Week 4 - Direct and Delayed Leads

LEADING LINES: Shadows cast across Jacob's Ladder, Auckland. (Photo: Danielle Hutchinson).

This week we looked at how to structure new stories through methods such as the inverted pyramid model (Hannis, 2018) which was familiar.

However, one of the readings introduced the concept of delayed vs. direct leads which I hadn’t explored before.

Usually, a journalist is pulled up by their editor if they ‘bury the lead’ of a story. However, Mencher’s chapter (1998) suggests that a delayed lead might be appropriate for a feature or human-interest story ‘that gradually takes the reader to the climax…of the piece’.

I think that it would be interesting to see more examples of these features which don’t follow the straight news conventions, and at what point a more ‘creative’ feature tips over into the realm of an op-ed.  

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References

Hannis, G. (2018). Chapter 14: News Writing. In Hannis, G. (Ed.), Intro; a practical guide to journalism in Aotearoa New Zealand, Revised edition. (pp. 199-217). Massey University Press.

Mencher, M. (1998). Chapter Five: Values and Beginnings. In Basic Media Writing, 6th Revised Edition. (pp. 130-158). McGraw-Hill Education.