Traveling further down the road to good article leads.

By Peter P. Jacobi

Finding the right route into a story, editors become like travel guides, pointing the way for writers so they can, in turn, point the way for readers.

We discussed leads in the last two months, but space prevented full disclosure of the issues. So we continue the theme now.

We had looked at the four tasks assigned to a lead: to establish subject, to set tone, to attract attention, and to offer the reader a bridge into the story.

That all means to draw the reader in. "The only difference between NBC and the Titanic," began a Wall Street Journal feature some years ago, "is that the Titanic had an orchestra."

The reader is drawn in. Oh, a networking crisis is the immediately established subject. The sardonic approach sets the tone of the piece, which sought to show there was no good reason for NBC to have maneuvered itself into such a situation. The humor tended, I'm certain, to attract the reader. And the bridges end there; as readers we can move right into the rest of the reporter's revelations.

Finding the Right Approach

Consider, with your writer, whether animation/action/narration is the best way into the article, or visuality/scene-setting/description, or definition/explanation/exposition, or passion/point-making/argumentation.

The decision should depend far less on what we think a fetching lead would make them than on what direction or goal or purpose we think the story should take or supply.

Jump Right In

But the word is plunge. Plunge in some way to begin to make the point of the article, quickly. Don't dillydally. Don't allow meandering. John Eastman, in writing "The Ghost Forest" for Natural History, uses description to make a strong point, almost immediately: "Up hill and down, extending miles across northern Michigan, the pine stumps endure. They squat in hard-core silence, cracked and ravaged by age, insect lichen, and fire, eroding like upthrusts of an old geology in a modern city of bracken firm and aspen. They are timing worked in the landscape, relics of the golden age of timber, amputees of an America I never knew. Today they form a ghost forest of sullen carcasses littering the slopes and plains that bridged the inland seas."

Directional or Informational?

That lead makes me, as reader, care immediately. And it makes me begin to understand what the writer has discovered and what he wants me to know and think about.

I recognize that Eastman's article is designed to lead me in a selected direction, to gain a desired perspective. If the story is meant to be directional, to move the reader’s thought or view or opinion, then the lead selected should begin to take the reader in that desired direction. If, on the other hand, the story is being written as an informational vessel, a collection of facts intended merely to instruct, to pass on knowledge without also asking for at least reflective reaction, then the story's opening should do only that: give information.

As Margaret Opsata does, for instance, in Spirit, the magazine of Southwest Airlines: "Americans purchased a whopping $247 billion of new mutual-fund shares last year. In fact, the 2.4 trillion that is now invested in mutual funds is almost equal to all the money collectively on deposit in the commercial banks of the United States."

Now, perhaps the author intends to suggest mutual funds as a solid investment opportunity. Perhaps? Of course, she does. But the paragraph and the story attached to it, dealing with matters of personal finance, are more instructive than motivational.

Leads That Mystify

I read that issue of Spirit once on a trip to Chicago. In it, author Jim Schultze begins his article this way:

How about this for a business plan?

(1) Find a product that has been around forever; that anybody can manufacture cheaply with almost no investment; that has no style, in fact, has negative style; and not too many people wanted, but at least it's permanent.

(2) Now, make a new version of it that's not only temporary, it actually disappears, so that two weeks after your customers buy it from you, they have nothing.

(3) Then, before you even have distributors, let alone market studies, invest 1 million or so bucks of your own money, order millions of the things, and buy all kinds of racks and packages for them.

(4) Really hope it all works out.

And what precisely is that product again? Temporary tattoos.

Actually, the title, "Tattoos to Go," gave away the punch line (and that’s something else for you as editors to consider: how to hint at a subject while not destroying the mystery that the author is trying to build). But Schultze was striving for a touch of puzzlement. And why not, as a change of pace?

Next time, in Part IV, we'll conclude this series on leads.

A classic article from a past issue in tribute to the late Peter J. Jacobi, longtime EO writer and author of The Magazine Article: How to Think It, Plan It, Write It.

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