables us to use the image of landslides destroying the old storm drains. "Destroyed" is an active verb. The new version also changes the second verb from "is putting in" to "will break ground" for two reasons. It paints a bit more active picture, and it indicates accurately that this is the beginning of a process.

This type of story might come out of a city public works meeting that some reporters would find boring. On its face, even the improved version is not the most exciting lead, but it connects an upcoming public works project to the major ongoing concern of landslides in a coastal city.

Newswriting students should be careful not to focus only on old information in a lead. There is technically no news value in old information because it ceases to be news by definition, but sometimes adding a bit of context with imagery helps.

The writer's block that strikes many students when learning to write straight news leads can be approached by "writing boring and translating to interesting."

This method is particularly helpful for those who struggle with perfectionism because it is often easier to make bad copy better than to birth fully formed great leads straight out of the writer's mind.

Avoiding bad leads

Learning to avoid writing bad leads is probably just as important as learning approaches for writing good ones. NPR, known for radio and online journalism, published lead writing guidelines that include some great examples of bad leads. The common thread through all of these is that they distract the reader and force them to focus on figuring out what the writer is saying rather than focusing on the story.

Often, the best lead writing goes unnoticed because readers will find themselves immersed in the story rather than thinking about the writing. Bad leads just get in the way. The following is an edited list taken from NPR.org.

Things to avoid when writing leads

• Clichés and terrible puns. This goes for any part of your story, and never more so than in the lead. Terrible puns aren’t just the ones that make a reader groan — they’re in bad taste, inappropriate in tone or both. Here’s one example.

• Long, rambling sentences. Don’t try to cram way too much information into one sentence or digress and meander or become repetitive. Clarity and simplicity rule.

• Straining to be clever. Don’t write a lead that promises more than it can deliver. You want your reader to keep reading, not to stop and figure out something that sounds smart but is actually not very meaningful. Here’s John McPhee: “A lead should not be cheap, flashy, meretricious, blaring: After a tremendous fanfare of verbal trumpets, a mouse comes out of a hole, blinking.”

• Saying someone “could never have predicted.” It’s not an informative observation to say someone “could never have imagined” the twists and turns his or her life would take. Of course they couldn’t! It’s better to give the reader something concrete and interesting about that person instead.

• The weather. Unless your story is about the weather, the weather plays a direct role in it or it’s essential for setting the scene, it doesn’t belong in the lead.

Source: "A good lead is everything -- here's how to write one." by Hannah Bloch, NPR

The next section covers how to structure straight news stories. It goes hand-in-hand with this section and expands on the foundation of the summary news lead.