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Burying the Lead
Fri, 10/10/2008 - 03:39 — deadprogrammer
Every time I reread my blog posts, the same thought comes to my mind - “man, I buried the lead again”. I learned about leads from “Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die” by Chip and Dan Heath. It is a short book, but one that influenced me deeply. Every blogger out there should read it. “Burying a lead”, in the jargon of journalists means boring the reader before getting to the juicy part. A “lead” or “lede” is the first sentence of the story. In the book, there’s an anecdote about a journalism teacher giving his students an assignment: ” … They would write the lead of a newspaper story. The teacher reeled off the facts: “Kenneth L. Peters, the principal of Beverly Hills High School, announced today that the entire school faculty will travel to Sacramento next Thursday for a colloquium in new teaching methods. Amnong the speakers will be anthropologist Margaret Mead, college president Dr. Robert Maynard Hutchins, and California governor Edmund ‘Pat’ Brown. ” Apparently, most students produced a lead that lumped all these facts into a single sentence. The teacher read all the submissions and then announced: “The lead to the story is ‘There will be no school next Thursday’ ” I am having a huge problem with writing in “inverted pyramid” style. The juicy parts of my posts are usually at the bottom. Think about it, most blog readers, especially the ones that matter suffer from add, and often do not get to the bottom of the article. This means they won’t link to it, won’t digg it. I am trying to improve, but writing is a difficult art to master. I just wish I took more writing classes. |
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What's All this Then?
My name is Michael Krakovskiy, and this is my blog.
Here’s what you might find interesting:
100 Views of the Empire State Building project: I try to take 100 interesting photos of Manhattan’s (sadly) tallest building.
My Gastronomic Adventures: I eat weird food - from 13 year old New Coke to Durian and parasitic fungi.
My attempts to grow exotic plants: pineapples, coconuts, etc.
My photos, mostly of New York City.
My musings about architecture mostly illustrated with my own photos. Would you like to learn about a mental patient who died at 103 who served as a model for some very famous sculptures? How about Brooklyn’s ugliest building? How about a wooden skyscraper?
I find myself frequently writing about logos. The most popular article I ever wrote is about the redesigns of the Starbucks logo.
I wrote a series of “Best Sci-Fi You Haven’t Read” posts:
Psywarrior
Yes, Virginia There Is Synergy
Call Time Police - We’ve Got a Time Traveler
Other topics that interest me include NYPD, New York City subway system, Japan, and things made out of titanium. On top of all of that, I seem to be interested in pigeions and Rupert Murdoch.
Dear reader, please browse around. You are sure to find something interesting. I could really use some help in bringing in readership: subscribe to the rss feed, digg the stories (there’s a convenient button at the bottom of every article), link to my blog from yours, write some comments. I put in a lot of effort into writing, and I really appreciate your attention.
If you don’t want all this pseudo-intellectual and want some lolcats? Please don’t go away. Here, I have that stuff too. Here, here’s another. And another. And another. I lied about not posting cat pictures.
Comments
Ha! I thought when I saw "burying the lead", I was thinking lead as in that heavy metal and it would be a post about burying it somewhere as in somebody!
Yea, those guys with ADD are a little too much for me. I wouldn't worry about them. They might get you links and traffic but I'm not much for the type of content they read. I like interesting stuff with details and facts. Your posts about old history are fascinating, where else can you get that kind of content without hours and hours of digging?
What about Steve Yegge? He has those long posts that people still read despite what everyone says "long posts won't hold the readers attention".
Just keep writing your great stuff and have fun. That's what it's all about.
John
If Yegge learned about writing, he would be as popular as Joel. In fact, he would be referred to as Steve, not Yegge. I can barely read through his ramblings. A true master rants like JWZ, not like Yegge.
What about a "summary" section between the title and body?
That way, the lede (not lead; for historical reasons -- they didn't want it confused with the metal, Pb) can't be buried very much.
Dunno, does not seem very organic.
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