#Lead January 26

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Writing is hard for a number of factors including you are trying to make a point along with capturing your audience’s attention. I never took a journalism class but I have read countless times how important the LEAD is to any story. The LEAD grabs the readers attention. I know I have lots of work to do in writing a good LEAD.

I perceived the essence of writing a LEAD is to simply get the facts and report on them. I know the five W’s -who-what-where-when- and why.

I read a story about Nora Ephron that changed my mind. Nora is a screenwriter who won an Oscar nomination for her screenplay “When Harry Met Sally”. She tells a story about how her high school journalism teacher Charles Simms. Mr. Simms taught her what the a great LEAD is to any story.

He gave Nora and her fellow journalism students at Beverly Hills HS (CA) their first assignment in the mid 1950’s. He wanted them to write the LEAD in one sentence for a story based on the following facts.

“Kenneth Peters, the principal of Beverly Hills High School, announced today that the entire high school faculty will travel to Sacramento, California next Thursday for a colloquium in new teaching methods. Among the speakers will be anthropologist Margaret Mead, college president Dr. Robert Maynard Hutchins , and California Governor Edmund “Pat” Brown”.

Here is the most popular LEAD the students used for this assignment. In fact it was the LEAD almost all of them used to some extent.

Beverly Hills HS faculty to meet Governor Pat Brown, Margaret Mead, and Dr. Robert Maynard Hutchins

Mr. Simms after reading all of the students submissions went to the blackboard and wrote down the following.

There will be no school next Thursday

Ephron discovered something I need to get better at. That a great LEAD for a story is not regurgitating the facts but figuring out the point.