A Good Lead

9H REMINDER: Bring in an English news article on Friday so we can dissect it. Use the news sources from this post.

http://www.projo.com/words/20030731_tp.htm

The following article is from a writer who was creating a news story. It describes the process of creating a story and choosing a focus for that story. While you read, ask yourself: What will the focus of your news story from Excursion Day be? How will you decide on a lead?


Time takes over in the quest for the right lead

By Michael P. McKinneyJournal Staff Writer

I'm still not sure the right lead ended up on this story about a barge tanker that spilled thousands of gallons of oil into Buzzards Bay off the Massachusetts coast.

I got back to the office close to 6:30 p.m. with a notebook full of imagery: Oil-covered birds near death on examination tables, oil in the water, men in spacesuits shoveling globs off the beach.

But something nagged at me. During a press conference at the Otis Air Force base, officials said a couple of oil masses in Buzzards Bay resisted efforts by ships to clean up the mess. That seemed like big enough news.

The question was: Use a straight-news lead or an anecdotal beginning about dying birds and globs of oil? For a while, I tried to do both -- in one paragraph. But that didn't work.

In the end, with time running out to write, the straightforward lead won, with birds and spacesuits getting the second paragraph.

At first, reporting the story seemed simple. I observed at Buttonwood Park Zoo in New Bedford, Mass., as men and women dunked birds in buckets of detergent and held the birds down to help them fight the oil. Plenty of drama.

But from there, the story became more difficult. It was a second-day look at the fallout of the spill, yet finding the oil everyone was talking about proved elusive. I went to Horseneck Beach in Westport, Mass. Nothing tangible there, other than people sun-bathing. Then I went to Fairhaven, Mass., where photographer Bob Thayer and I finally tracked down oil globs on the beach.

Meanwhile, I had to be mindful of the clock: A press conference was scheduled for the afternoon at Otis Air Force base over on Cape Cod. One piece of advice: The military doesn't always see time the way we do.

I made it to the gate of the base on time. The guards asked me if I had a pass to get on base. I did not. They directed me -- and some other reporters -- to a sort of impound lane. Time marched on. And on. And on. Finally, one soldier checked out all the cars then sent an escort -- at least a half-hour after the press conference started.

As we arrived, reporters streamed out of the building. That sinking feeling set in. We'd missed it.

Military and marine officials agreed to hold a mini-press conference for us. Then it was time to drive back.

Sitting at the computer, the question, as always, was what was this story about? There's no doubt people were worried about the impact the oil might have on the shellfish industry -- a major business for the region. And if those oil masses could not be contained by ships, it seemed they could become a further threat to the people who benefit from the industry.

Still, even with the debate about the top of the story, I found that the rest of it flowed pretty well. When I came to a section about the doctors trying to rescue oil-covered birds, I found that it helped to blank out the rest of the story and begin as if the birds were the lead of the piece:

``Yesterday was about small moments of heroism. In the quarantine building of Buttonwood Park Zoo, in New Bedford, four people in scrubs and plastic gloves tried to rescue birds at the edge of death. There was no time for names. Each bird had only a number.''

I don't know, maybe some version of that could have been the lead. But the clock hit 8:30 p.m. Time to let go of the story.