To Lead or Not to Lede

A man cools down with water during a heatwave in Karachi on June 22, 2015.  Photo source: AFP

The following lead appeared in today's edition of The New York Times (p. A4).

"KARACHI, Pakistan -- Karachi's poor learned long ago to cope with the many adversities that afflict Pakistani's most crowded and chaotic city, including flooding, street violence and political crises. But since a suffocating heat wave descended on Karachi three days ago, killing at least 650 people, they have found no respite and no escape."

The lead works. It is effective. Besides answering the 5HW (who, what, when, where, why, and how) questions, the lead grabs the reader's attention with the vivid images it employs for its description of the city and the plights of its residents. It lets the reader know that this might yet be the height of the challenges faced by Karachi dwellers, thus bringing the reader to feel for them.

The second lead, from Boston Herald (p. 4), reads:

"After more than two years of going to "hell and back," Liz Norden said she's summoning the courage to tell convicted Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev just how she feels today."

While not requiring any improvement, the second lead has quite a different appeal. It points to an agony of some untold stories of the Boston marathon bombing. It touches on an incident that still stirs the emotions of many people in Boston, particularly, and hence reaches for the reader's interest to read more.

NB: I could not find any lede that requires improvement. Hence, I ran two that accomplished their task. However, in the course of the program, I will surely revise this post whenever I find the appropriate material.