Don’t bury the lead

Photo by JC Olivera

No lesson from my former newspaper career has been more valuable to me over the years than this one: Don’t bury the lead.

In journalism circles, the lead (also known as the lede, for weird reasons) is the most important part of any news story, and for that reason it is almost always in the first sentence. It is why the story is being written, the one thing the writer wants the reader to know. You never want it to be hard to find.

Here are some examples:

• President Joe Biden has dropped out of the 2024 election.

• The Park Fire continues to spread across northern California.

• I’m writing to ask you to review this document.

• An issue arose this morning that requires us to jump on a call before noon.

Burying the lede is what happens when you put the most important thing so far down in the story that the reader struggles to find it, and doesn’t come away with a clear idea of what the point is. Unfortunately, this happens a lot in the nonprofit world. I think the reason is that many of us are trained in science or law where convention is to present all our goals, methodology, and facts before getting to our conclusions. We like to set things up before getting to the point. But rather than make things more clear, more linear, it can have the opposite effect. If you put too many facts in front of the most important fact, it can be hard for the reader to know which fact is the most important. When one buries the lede, one is making the most important thing hard to find.

No rule is sacred. Sometimes it makes perfect sense to bury the lead. But the next time you’re doing a communication—a letter, an email, a brochure, anything—ask yourself if maybe it won’t be a little better with the most important thing in the first sentence. It almost always will be.