Lovito Lead Critiques

I was pretty impressed with the lead from this story in the Washington Post about a recent vote in the DC City Council. The author clearly explains that the Council was unable to override the mayor's veto of a living wage law and what that law would have done in a simple and understandable manner. The next paragraph adds to the lead by providing a more specific breakdown of the vote and what happened in a similarly clear manner. The lead provides the most important information first, and the rest of the article fills in all the details, pretty much a perfect example of the inverted pyramid style.

The lead from this other Washington Post story is even more impressive. The author manages to pack a lot of information into the lead while making it flow well and painting a vivid picture of what the Republic leaders in the House are trying to accomplish. Trying to fit all of this information into one sentence is not easy and could result in something clunky and confusing, but the author manages to make it clear and streamlined. The clarity of the information allows the author to use more colorful and descriptive language like "double-barrelled" to describe the Republican strategy, making the story more interesting to read. The author also does a good job of including all of the very relevant and important information he left out in the lead in the next two paragraphs, managing to get pretty much all of the important information regarding the setting/context of the story within the first three paragraphs. This helps give the reader a better understanding of what's going on when they read the more detailed information later on in the story.

I was not horribly impressed with the lead of this New York Times story about the gun used by the Washington Navy Yard shooter. The lead tries to pack in too much information into one sentence, describing the shooting, the shooter's attempted purchase of an AR-15, the law that didn't allow him to buy the gun and the sources for the story all at once. Furthermore, the lead seems somewhat disconnected with the rest of the story, which describes what firearms the shooter used and his history of mental illness, but never revisits the Virginia law that stopped him from purchasing the AR-15. THe most important information in the story seems to be about what firearms the shooter used, not the fact that he was prevented from buying an assault rifle. Therefore, the information about the firearms he did use should be at the beginning, and the information about his failed purchase of the AR-15 should appear later in the story.

If I had to re-write the lead of the story but still provide information about the law somewhere, I would probably do it as such:

      The suspect in the killing of 12 people at the Washington Navy Yard on Monday purchased a law-enforcement style shotgun and ammunition in a Virginia gun store last week, officials say.
        Aaron Alexis of Texas also test-fired an AR-15 assault rifle, but was prevented from purchasing it due to a Virginia law preventing the sale of such a weapon to out-of-state buyers.