Best ledes

[Songbird]

This isn't the lede, just part of the story.

With that, what ARE your favorite ledes?

Who writes the best ledes these days?

 

[tapintoamerica]

Edna Buchanan on the guy shot while trying to stick up a chicken place in protest of its slow service: “(Name) died hungry.”

Don’t know author. Story about a condemned man’s final hours: “(Name) received a phone call from his girlfriend that warmed his heart and 10,000 volts of electricity that stopped it.”

 

[Slacker]

If Edna had written that lede ...

Don’t know author. Story about a condemned man’s final hours: “(Name) received a phone call
from his girlfriend that warmed his heart and 10,000 volts of electricity that stopped boiled it.”

 

[Vombatus]

Technical point: Voltage isn’t what kills - it’s the resulting current flow.

I know of stories where people have been killed and the potential difference was less than five volts.

Current is what disrupts the heartbeat.

 

[Azrael]

Stanley Ketchel was twenty-four years old when he was fatally shot in the back by the common-law husband of the lady who was cooking his breakfast.



John Lardner
True Magazine
1954

 

[Songbird]

Wow 3 "was" in the sentence.

And they say to avoid being passive.

 

[Dog8Cats]

In the game-story category ... Gene Wojciechowski, L.A. Times, 1991:


TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Chunks of broken ceiling tile and thick swatches of insulation, the products of a Miami victory celebration gone berserk, littered the floor of the visitors’ locker room.

Kids.

Meanwhile, in the near-silent Florida State locker room, where the late-great No. 1-ranked Seminoles resided, the damage was more severe. There were broken hearts, broken dreams and the cold realization, as cold as the thought of Saturday’s 17-16 loss to the Hurricanes, that yet another precious national title chance had slipped away.

 

[BTExpress]

For the longest time, I thought "Gentlemen, start your coffins!" was the lead to a Jim Murray column.

But it was just a line deep in the column. . . . that also was appropriated for the headline.

Jim Murray, 'Gentlemen, Start Your Coffins!'

 

[ChrisLong]

What's worse, hearing fingernails on a chalkboard or watching Hank Gathers shoot a free throw?

 

[Old Crank]

This one is usually attributed to the late Frank McGhee of the Daily Mirror. It was his advance on the eve of the 1966 World Cup final between England and (then) West Germany: "If, on the morrow, the Germans beat us at our national game, we'd do well to remember that, twice this century, we have beaten them at theirs."

 

[tapintoamerica]

The light moment actually has a precedent in fact. It reminded anyone who has read Dan Jenkins over the years of his "Best Lead Ever Written on a Golf Story." According to Jenkins, Leonard Crawley of the London Daily Telegraph once typed: "Despite the abominable handling of the press luggage at the Zurich airport, the Swiss Open managed to get of to a rather decent start yesterday."

 

[typefitter]

The entire top of Kathryn Schulz's earthquake story is ridiculously good, but here's the lede:

When the 2011 earthquake and tsunami struck Tohoku, Japan, Chris Goldfinger was two hundred miles away, in the city of Kashiwa, at an international meeting on seismology. As the shaking started, everyone in the room began to laugh. Earthquakes are common in Japan—that one was the third of the week—and the participants were, after all, at a seismology conference. Then everyone in the room checked the time.

Yeah, you're gonna keep reading.

The Earthquake That Will Devastate the Pacific Northwest

 

[Junkie]

One of my personal faves ...

The Tech men's basketball team made two points in the first quarter Tuesday night at State. The first was on a free throw by Johnny Smith. The second was the Techies were not going to beat the Statesmen.

 

[Dog8Cats]

The light moment actually has a precedent in fact. It reminded anyone who has read Dan Jenkins over the years of his "Best Lead Ever Written on a Golf Story." According to Jenkins, Leonard Crawley of the London Daily Telegraph once typed: "Despite the abominable handling of the press luggage at the Zurich airport, the Swiss Open managed to get of to a rather decent start yesterday."

I wouldn't say the 1966 lead was a "light moment" at all. I imagine - barely 20 years after World War II ended - that the sentiment was gravely serious.

 

[Michael_ Gee]

Jim Murray in September 1963, when the Cards were cutting into the Dodgers' lead. "Before the season began, I wrote the Dodgers had to players to burn. If they blow this, it'll be too good for 'em."

 

[JM22720]

Emptiness is loneliness, and loneliness is cleanliness, and cleanliness is godliness, and God is empty, just like thousands of seats for the upcoming Smashing Pumpkins reunion tour.
Despite all their rage, Smashing Pumpkins' tour isn't selling well

 

[swingline]

The entire top of Kathryn Schulz's earthquake story is ridiculously good, but here's the lede:

When the 2011 earthquake and tsunami struck Tohoku, Japan, Chris Goldfinger was two hundred miles away, in the city of Kashiwa, at an international meeting on seismology. As the shaking started, everyone in the room began to laugh. Earthquakes are common in Japan—that one was the third of the week—and the participants were, after all, at a seismology conference. Then everyone in the room checked the time.

Yeah, you're gonna keep reading.

The Earthquake That Will Devastate the Pacific Northwest

A sentence in the story, wrapping up a paragraph: "Leafless, branchless, barkless, they are reduced to their trunks and worn to a smooth silver-gray, as if they had always carried their own tombstones inside them."

That's writing.

 

[Neutral Corner]

The entire top of Kathryn Schulz's earthquake story is ridiculously good, but here's the lede:

When the 2011 earthquake and tsunami struck Tohoku, Japan, Chris Goldfinger was two hundred miles away, in the city of Kashiwa, at an international meeting on seismology. As the shaking started, everyone in the room began to laugh. Earthquakes are common in Japan—that one was the third of the week—and the participants were, after all, at a seismology conference. Then everyone in the room checked the time.

Yeah, you're gonna keep reading.

The Earthquake That Will Devastate the Pacific Northwest

That's a fabulous article. It was when I first read it, and it remains so.

 

[Baron Scicluna]

“The million-to-one shot came in. Hell froze over. A month of Sundays hit the calendar. Don Larsen today pitched a no-hit, no-run, no-man-reach first game in a World Series.” — Shirley Povich

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/sports/longterm/general/povich/launch/larsen.htm

 

[MileHigh]

Woody Plaige, in January 1997 after the Broncos gagged at home in the divisional round against the Jaguars.

What do the Pope, Billy Graham and the 1996 Broncos have in common?

They got 76,000 people at Mile High Stadium to stand up and shout, "Jesus Christ!"