Venezia News Leads Critique

The lead is arguably the most important part of a news story. It should grab the reader's attention, while simultaneously providing them with the most crucial elements of the article. The opening sentences of this Reuters article constitute a good lead. It gives the who (the movie "12 Years a Slave"), what (wins the top prize), where (the Toronto International Film Festival), when (Sunday), why (it was critically acclaimed by critics and audiences), and how (the people voted it for best picture). Most news articles address only a few of these in the first few paragraphs, much less the first three sentences. It made me want to read the article more, and learn that is a major contender for this year's Oscars. In addition, while this article is intended for those interested in movies, it still briefly describes the plot of "12 Years a Slave" for those who have never heard of it before.

I also really like the lead of this Washington Post article. While the Reuters story gives a lot of information in a brief amount of time, this article has an attention-getter opening that grabs the reader immediately. It plays on the popular sci-fi phrase "to boldly go where no one has gone before" by instead saying that the Voyager 1 probe is "boldly going where no machine has gone before". The next sentence gives some more information, but still keeps the colorful language used before. I enjoy reading this type of lead, because it creates a more emotional story that feels more real. It makes the Voyager 1 probe seem as important as it should be; as the first man-made object to go into interstellar space, all of humanity should look to it in awe.

While these two articles have good examples of leads, this New York Times story has a poor opening paragraph. The New York Times has been known for catering to an intelligent audience, and the writing is quite excellent, but their leads are often garbled messes that try to say too much at one time. The first sentence alone is 55 words, and uses phrases that make no sense if you do not know political jargon. It does not catch my attention, and I have no interest in reading further. I also found the context of the story, a phone call between Senator Jeff Merkley and White House chief of staff Denis McDonough, to be grating and annoying. The New York Times article instead should have started with smaller, more concise sentences. For example, "Five democrats on the Senate Banking Committee are voting "no" on Lawrence H. Summers, who has up to now been the favorite for the position of chairman of the Federal Reserve."