Wednesday, June 24, 2015

Ledes from Home

While reading through this morning’s News and Tribune: Clark County Edition, I happened upon the following lede:

“Classified case files dated 2005 and earlier on Clarksville Town Court’s server were hacked and encrypted Tuesday.”

This lede offered enough information to entice me to read the rest of the article since I may have a professional stake in its contents. I previously served as special prosecutor in the Clarksville Town Court and had to find out more!

What made this lede work is that it outlined several key facts (who, what, where and when). The subsequent paragraphs elaborated on these points. Unfortunately, the how and why remain unknown. The fault for this deficit cannot lie with the lede since, according to the News and Tribune, the government investigation had just begun.

http://www.newsandtribune.com/news/classified-case-files-hacked-at-clarksville-town-court/article_e017cb7e-19f4-11e5-97ff-73ea96d96cc8.html

As a faculty member at Indiana University Southeast, I wanted to catch up on campus news back home. While paging through the most recent, albeit dated, issue of the online edition of The Horizon, IUS’s student newspaper, I read the following lede:

“Elegant rudy red dresses, crystal chandlers, black tablecloths and a runway red carpet adjourned The Grand Venue. Where students, facility, and alumni of Alpha Phi joined together for the Red Dress Gala; An event that celebrates and honors heart disease awareness and research.”

This lede did not work well with me. First, although it described the scene well, the lede never stated when this important event occurred. In fact, the article never stated it. Second, the lede was hard to read given its choice of words—e.g., “adjourned” instead of “adorned”—and typographical errors.

http://www.iushorizon.com/16219/news/alpha-phi-red-dress-gala-celebrates-and-honors-heart-disease-awareness/

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