Lede of the century
Hey, Private, can you write?
I rarely pick up Esquire any more, but when I saw the 75th anniversary edition at the local Troop Store (Note to magazine distributor: AIT students? Esquire?) I became curious to see what six-figures-a-year journalists did to earn their pay.
Speculate, mainly, based on the profiles I’ve read so far. They also tend to compose spare, compelling articles — a difficult label to fit on essays of 3,000 words or more. The writers suck you through to the end by paying careful attention to the language. Almost every sentence works to surprise, inform and connect: Surprise with vivid, energetic words and varying structure; inform, by performing the basic function of a sentence in a minimum of space; and connect, driving your mind from the sentence before to the sentence following.
I’m describing my experience reading a profile of Apple founder Steve Jobs by Tom Junod. It isn’t on the Web at this writing, but the hard copy is worth the five bucks). Let me share the lede (or lead):
One day, Steve Jobs is going to die.
That’s one DINFOS Surprise Lead that’ll make you read the next sentence. In seven words we find the subject, death and celebrity. Watch Junod take us further:
One day, Steve Jobs is going to die.
First, he is mortal. Second, the odds against him are not only actuarial — the inevitable odds we all face — they are clinical. Four years ago, he announced in a memo to his employees that he had undergone surgery, that the surgery was for the removal of a malignant tumor, that the tumor was on his pancreas, and the surgery was, for the most part, successful. An exceptional man who specializes in exceptionalizing himself…
Want more? I did, and it was worth the hour I dedicated to the article, and left me compelled to share it.
Lessons for military journalists:
First, don’t just study exceptional writers, compete with them. The average article in a military newspaper should not be your standard. Much better product is competing for your readers’ minds and time. Always reach higher. Write for People, for the Times, for Car and Driver or Esquire.
Second, don’t be afraid to rip off ledes. When I’m stumped at the beginning of an article, I find a magazine and play “lede roulette”: I flip through the articles, looking at the types of ledes to see how they fit my subject. This usually leads me to a type of lede (surprise, narration, description) rather than grand theft style (better check with your PAO before using “Some day, General Bernard P. Fluffy is going to die”).
Third, vary your reading diet, especially if your job deals you a lot of memos and executive summaries, or if you stick around the headquarters too much. Formal military prose has a voice, and it’s not a very compelling one for articles your audience is not required to read. Read and read and write and write.
The magazine’s cover boldly pronounces, “The 21st Century begins now.” It takes a lot of hubris for a dead-trees edition to make that pronouncement, no matter how hard the editors work to back it up, especially a magazine famous for having lost its direction. But I can’t argue with the quality of the individual articles inside, or the photos and editorial layout (lets ignore the cringeworthy fashion ads, ok?).
I still aspire to write that well. You should, too.
