The following are a couple articles that I thought had all the critical information for the best news leads:
“Toyota recalls thousands of Prius cars worldwide”
“Toyota has announced the recall of about 436,000 hybrid vehicles worldwide, including its latest Prius model, to fix brake problems.”
-This first paragraph is short and sweet. You have the who, what, when, where, and why in just the span of a short sentence. Obviously this reporter is experienced and knows how/where to express the importance of the information at hand.
and….
“Michelle Obama launches campaign on child obesity”
“US First Lady Michelle Obama has launched a nationwide campaign to tackle child obesity. One in three children in the US is overweight or obese and Mrs Obama says the issue threatens America’s future. She is setting out an ambitious plan to try to solve the childhood obesity problem within a generation.”
-This first paragraph is also a good example an excellent leading paragraph. The knowledge of child obesity has been on and off in the news for the last ten years. I think one of the reasons it is in the news again because it is common knowledge that a major cause of obesity is bad health which in turn can link to President Obama’s campaign for Health Care Reform.
and…. An article that could have been a little clearer….
“Ethiopia Airlines jet ‘black box’ retrieved in Lebanon”
“Lebanese search teams have retrieved the flight data recorder from the Ethiopian Airlines jet that crashed in the Mediterranean, officials say. The Boeing 737 crashed on 25 January, minutes after take-off from Beirut airport during a fierce thunderstorm, killing all 90 people on board.”
This paragraph could have explained the importance of the data recorder to intrigue the reader. The article does tell when they found this box later in the article but fails to mention when the plane even crashed. Overall the article had a nice flow but you could definitely tell the difference in journalists within the BBC.
All of the above articles can be found on http://news.bbc.co.uk. I found the first two articles under the subtitle Americas and the last article under Middle East.
The Sandbox 