Friday, August 10, 2007

Weekend is almost here!

A relatively benign week is almost at an end. Woo-hoo! It's nice having a walk in the park after the week of July 29-Aug. 4. At the beginning of that week, we had the helicopter crash, then an officer was gunned down trying to chase a guy cashing forged checks the next day and a man died from a stun gun after trying to perform an exorcism on his granddaughter. I don't know why so much weird stuff happens in Phoenix. What's more, some family and friends erected a memorial with flowers and candles for the grandfather. There was even a giant cross with "Thank you Ron" painted on and little notes of "We'll miss you." I mean, wouldn't they be too upset with him for...oh...I don't know...trying to strangle his 3-year-old granddaughter?! People are so odd.

Yesterday, I saw one of the worst article ledes. Ever. For those of you who don't know, a lede is just how a reporter opens a story. This was the lede for a story in a newspaper in Tucson on a growing trend of motorcycle deaths in Arizona:

"Six-month-old Evelyn Ausdemore will never know her grandfather, but she will learn he was part of a growing trend."

Not everything needs to be turned into a feature. It's sad when bad ledes happen to decent story subjects.

2 comments:

Rachel said...

Hi - I can't find an email address for you. This is Rachel from Cupcakes Take the Cake and you won a copy of Eat This by Ian Jackman. Please email your mailing address to cupcakestakethecake at yahoo.com ASAP and I'll mail it right out to you. Congratulatios!

Anonymous said...

Terry! Congrats on winning the copy of Eat This!!

And yes, that is a very unfortunate lede for the motorcycle deaths article. Makes me want to cover my eyes.