On the leading edge of environmental coverage
By David Poulson
What has six legs and can hold up thousands of tons of concrete?
That’s what I wrote to a colleague this week. She was seeking examples of good ledes used in day-to-day beat reporting. And even though I wrote that one maybe 15 years ago, it still sort of makes me chuckle because of the sentence that followed. It went roughly like this:
It’s the Mitchell’s Satyr Butterfly, an endangered insect that’s delaying construction of a freeway motorists had hoped would ease their daily commute.
I like this lede because it breaks all of my rules. Normally I hate question ledes. They usually just sort of flop there in an irritatingly chatty kind of way:
Have you had your flu shot yet? No? Well, then trot down to the county clinic Tuesday where you can get one for free.
Yeccchh.
I also hate bad jokes. Well, actually I like bad jokes. I just hate them in news stories - especially the lede.
And yet, this one somehow works. How do I know? To start, I still remember it. Also, at the time I worked for a news service. A bunch of papers far from this entomological confrontation played the story big on their front pages. I’m pretty sure their readers could care less about the insect or about faraway commuters.
It was the lede that got me onto that prime real estate.
Journalism = Content + Engagement. Too often we give scant attention to the engagement part of that equation. But if you’ve created content that no one consumes, you haven’t committed journalism. With a messy beat like the environment, you’ve got to strive to engage readers.
And you have to carefully craft the attempt. An early version of that lede: What has six legs, can fly and can hold up thousands of tons of concrete? Read it aloud. The rhythm is all wrong. “Can fly” just throws it off.
But don’t let the crafting let you forget the content side of things. Britney Spears coverage aside, you really have to have something worth reporting to commit good journalism.
In fact, I also recall thinking that after the lede, I sort of blew the butterfly story. I set it up as a classic bug vs bulldozer piece. It could have been better framed as a broader issue of how habitat preservation policies could help avoid such spotted-owl type showdowns. Focusing on the destruction of a single species trivializes larger issues.
But even if I did successfully tackle the big picture, I still would have used that lede. In fact, I like it so much that I used it again in hopes of luring you to the end of this post.
February 26th, 2009 at 2:39 pm
The site looks great, Dave! Much better than mine.
I am already thinking in changing from Blogger to WordPress as soon as I finish my dissertation.
About lead paragraphs: after teaching them all the rules and making sure they got it, I often say “O.k., Now, surprise me!”
As long as the lead catches the readers’ attention and provide accurate, relevant, meaningful and useful information, I prefer to read something completely out of the blue. That’s the difference between a good and solid lead and a great, memorable one.
February 26th, 2009 at 3:21 pm
Thanks for starting this–I look forward to sharing it with students in my environmental communication courses.
You got me all the way to the end of the post. I kept reading because I was thinking what an awful frame that “lede” would have been for such a story. It seems to me the lede creates the frame that you regret in retrospect.
I am wondering if you could address how you would create a different frame for the story with a lede that frames the story in terms of bug vs. highway construction and commuter convenience. It seems to me that there would have to be a different “punch line” in order to frame the story differently.
February 26th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
Pete,
You may well be right and I just may be reluctant to give up my joke. Sometimes you need an editor to help shoot down cherished ideas.
But you might pull it off by hitting the “turn” of the story hard. You set it up one way and then quickly surprise the reader with a hard pivot. Even that surprise can work as a literary device that spurs interest and engagement. Maybe something like this:
What has six legs and can hold up thousands of tons of concrete?
It’s the Mitchell’s Satyr Butterfly, an endangered insect that’s delaying construction of a freeway motorists had hoped would ease their daily commute.
But this is no simple bug vs bulldozer debate. The issues behind this story are complex questions that mislead the public into thinking such conflicts involve simply weighing the fate of a single species against progress. A key question is how to value the preservation of habitat that brings a whole raft of unacknowledged benefits…
It’s bait and switch - catch them with the funny stuff and trick them into reading something substantive. The danger is if they only take away the joke. And weighing the risk/benefit of the approach is much more art than science. I wouldn’t publish anything like this without first calling my wife and reading it aloud to her. She’s my proxy for Josephine the reader.
February 26th, 2009 at 9:19 pm
Dave - My students loved this lede. We spent a lot of time this morning talking about how routine stories do not have to be boring. You proved that with this top.
February 27th, 2009 at 9:55 am
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