Nate Silver: 2/3 of America's op-ed columnists are "worthless"

That rag The New Yorker seems OK with that lede set-up, and with very good reason: It establishes time and place for the reader, right off the bat.

It works. It works really, really well, even if the writer with a capital "W" doesn't get to flex his or her wordsmithing muscles.

 

I think that's a really off-base comment to make in this context, because I don't find Slate pieces to be "writerly" at all. They are written in a pretty breezy and conversational style.

You'd be surprised at how infrequently I actually visit Slate without being specifically guided there, either by a link they post on Facebook, via a blurb in "The Week," or through the Atlantic's daily email with the five best columns of the day summarized and linked to.

Slate is absolutely not a daily stop for me.

 

They are writerly in that they actively attempt to be ironic.

 

Thumbing through the three most recent New Yorkers, I see the time/place setting in some of the ledes, but in several the the opening sentence has far more care and detail apportioned to them. Some of them are dry, which is my opinion regardless of whether they appear in the New Yorker or not.

But, whatever. You like them, and I don't.

 

With rare exceptions, I do not believe you can judge an opening sentence out of context. The 538 ledes, particularly in 800-1,200-word columns, are perfectly fine, even preferable. A lede - and now I'm back to the New Yorker-style ledes - should contain action, in most instances. In less skilled hands, of course, this leads to ledes wherein Peyton Manning stands at his locker, or Frank Vogel adjusts his tie at the podium. But the New Yorker's ledes set us in a time, immediately, then give us action. Bam, you're into it. No reader disorientation while a writer flexes his or her wordsmithing muscles.

Same general concept with 538, different aim than cinematic narrative. Here's our opinion. Bam. Now keep reading to see how we support it.

 

I didn't judge the opening sentence out of context. The writing is consistent throughout -- consistently boring, IMO. At least for now, the pieces must turn on whether the studied topic is sufficiently interesting.

 

This should be standard operating procedure.

No amount of overwriting writing will make an uninteresting topic interesting.

 

That's absurd. Traditionally boring topics are turned into something interesting by the craft of the writing all the time.

 

No. The "craft of writing," performed skillfully, or, even moreso, the craft of reporting, revealed that what was thought of as boring was actually interesting.

 

The extent to which a topic is interesting might be worth exactly one story.

Of course good reporting and good writing go hand in hand. You just think 538's product is more robust from a creative perspective than I do. I'm not seeing the quality of The New Yorker in that site yet or anything close to it.

 

Oh, I'm not either. My point was strictly confined to ledes, i.e. first sentences, and how a seemingly mundane first sentence can be a perfectly appropriate start to a fine piece of writing.