Worst lede ever

[Tom Petty]

****, i kind of like that one.

 

[sporting_guista]

We may have a new winner, fresh off today's presses. The names of the guilty have been redacted. I don't know what's worse, the lead, the writing or the ****-poor editing. All are heinous, but I'll go with the editing. Just lazy:


The XXX High School field hockey team was a little too late for Labor Day, but still too early for Columbus Day.
Whatever the cause of the mix-up, YYY made XXX pay for taking a long weekend on Monday.
“I hate Monday games, basically,” said XXX coach XXX. “It's just like, you give them two days off on the weekend, it's just really detrimental.”
The solution?
“We'll be having Sunday practices for the next couple of Monday games,” XXX said.
Although the XXX controlled play in the YYY end for an overwhelming majority of the time, XXX came out on the short end of a 3-2 final score.
“I think there are strong drives going in, but there's just nobody there to tip in,” said XXX in trying to explain why XXX, although dominating possession, ended up falling to 0-3-1.

 

[AP_Hack]

At a previous stop in my career, one of my favorite high school football leads had to do with a game in which many, many passes were thrown. It read, as follows:

"The air was busy over Podunk Field on Friday night."

 

[JackInTheBox]

From the Richmond (Ky.) Register, circa 1995:

"When EKU coach Roy Kidd seen his 1995 schedule, he literally had a heart attack."

Not sure which was worse: "seen" or "literally." Worse still, I think it made it into print.

 

[slipshod]

Many years ago, wire service golf writer began a story, ``Darkhorse Lee Elder...''

 

[Herbert Anchovy]

Anyone who uses a Webster's Dictionary Lede should meet his end by firing squad. And any editor who has to rewrite it gets to shoot first.

 

[Clever username]

Just had this doozy come across from a stringer: "Baseball is certainly a game of inches, but so is football."

 

[busuncle]

From a college newspaper story on an apartment fire...

There's no place like home -- until it burns down.

 

[da man]

From a college newspaper story on an apartment fire...

There's no place like home -- until it burns down.

Oh, come on, I like that one! LOL (Yes, I really did laugh out loud)

 

[PCLoadLetter]

From the TV news side...

Years ago I had an intern from Hillbilly U, about 150 miles away. Her J school professor told us she was the best writer he had in his 20 years of teaching.

A guy was mugged outside the Dairy Queen. I asked her to write a 30 second story on it. Her lede, which I remember vividly 16+ years later:

"Ice cream and lemonade are fine summertime treats, but a man had a bad experience outside a local establishment."

I tried to explain to her why that didn't work, and she just sat there and smirked like she thought it was cute that I was criticizing her copy. She ended up having a very brief internship.

 

[Tom Petty]

From the TV news side...

Years ago I had an intern from Hillbilly U, about 150 miles away. Her J school professor told us she was the best writer he had in his 20 years of teaching.

A guy was mugged outside the Dairy Queen. I asked her to write a 30 second story on it. Her lede, which I remember vividly 16+ years later:

"Ice cream and lemonade are fine summertime treats, but a man had a bad experience outside a local establishment."

I tried to explain to her why that didn't work, and she just sat there and smirked like she thought it was cute that I was criticizing her copy. She ended up having a very brief internship.

i thought it was the best lead i ever read until i realized they don't even sell lemonade at dairy queen. ... hope that took the god damned smirk off her newbie ****in' face ; )

 

[Bob Cook]

From the TV news side...

Years ago I had an intern from Hillbilly U, about 150 miles away. Her J school professor told us she was the best writer he had in his 20 years of teaching.

A guy was mugged outside the Dairy Queen. I asked her to write a 30 second story on it. Her lede, which I remember vividly 16+ years later:

"Ice cream and lemonade are fine summertime treats, but a man had a bad experience outside a local establishment."

I tried to explain to her why that didn't work, and she just sat there and smirked like she thought it was cute that I was criticizing her copy. She ended up having a very brief internship.

Would it have worked if she had written, "Ice cream and lemonade are fine summertime treats. Good thing, because those are the only foods one local man will be consuming for a while after getting punched in the face at the Dairy Queen."

 

[Bri3105]

There was a guy my co-worker used to work with who was writitng about a high school team called the sharks.
The lede was:
Dun-dun, Dun-dun, Dun-dun.
(The Jaws theme song typed out.)

 

[Nathan Scott Phillips]

Just had this doozy come across from a stringer: "Baseball is certainly a game of inches, but so is football."

I thought football was a game of yards.

 

[da man]

Just had this doozy come across from a stringer: "Baseball is certainly a game of inches, but so is football."

I thought football was a game of yards.

Soccer is a game of feet (ducking).

 

[Chi City 81]

Just had this doozy come across from a stringer: "Baseball is certainly a game of inches, but so is football."

I thought football was a game of yards.

Soccer is a game of feet (ducking).

BOOOOOOOO!!!

 

[melock]

This wasn't in a lead, but it's still pretty funny.

A PT was covering a rookie-league baseball game for us on a Sunday night. He comes back from the game and writes his story. I'm reading through it and he's describing this absolutely meaningless home run hit by the opposing team that was leading 11-1 or something like that at the time. The PT writes that the pitch was erroneously placed. I didn't know a pitch could be erroneous, but I was corrected.

 

[DonBowman]

When I was in Hartford, a writer who covered the UConn women (who will go unnamed, at least from me) was covering the bracket revealing for the NCAA Tournament. The UConn women had apparently made it known that they HOPED they would draw Brown in the opening round.
They did.
And the lead.......Brown women, that's how we like 'em.

Nooooooo, did NOT make the paper.

 

[DonBowman]

Of course to me the best one (even though I was about 10 at the time) was the Austin American Statesmen's infamous lead on the Texas-Texas A&M game a couple of days after JFK's death. UT was ranked No. 1 and barely pulled it out.....the lead......Tommy Wade, as anonymous as a secret service agent all season long, stepped in and filed an assassination plot that almost took the life of another of America's No. 1 citizens. The University of Texas football team.

 

[Johnny Dangerously]

That's always been in my top (bottom?) 10.