HOW TO WRITE A NEWS STORY LEAD

Reporters who write traditional news stories use a special style and format almost exclusively. This convention has developed over centuries of print news and still gets used on the Internet as well. The idea is to state the major aspects of the news story at the beginning of the piece. This element of the story is called the lead, though news people often spell it "lede." There are actually two kinds of leads, a soft or human interest lead and a hard news lead. The second one is the one most commonly used for a news story. Here are some of the most common steps that pros suggest for how to write a news story lead.

Steps

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Collect all of your source material. The first step in writing your news lead is having the right data at your disposal. Without this core process, you will not be able to verify all

of the facts that you put into your lead, and a quick fact check is a major part of writing well and keeping your reputation as a factual reporter.

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Include your collected factual data up front. The main step in writing your lead is to focus on telling the entire story quickly within 1 sentence. Some news people refer to the hard news story lead as a "summary lead" because it is supposed to summarize something more detailed.

o Use the 5 W's and H system. A good news lead should reveal what happened, where it happened, who was involved, why it happened and when it happened. Some experts also recommend including the how of the story, but this successive element often goes outside of the lead, within the body of the piece.

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Format your news lead correctly. The lead is most often in the form of one long sentence. Try to fit as much of the story as you can into this revealing first line.

o Use a semicolon as necessary. Sometimes, if it isn't possible to fit many of the facts into a sentence, the lead writer will insert a semicolon and put more facts into the successive clause. For example, in discussing a house fire on Baltic Avenue at 7:30 a.m. in which no one was injured, a hard news reporter might write the lead this way: "A house fire on Baltic Avenue ravaged homes from 7:30 a.m. until noon; no one was injured." Here, the second clause fits into the structure of the single sentence.

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Check your lead for spelling, style and correct flow. While looking over the sentence in a final edit, you want to make sure that your lead and all other elements read well and work without clunky, awkward vocabulary or sentence structures. Remember to keep text "punchy," including active voice and vibrant verbs.