Today, The Boston Globe published an article written by The Associated Press pertaining to deadly monsoon flooding in southern Asia. The Boston Globe is a leading daily newspaper that has over 23 Pulitzer prizes to its name since its launch in 1872. This article immediately captured my attention due to the fact that, alarmingly, human lives were being lost in a big way across the world and I had not heard about it.
“SRINAGAR, India — Five days of rains have triggered landslides and flash floods in large swaths of northern India and Pakistan, raising the death toll to nearly 300 people, officials said Sunday.”
The lede above contains all of the necessary components of a summary lede. The ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘when’, ‘why’, and ‘where’ questions are all clearly answered within a one-sentenced graph. The reader is instantly brought into the news story’s setting because the location of the event is the very first word stated in the article. The two appearances of numerical figures bring substance and impact to the lede. Language used in the sentence, such as “triggered” and “large swaths”, depict a detailed scene stemmed solely from the author’s word choice. The quick action verbs cut straight into the heart of the story and reaffirm the engagement of the reader. If the lede were to be rewritten, I would rearrange it so that the death toll numbers were written first, with the reasons why the event occurred to follow. People are more inclined to interact with the article if their attention is brought to the main point of the story quickly; the main point being that human lives are being lost.
Elon on Deadline 