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/

A tale of 2 ledes

By Cristin Nelson

Lede I liked: “The powerful earthquakes that shook Nepal in April and May injured more than 22,000 people who are now struggling to recover from broken bones, lost limbs, and other injuries, uncertain if they will ever be able to return to the lives they once knew.”

This lede is powerful because of its vivid imagery, its call for empathy, and because it is a reminder of the documented phenomena of our strong immediate response to international tragedy, followed by no response at all as the incident fades from our minds.  I am drawn in because I know there will be anecdotal follow-up to this lede in addition to a big-picture summary of the current state of things in Nepal.

From “For injured Nepalis, a bleak prognosis”

The Boston Globe, June 24, 2015

Lede that doesn’t work: “A federal court has ruled in favor of tough new regulations aimed at career training programs, dealing a major blow to the for-profit college industry.”

Although it does draw attention into the story, I see this lede as a strange combination of lede and nut graph.  It doesn’t provide a news summary like a purely informational lede should—instead, it provides the big-picture view that a nut graph typically provides, and the who/what/where/etc details are strewn about the following few paragraphs.

From “Rules on student loans upheld”

The Boston Globe, June 24, 2015

Ledes, one that worked, one that didn't


Ledes, one that works for me appeared on the front page of the NYT.  “After years of facing threats far beyond its borders, NATO is now reinvigorating plans to confront a much larger and more aggressive threat from its past:  Moscow.”  For years, we've been hearing that the Cold War is over, so this lede was a good hook, supported by news of training exercises in a country bordering Russia and reference to Russian actions in the Crimea.

On the other hand, a Wall St. Journal article leads with a statement that is not supported by the remainder of the article.  “ Central banks in emerging markets are running down their foreign-currency reserves at the fastest pace since the financial crisis, reducing some countries' capacity to weather potential shocks such as a rate increase in the U.S.”  This would be disturbing news except that statement is undermined by the later comment that reserves are actually “hovering around record highs for emerging countries” and a quote from a J.P. Morgan Chase person saying, “We are not that worried about some of the drop in foreign-exchange reserves.”

Of Boston Globe and Its Tuesday Front Page

Photo Source: bostonglobe.com

The Boston Globe's Tuesday, June 23, 2015 front page contains five major stories:

• Conservative media eye local niche
• Sides remain apart on T fixes
• Aquarium sees harm in tower plan
• Precarious future for primary care
• Baker vows action on opioid addiction.

According to Bill Kovach and Tom Rosentiel (2014), journalism represents "the system by which citizens get news." In that sense, the above stories belong on the front page because they primarily present their readers with the current--and in the Internet-social media parlance, the trending--news within and beyond their communities. 

Besides this primary role of presenting the citizens with news, the stories also serve the purpose of attracting interests of varied publics. Given, as Kovach and Rosentiel also observe, different publics engage different news items differently depending on the issue. No one public is completely disengaged, "everyone is interested and even expert in something." Globe's front page presents a diversified menu (in reference to Dave Burgin) which ensures that different publics finds something of interest, albeit on different scales. Kovach and Rosentiel call Burgin's diversified menu the theory of interlocking public.

The layout of the page grabbed my attention, especially with the accompanying picture for the third story, Aquarium sees harm in tower plan. The picture presents an aerial view of the location of the aquarium and the proposed tower, highlighting the two sites in red, thereby drawing attention to their proximity. Such presentation gives context to the argument for traffic disruption, construction vibration, and shadow-obstruction made by the aquarium.

The first story in particular has an opinion which can be inferred from its heading, Conservative media eye local niche. The article references Harvard's communication professor, Matthew A. Baum, as saying that "in a state that has backed a Democrat in 18 of the last 22 presidential elections, it makes sense that the new enterprises looking for a piece of untrammeled territory would see opportunity on the right side of the media landscape. Whereas the first part of the above statement is fact, the second half of it is an opinion drawn from the the preceding half to buttress the point that the voting pattern of the state does not foreclose conservative media presence. 

Washington Post Front Page June 23

The Washington Post’s online front page is largely reflective of the conversation the class held yesterday about “UpWorthy” headlines, focusing more on sensation and grabbing attention rather than providing a solid quick piece of information. As might be expected, there is a definite distinction between the front page of the print version and the online version, which seems to have more of a focus on generating the most clicks even if the article wouldn’t traditionally fall on a front page. For example, the “In the News” ticker right below the paper’s title ranges from confederate flags, to Tom Brady, to Diddy, to DC Weather; the larger range of interests that the paper provides immediate access to, the more likely that any given reader will see something that will keep them on the site. 

The leading headline of the Washington Post’s online version is dedicated to a startling update to an older story about a fatal incident in the DC Metro. The phrasing of the headline immediately grabbed my attention: “Screams heard as smoke filled Metro train”. While this is certainly a good hook that led me to read further into the story, it was also somewhat misleading. I was initially under the impression that an accident was a current issue in the process of being resolved, not simply new information released regarding an event months past. This does however strike me as an appropriate leading story: it is closely relevant to DC/Metro residents, it is somewhat sensational and therefore attention-grabbing, and it gives a small break from the plethora of recent stories about Charleston, flags, and race relations (not that these aren't important!).

The other leading article examined the issues with a federal computer upgrade that may be creating as many problems as it was intended to fix, due to what is essentially conveyed as a lack of knowledge among those who were implementing the upgrade. This story is timely and linked to other current events, with the first alert of an issue dated to June 17, House hearings on similar breaches currently taking place, and hacking issues fresh in the public mind. The headline on the initial page was brief, informative, and unbiased. The only opinions I encountered in this article were either directly attributed to their sources in a quote (“‘We believe this is overly optimistic..’ the auditors said”) or backed up by enough information that they are transformed from what could have been a leading opinion into an accurate observation (“Also questionable is the ultimate cost...” followed by a long quote from the auditors exposing the confusion around costs and funding).  I found it interesting that while these leading stories are new to today’s paper, many of the following articles were the same as yesterday’s paper, which I can’t imagine would ever happen in the print version, although they did provide an option to view an online replica of the print version if you pay for a membership. 

Immediately below the leading stories, the Post provides a “Morning Mix” of headlines adjacent to a list of the current Opinion articles. I was surprised that the Opinion section was given such high priority, but it does make sense when reading the headlines of the articles. They seem aimed at pushing buttons and pulling readers in through the emotion around the topics, which, in a highly socially conscious, racially diverse, and politically involved city like DC, makes sense as a tactic to gain readers. The “Morning Mix” was slightly confusing to me as a section as it wasn’t clear which articles were also opinion pieces and which were traditional news stories, with some of the articles even overlapping between both sections. 

These more defined sections are followed by a number of other articles from various sections of the paper related to a number of topics that all stuck me as being connected not by specific subject, scale, or proximity, so much as their current status as “trending” topics in public conversation: gender rights, race relations in the US, celebrity mishaps or deaths. This assortment of articles speaks to my overall impression of the online front page as focused on quick clicks, short attention spans, and news as a primarily social construct. The leading stories show a mix of these aspects and more traditional journalism, but there is a definite sense that the Post is organizing at least their online front page with the intent to initiate conversation around the articles, both related to the topics and the writing itself. 

The News and Tribune: Clark County Edition, June 23, 2015

The first story, “River Ridge $8.5 Million in Bond,” belongs on the front page of the News and Tribune: Clark County edition because of the proposed infrastructure project’s economic impact on the Clark County, Indiana community.

First, information pertaining to the project’s potential creation of thousands of jobs as well as substantial commercial and industrial space is important information to convey to a community of over 100,000 people. With River Ridge’s addition of Amazon’s fulfillment center bringing thousands of jobs—see http://www.wdrb.com/story/29174479/amazon-to-hire-more-than-500-people-at-fulfillment-center-in-jeffersonville-ind—area residents would be interested in learning about the region’s potential future job-creating success.

Second, Clark County citizens would need to be informed of the financial obligations this infrastructure project imposes on federal, state, and local governments. This may raise concerns about possible future levies to repay the bond.

Third, the River Ridge project is tied to the Ohio River Bridges Project, a joint bridges construction initiative between the State of Indiana and the Commonwealth of Kentucky. The local community has demonstrated a long-standing interest in this project.

The $8.5 million figure stated in the headline grabbed my attention.

The second story, “Self Guided Learning: Children’s Learning Center touts hands-on curriculum,” belongs on the front page because it presents Goodwill of Southern Indiana Children’s Learning Center’s local implementation of a nationally trending early childhood educational approach. It provides helpful information to the Clark County community.

First, information on the teaching method informs area residents of its success in achieving desired learning outcomes. The standards for teaching certifications and number of proficient educators bolster assertions of the program’s efficacy.

Second, information about Goodwill’s early childhood education programs would raise awareness of the organization’s service to the entire community. Clark County residents generally understand Goodwill of Southern Indiana to be a charitable group that only serves those of disadvantaged backgrounds. This article states that children of all socioeconomic backgrounds attend.

What grabbed my attention was both the headline and how engaged the teacher and students appeared in the photo next to it. Both serve as a micronarrative of the article.

As of 11:20 a.m., no one has posted comments on either article in the newspaper’s comment section. However, Clark County citizens usually post comments on a popular local blog, Clark County Chatter. http://clarkcountychatter.com/. As the preferred online local discussion forum, members of the Clark County community, area officials, and local reporters often comment on top news stories of the day. As of 11:20 a.m., no one has posted comments on either of these stories in that forum.

http://www.newsandtribune.com/news/clark_county/

The Boston Globe had five articles on the front page that were all local topics, they were all news, no opinion, and three out of those five (the T story, the Aquarium story and the one related to the opiod abuse problem) related to some new release of information from the previous day, making them newsworthy. 

The transportation article grabbed my attention because having read all the transportation horror stories this past winter, it's hard not to expect some major fixes to the MBTA.  The other thing that grabbed my attention was not a full article, but the sidebar summary of the news that the SC Governor called for removing the Confederate Flag.  This was the only topic that appeared on all three papers that I read, the Globe, the Wall St. Journal and the NYT.