Short reports can vary in the form they come in. They are typically bulletins which range from 1-2 sentences, e-mail alerts, crawlers, or newspaper briefs. Crawlers are the scrolling words on the bottom of the screen on sports or news channels, and newspaper briefs are the same only in print form. The declarative or opening sentence of news stories are called summary leads. These are useful to the reader because they project the important facts of the story in past tense and include the an element of time.
One example of a summary lead I found on the New York Times website. Alongside a picture it said "In one the most dramatic days in Wall Street history, Merrill Lynch was near a deal to avert a crisis, while Lehman Brothers hurtled toward liquidation." Although this was only one sentence long, it really gave good insight of the story behind it.On the New York Times website I also found examples of short repor
ts. One in particular was a football score under the sports section on the bottom of the page, saying "Giants 41, Rams 13: Giants Win on the Road, Again." This is a short statement but it displays a lot of information. Not only does it give the score of the football game but it also lets the reader know (if they didn't already) that the Giant's have been winning while playing in other stadiums.
1 comment:
Good observation on the lede being one sentence long. Ledes are almost always one sentence long. I'm planning to ask you to talk about lede length in class since you made the observation here. I couldn't check your short report example since there was no link. Be sure to include it next time.
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