Readers' Plea: Get to the Point

"A lead is a promise of what else is to come. Most newspaper writing was stale and conventional. Most leads were stuffed with facts and were incomprehensible. They shoved everything in the suitcase of the first paragraph and then sat on the suitcase until it closed," Clark said. "There is an inevitable tendency of storytellers to build up to the important news, sometimes to readers' benefit and sometimes to the readers' detriment."

But he still likes his news stories straight. "The more important the news is in the article, the more important it is that you deliver it early." Exactly.

My rule as an editor was that readers had to be certain what was happening by the fourth paragraph, which can be done by putting in a "nut graph" that tells readers why a story is important.

Clark sees problems when such beginnings lead a reader the wrong way -- bait and switch. Or when a dramatic anecdote doesn't fairly represent the rest of the story. Or worst of all, when the anecdote is too long or uninteresting and the reader falls away because "the reporter dumps the rest of the stuff in his notebook in the story."

Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, thinks reporters should be "very judicious" about anecdotal leads. "Nothing tells a story better than a killer anecdote. If the story is newsy at all, there are ways to use anecdotes right beneath the lead."

Not one reader complained about the anecdotal leads on the stories about the problems at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, because the articles grabbed you immediately with facts and led you to the reporters' conclusion quickly and compellingly.

No matter how it's written, a lead should draw an interested reader into a story. If it doesn't, the lead fails. The Post must respect readers' time by quickly making it clear what a story is about.

Deborah Howell can be reached at 202-334-7582 or atombudsman@washpost.com.