KEY POINTS

• Well-formed news stories follow strict guidelines, but everything follows from the lead. Its setup dictates the order and focus of the rest of the elements of the story.

• The lead is of paramount importance in the construction of the news story. A “good lead” is evaluated for its craft value as well as for its putative purpose of getting the attention of readers.

• The deceptive simplicity of a news story, given its underlying complexity and story-formation rules, means the reporter who can produce them has mastered the requisite verbal and interactional skills of the news community and can be deemed communicatively competent – or “a good reporter.”

In a news story, unlike a joke, the “punchline” comes first. The structure of news stories follows a particular order, influenced by what reporters identify as the most important or newsworthy element. This element is emphasized in a variety of ways in the “lead,” or first paragraph or beginning of a story, from the strategic use of passive voice in print to vocal emphasis in radio to the use of visuals in television. More than any other textual demand, writing a good lead is the most advanced of skills, generally acquired last by learners who have already mastered other aspects of good story design: organization, placement of attribution and quotation, and insertion of background and context. News stories have never traditionally been held as exemplars of prestige writing, and are not often described in terms of their textual complexity.