In old school journalism, the kind you see portrayed in films starring a James Cagney or Clark Gable as a tough city editor, the worst sin was to "bury the lede" — the who, what, when, where and why of a story scattered throughout or stuffed somewhere in the copy. It just wasn't done, as they say.
Yet burying the lede became fashionable in the modern era of newspaper reporting. Several attempts moments ago to research the when and why of this annoying development were unprofitable. At any rate, The New York Times has always struck me as the most egregious offender; I'll see a headline about, say, a congressional resolution to canonize, and next year deify, Humphrey Bogart — an act of Congress long overdue — and 15 paragraphs of everything but Bogart will follow.
If you'd like to see a modest, real-world example of burying the lede, you're reading one. This post has nothing to do with depression-era or modern journalism, films of the 1930s or the nation's tragic belatedness in upgrading Bogie to the celestial rank of a god. It's about Mark Robinson, coo, coo, ca-choo, American politician of recent note.
CNN's investigative team called KFile broke the story and uncovered the scandal now surrounding the aforesaid behemoth of politics. What blew me away when I began reading the text was not the scandal, but that the network's reporters chucked the contemporary jazz of burying the lede and packed all five Ws in the opening paragraph, or the lede. Behold:
"Mark Robinson, the controversial and socially conservative Republican nominee for governor of North Carolina, made a series of inflammatory comments on the message board of a pornography website, 'Nude Africa,' more than a decade ago, in which he referred to himself as a 'black NAZI!' and expressed support for reinstating slavery."
OK I confess. I tampered the tiniest bit with CNN's lede, which was absent the name of the pornographic website. I rearranged the sentence structure just a trifle and worked it in. As it happens, I remembered "Nude Africa" from my early childhood. It was published in magazine form, my parents were subscribers and I, for one, looked forward to every edition, some better than others, but back then "Nude Africa" went by the name of "National Geographic."
Otherwise, what a refreshing, traditional lede: tight, well-written, and the reader gets the essentials right up front. In addition, yowza! what a scoop.
And empirical logic is its name. The story's every element fits into a coherent whole. For example, the Republican politician is a social conservative so naturally he frequented a pornographic website — both particulars, there in the lede. Or, Robinson has at last been outed as an olympic hypocrite, which in the GOP is a great honor and always just a matter of time.
He's "controversial" — high-toned NewSpeak, the real thing from 1984 in today's more respectable newspapers. Its meaning: a) of, or related to, whackjob bloviation of conspiracy theories; b) associated with the latest, fetid falsehood from JD or Donald; see: Trumpian..
No need to hash over the story's other items: the "black Nazi" thing, the slavery thing, "inflammatory comments," Robinson's unsurprising success in the GOP universe — they're all part of Trumpism's one big package in which anything goes, and the lower-brow the better.
Returning to the subject of ledes, CNN's was so well done, I stopped there. Besides, I didn't much care about drilling down into Robinson's porn-website routine or any other aspect of his trashy existence.
With that, I'll turn it over to Borowitz and his Vance-Robinson connection. Andy also has a good, tight lede.
JD Vance Responds to Mark Robinson News by Clearing His Search History
Apparently some republicans were trying to pressure Mark Robinson to drop out of the race, but the deadline to do that has passed as of midnight. And it's too late to get his name off the ballot.
As Rick Wilson said in his podcast yesterday, the republicans are now "forced to carry Robinson to term."
Posted by: Anne J | September 20, 2024 at 10:49 AM