Favorite lede you've written

Once upon a time.

 

How's this for a lede?

"Madeleine Albright is a whore."

I'm not sure what type of story that would go to, but thinking about one day being able to use that makes me happy.

 

I don't know what's wrong with me, but I've written a bunch of great stories that started out with a (looking back on it now) terrible lede.

I can't think of one of my better ones now but a couple of years ago I wrote a game-feature on a pitcher who had a pretty good game.

He did have a few errors though, so I wrote something like, "it wasn't all candy and flowers for crotchkisser."

 

I don't want to make it look like we're piling on Batman here, so I want to make it clear, I definitely didn't think his leads were awesome, but I also didn't particularly like them. Some of the others, I thought were very good.

As a former copy editor, I'm not sure if I would have asked him to rewrite, either. He had a good argument for the football gods one, although it does come across like you're making fun of two crappy teams with a kind of "why am I stuck covering this crappy game in this crappy weather'' type thing that might piss off parents/participants. The video game one was probably a stretch in a lot of ways (including assuming one team or the other would have felt like they had a "right'' to win, but not really explaining it through either quotes or an actual scene, like others have brought up).

And there I go again, piling on! what a jerk.

 

OK, I laughed at that.

So were you there for the Hell Music Festival, a feature on Miss Universe 1990, or was it just the assignment from Hell?
How close were you to going with this: Despite what you may have heard, Hell can freeze over.

 

Here's my favorite of late. It was from football season:

Friday night, Podunk High was guilty of the following crimes: a blocked punt; a punt snapped out the end zone; a snap that one-hopped to the punter; a muffed punt; a muffed kickoff; seven fumbles; three lost fumbles; two interceptions; only double-digit rushing yardage (99); only double-digit passing yardage (89); four possessions lasting only one play; another possession lasting only two snaps; and — everyone sing along — a partridge in a pear tree.

 

Awful!

Why do you all have to try to be so clever and cute?

 

Yikes. That just drags on ... and on. And blocked punts and bad snaps and everything else you listed there are NOT crimes. Yes, I realize you meant that figuratively and not literally, but you need to tread extremely lightly when writing about kids. Plus, equating all those things to crimes is like calling a player who hits the game-winnner a hero. No way would should that run.

 

Like a cross-eyed model or a two-headed beaver, I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes.

Not my best ever, but the best one today.

 

From the fishing expo at the convention center one year:

Give a man a fish, and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he may never eat again because he spent all his money on accessories.

 

I actually like that a lot.

 

Actually, I was making fun of the two bad teams in crappy weather. After covering most of Alcorn's games that year, by Week 10 it was starting to get depressing. And it was a college game, so there's a little more leeway there to be snarky.
And the second one did have some quotes later in the story, just not in the lede. And like I said before, a lot of people really did expect that team to go further. They had been to the semifinals the previous year, were ranked No. 1 in the preseason, finished 8-3 in the regular season, and had several players who went on to play college ball. A first-round exit at home was an upset.