Ledes and me

When I went to back to college at 40, one of the hardest things was letting go of the “news lede” style of writing.

My professors, who almost to a person looked thoroughly constipated when I proudly revealed my profession, immediately pounced on my snappy opening paragraphs.

Professor: “This reads like a sell job.”
Me: (stiffly) “I don’t think a winning introduction is ever out of place.”
Professor: (dismissively) “You would do well to revisit this.”

I did. I learned to write those Ambien-like opening grafs when necessary. And, fortunately, I found a terrific thesis adviser, an historian and gifted author who didn’t take points off when I stepped into a pile of journalism now and then.

Returning to the daily-newspaper world was the same conversation, in reverse:

Editor: “Are you kidding me? What’s with this lede?”
Me: (stiffly) “I think readers deserve something a little less formulaic.”
Editor: (dismissively) “Bullshit.”

These days, of course, I get to veer wildly between ledes and thesis statements, a sort of literary bumper car, smashing into them just for laughs. Behind every former-journalist blogger is someone who always wanted to use the passive voice and bury the lede in the 19th graf.

And here, only about seven grafs in, is the point of this post: Today I read one of those ledes that makes me proud to have printer’s ink in my veins. Every now and again, a writer gets a whole story in that opening line. Michael Brick did it in the New York Times:

“John Bachar, a rock climber who inspired awe as a daredevil, condescension as an anachronism and eventually respect as a legend, fell to his death Sunday from a rock formation near his home in California. He was 51.”

Even more rare is the writer who gets it all in the lede, and then quits. One of my all-time favorites is this from E.B. White, who in 1963 captured John F. Kennedy in 149 perfect words:

“When we think of him, he is without a hat, standing in the wind and weather. He was impatient of topcoats and hats, preferring to be exposed, and he was young enough and tough enough to confront and to enjoy the cold and the wind of these times, whether the winds of nature or the winds of political circumstance and national danger. He died of exposure, but in a way that he would have settled for—in the line of duty, and with his friends and enemies all around, supporting him and shooting at him. It can be said of him, as of few men in a like position, that he did not fear the weather, and did not trim his sails, but instead challenged the wind itself, to improve its direction and to cause it to blow more softly and more kindly over the world and its people.”