The Yang Slinger: Vol: VII
The art of the elusively challenging lede (hint: never use a presidential assassination as a funny analogy), five questions with Mirin Fader and the death of a beat writer.
On April 6, 1995, editors at The (Nashville) Tennessean sent me to cover a prostitution sting.
I was 22 at the time, a first-year reporter who desperately wanted to kick ass and take names and show the world (well, my colleagues) that I could write at a super high level. So when the Nashville Police Department called and suggested a reporter attend the crackdown, I was 100-percent in.
Upon arriving on a seedy street in a seedy part of a seedy town, I was escorted to a surveillance vehicle, where a lone officer was positioned before a tiny black-and-white television monitor. We were located across the way from the dumpy Key Motel. In Room 3, the cops set up a series of cameras. Outside the facility, an undercover female cop dressed as a hooker. One by one, I observed on the monitor as men seeking sex approached the fake hooker, entered the room and were greeted by an onslaught of police officers.
After a while, I was asked, “Do you want to watch from inside the room?”
Hells yeah, I did!1
Moments later, I found myself inside a bathroom with three or four cops. It was dark. The smell was musty. No one said a peep.
The room door opened.
“Come on in, baby,” a woman purred. “I won’t bite …”
BAM!
We jumped out—all of us. “POLICE! PUT YOUR HANDS UP!”
The man’s expression … I’ll never forget it. Shock. Fear. Ruin. He was cuffed and placed on the bed. His wallet was removed, opened and plopped atop the comforter.
Richard Harrington.
Age 34.
Two kids and a wife in a photograph.
Shortly thereafter I returned to the office to write a piece for the next morning’s paper. I’d worked out the lede in my head while driving from the motel, then sat down at a computer and pounded it out …
By JEFF PEARLMAN
Staff Writer
All Richard Harrington wanted was a blow job.
•••
The editor assigned to the piece was Ted Power, a wonderful man with a fabulous touch. I vividly recall him reading the opening line and placing his head in his hands. Then he called me over. “Jeff,” Ted said, “we’re in the heart of the Bible Belt. You cannot begin a story like this. You just can’t.”
Here’s what ultimately ran …
The new lede isn’t as good.
It’s not nearly as good.
But it’s also not nearly as bad.
Ledes are tricky. They’re bewildering. What we’re told works doesn’t always work. What we’re told never works sometimes works. We oftentimes convince ourselves (as writers) they’re not that important, but a bad lede almost always leads into a bad article. If nothing else, it serves as a neon STOP sign for those breezing through the world’s written words.
So what makes a good lede? And what makes a bad lede?
Some thoughts …
The worst ledes try way too hard
One of my best friends in the business is Jennifer Wulff, a former Sports Illustrated colleague who made a name for herself at People Magazine back in the late-1990s and early-2000s.
In the lord’s year of 2005, Jen was assigned to profile actress/model Elizabeth Hurley and her swimsuit line. She wrote up a workmanlike piece that began with a story on Hurley’s longtime hatred of trying on bathing suits.
Then an editor got a hold of it …
Glub.
Somewhere along the line, Biff2 thought everything Jen had jotted down needed to be destroyed because—wait for it—the word “breeding” rhymes with “beading.” And while the story concerned neither breeding nor beading, a crap editor (aka: Biff) with a head full of steam cannot be stopped.
So Jen had to sit back and watch this thing she’d crafted be turned into sludge for no good reason. “I was so horrified that I opened the story and changed it back to my original lede,” Jen told me. “Then I got a call from my senior editor who said that the top editor—who was at People since it launched—was so furious he turned bright red and started ranting about my lack of respect. Writers dreaded him because he never just let a story through without leaving a shit stain on it. I almost asked if I could take my name off it, but then he’d probably be even more insulated.”
The new lede is awful for 1,000 different reasons. It makes no sense. It’s stupid. It’s stupid and it makes no sense. But the biggest reason is it tries waaaaaaay too hard to be something cool and funky and fun—all because two words rhyme.
Coming up through the ranks, my old lede weakness was trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. Years ago, for example, I was occasionally ordered by Tennessean bosses to write about new houses being built in Nashville. One time a home was named “The Winfield.” My brilliantly brilliant-brilliant-brilliant lede compared the abode to former Yankee slugged Dave Winfield, even though the two had literally nothing in common. I thought it was pure genius. It wasn’t. It could not have made less sense.
So, when in doubt, don’t force fit a horse into a shoe box. Just work with what you have and make it work.
The worst ledes are tasteless
These are my favorites—because I’ve written so many of them.
“All Richard Harrington wanted was a blow job.”—tasteless.
Like, really tasteless.
But not as tasteless as this …
And this …
And this …
And, best of all, this …
This gem o’ gems appeared in the Nov. 29, 1963 Austin American, exactly one week after John F. Kennedy was murdered in Dallas. And if you think the writer, Lou Maysel, was some misguided hayseed a year out of community college—think again. He was 40. He was the newspaper’s sports editor. Somehow, against all logic, he sat in the Texas A&M press box and considered it wise/appropriate to compare a 15-13 Texas Longhorn victory to the assassination of the 35th president.
In the pre- pre- pre-social media age, almost no one seemed to flinch. I’m not sure why. Maybe because Kennedy had been terribly unpopular in Texas. Maybe because the immediacy of Twitter rage didn’t exist. Whatever the case, a grand total of two complaint letters ran over the next few days …
And that was that.
Here’s the thing: Most young writers worth their salt dabble in tastelessness. It’s almost required. I’ve written about this many times, but when I was in college I could not have been more deliberately gross, offensive, mean, awful. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was stretching my legs, seeing what worked/didn’twork.
It’s OK to make your mistakes, then look back and think, “What in God’s name was I fucking thinking?”
Just never compare Texas-Texas A&M to murder.
The worst ledes always travel the same path
One thing I never aspired to be was a writer who tried the same device over and over again, to the point where readers would yawn whenever they saw my byline. A big part of this (and a mistake younger writers often make) is turning to the same unchallenging device … every … single … time.
Example: You’re covering the Mahopac High-Yorktown High lacrosse game. It ends 9-8 on a late goal by Rick Beardsly. Your lede is something like: “Rick Beardsly cut through the defense like a fog cuts through the night air. He drew back his stick, stared toward the goaltender and unleashed a shot that traveled high and fast and into the net.”
A day later, you’re at the Carmel-Brewster basketball game. LaTwan Dickens scores 30, including the sealing bucket. You write: “Watching LaTwan Dickens drive to the hoop was like watching a fire burn through a village. He twisted his body toward the baseline like a pretzel, slashing and cutting with reckless abandon.” Blah, blah, blah.
Those aren’t good—but you get the idea. You surprise no one. You challenge no one. Your readers know you’re gonna do the same exact thing every … single … article.
You always lay out a scene.
Or you always compare athletes to superheroes.
Or you always start with a short sentence or a single word.3
This is gonna sound weird/read weird, but my all-time favorite lede appeared in a 1994 issue of The Review, the University of Delaware’s student newspaper. It was penned by Greg Orlando, and, eh, here it is …
Lord, I loved this lede.
Lord, many people I know hated this lede.
I remember showing at around at The Tennessean, and folks scrunching their noses, sticking out their tongues. “What’s he even talking about? He loses the reader! Loki has nothing to do with Jordan Knight!” And all that is true. Undeniably. But it’s also creative and absorbing and refreshingly different. It makes you stick with it. It makes you care.
It was nothing like any of the other ledes Greg had written in our time together at Delaware. In fact, a few days ago I asked him to explain the thinking. This is what he wrote …
Um, I dunno what to say.
But the lede kicks ass because Greg didn’t travel the familiar path. He challenged himself.
And the reader.
The best ledes surprise you
Roughly eight years ago, Esquire’s Chris Jones profiled (of all the people) Carrot Top, the comedian. A colleague/friend of mine named Matthew Rudy actually alerted me to this one when he knew I was opining about ledes.
This is how Chris opened the piece …
I mean, it’s preposterously great. The detail. The nuance. The little things that jump off the page; the things most people wouldn’t even see.
In short, it’s the perfect lede.
I asked Chris about it:
“Honestly, I put less thought into my ledes than my endings, which are paramount to me. But I still try to write ledes that do the classic things that ledes are supposed to do: Namely, I want you to keep reading. I usually open with a scene, hopefully one that’s evocative, intriguing, and maybe a little bit surprising. In this case—a profile of Carrot Top—I thought it was surprising that he hangs out with Nicolas Cage, and I feel like any time you can get chaps in up top, you want to do that. (An aside: ‘Assless chaps’ is a redundancy; all chaps by definition are assless.) And then the lede sort of wends its way into a scene at a pre-show meet-and-greet. These were literally the opening minutes I spent with Scott (Carrot Top’s real name), and I thought it was funny and also a little painful to see what follows, which is a drunk fan asking why he, the fan, “can’t be the funny one.” That, helpfully, also sets up the rest of the story, which is about what it’s like to actually be the funny one. I hope the reader feels the awkwardness, the absurdity, of the moment, and so, too, begins leaning into the absurdity of the story of Carrot Top. Of whom I’m very fond. So that’s the final thing I hope this lede accomplishes: Oh, this isn’t a rip job. That would be the most boring story ever. But a celebration of Carrot Top? That’s surprising. I’d keep reading that.”
The best ledes grab you
The best ledes place you in a spot.
By “spot,” I don’t necessarily mean a location. Terrific ledes gives you a sense of place, time, feel, texture. You taste the ice cream someone is licking. The feel the cool slice through your body on a December day in Yellow Knife. You see an eagle soaring above. You hear the piercing shriek of a fire alarm that won’t turn itself off.
Steve Rushin, my friend and longtime Sports Illustrated colleague, is (for my money) the best scene writer of my lifetime. Last November, he wrote a piece for SI about the closing of sports bars because of the pandemic.
This was his lede …
Like Chris’ ode to Carrot Top, I am all in on this. If you’re writing about an empty bar, I don’t actually see a better way to lead off than painting the innards of a once-lively place gone dead. When I e-mailed Steve to asking about his thought process, he noted that it’s rare for the first encountered scene to become the lede. But this time, it did. Explained Steve: “That was the case walking into The Fours in Boston in the morning, at an unnatural hour for a bar, when the place was shuttered and sacred, with shafts of sunlight coming through the windows and the Bombay Sapphire bottles looking like stained glass. The story was about sports bars going out of business in the pandemic—The Fours was closing after nearly half a century—and the empty bar just had the feel of a funeral. Quiet, dark, somber. I was there to interview Peter Colton, the proprietor, who sadly passed away in the year since the story was published. It was the first non-phone or Zoom interview I had done since the pandemic started, and I was eager to see and smell and hear the some place, any place, in person. I wrote down all those feelings I had when I first walked into in the bar, while I was still in the bar, and that became the lede.”
The best ledes don’t have to blow your mind
This is the most important one, especially for younger writers.
The tendency is to try and mimic what the veterans do. Which makes sense—you’re young and new and you want to be Howard Bryant/Wright Thompson/Steve Rushin/Jemele Hill/Chris Jones/Grant Wahl/Mina Kimes. So you place your foot to the metal and push it to 120 mph.
There’s nothing wrong with that. Truly, nothing. But the reason Chris Jones is Chris Jones is because he’s been honing this shit for three decades. And the reason you’re a University of Toledo sophomore is because you have not been honing this shit for three decades. So if you have a comfortable scene, and it works, describe it. You don’t have to compare the oak trees to arms and the dirt to crumbled Oreos. You don’t have to tell me the quarterback boasts the charisma of a young Denzel Washington and the power of an ant god.
You can simply, deftly tell the reader that a quarterback is wonderful because he stands in the pocket, unafraid and undetered, and takes hit after hit. You can throw in a quote from his halfback— “Brad reminds me of a concrete wall.” Ultimately, the goal of a lede is simple: Guide the reader into the story. That’s pretty much it. And if you don’t have something that knocks your socks off, keep your socks on and just do the best you can.
Look, this was written by Matthew Rudy (mentioned above), a fantastic (and long-time) golf writer with a beautiful eye for emphasis …
You wouldn’t walk away and think, “Holy shit! That just exploded from the page!” But then you read it again. And again. And it’s composed by a man who paid close attention, who knew precisely what he was trying to say, who laid it out in a smart, orderly, precise way. Upon further review, it does explode off the page without exploding off the page.
Because it works.
The Quaz Five with … Mirin Fader
Mirin Fader is a senior staff writer for The Ringer and author of Giannis: The Improbable Rise of an NBA MVP. You cam follow her on Twitter here.
1. What’s the best advice you’ve ever received as a journalist?: “Be you. Don't try to write like someone else.” When I first started out, all I could do was try to emulate the people I admired the most. It got to a point, though, where I was trying to be them, instead of trying to find my own voice, and gain confidence in my own voice. There were so many awful paragraphs I wrote trying to sound like Gary Smith (one article, on Lonzo Ball, comes to mind, when I kept trying to use repetition to sound very overly voice-y. It was very Gary, but very not me). But once I heard "be you" I realized that I didn't need to be Gary. I could study and admire his work, but I needed to find out how to be the best me I could be on the page, and that came from taking risks. Trying non-linear structures, one word sentences. Trusting the rhythm that I felt in my head when it flowed into my sentences.
2. What’s the worst advice you’ve ever received as a journalist?: "Get out of the business." There is nothing I hate more than this. A lot of vets told me this when I reached out to them when I was in college, and that was around 2012/13. There is a way to discuss the difficulties of the industry and the structural problems it has without completely dismissing or discouraging the next generation. Writing and reading and reporting is so wonderful and such important work, and it has never been more necessary. We need to find and hold onto the next generation, not lose them.
3. What’s the best thing an up-and-coming journalist can do to help their career?: Read widely. Read mostly things that aren't sports. I'm a huge book reader and I read mostly fiction. Strive to be a voracious reader, and your writing will improve. Reading books teaches you about character development, plot, timing, turns of phrases, transitions, sustaining attention. If you are so bogged down in doing one thing—following sports—you miss out on the incredible words in so many other areas. That's why you'll see a lot of great long form writers actually started out as sports writers. They see that it isn't really about the sport, it's about the person. It's about the words. It's about stringing them together in a way that will make someone want to continue and continue reading them.
4. What’s the worst?: Becoming arrogant. I have never understood this. We are not special because we write, or watch sports, or report on elite athletes. We are just people, who get to do a job that is really rewarding and challenging. When you become arrogant, when you insist you know better than your editor, when you gloat on social media about how great of a writer you are, you take your eyes off the work. It should always be about the work, not about you or clout.
5. Rank in order (favorite to least): Derek Jeter, Russian figure skaters, Cookie the dog, books that smell like old books, B/R Mag, candied yams, Billy Joel, Prince, the color pink: Cookie the dog (That's my baby!!!), B/R mag (my heart still hurts), candied yams (yum), books that smell like old books (and when it gets yellow! Sorry that's gross but cool to me), the color pink (color of my gym water bottle), Prince ('The Beautiful Ones' has been on my stack for a while. Can you imagine the pressure of writing that, finishing the memoir without him? So intense), Billy Joel (I guess?), Russian figure skaters (I have no idea but I miss ice skating even though I suck at it and fall down a lot), Derek Jeter (I'd like to cover baseball more).
Yet another story of one of my myriad career fuckups …
Five years ago I was using the elliptical machine at the local gym. Fox News was on, and I was pissed. It was four women—all in skimpy skirts—surrounding a single man. Sweat was pouring down my face. My heart was pumping. All sorts of energies were flowing through my body.
And, because I am a moron, and because I have accidental moments of thinking my Einsteinian thinking4 needs to be shared across the information superhighway, and because one should never Tweet while exercising, I fired off this …
Now, in my defense, Fox News did have its women dress suggestively. And one of the people (Andrea Tantaros) later accused the network of all sorts of sexist bullshit. But: A. “Hookers” is never a good look for someone to write; B. Shit went viral—and not in a positive way.
I actually left Twitter for a few days, and later removed the app on my phone.
Lesson learned.
This week’s college writer you should follow on Twitter …
Krista Kroiss, University of Oregon junior and arts and culture reporter for the Daily Emerald.
So just as I’m writing about ledes, and how sometimes less is more and details can dance, I stumble upon this Krista piece on the only independent movie theater in Eugene to survive the pandemic. Like Steve Rushin’s bar ode above, Krista places you inside the theater. Writes Krista: “On the left hand side of the main lobby in the Broadway Metro, an old movie projector sits next to a concessions stand with taps for alcoholic drinks — and, during pre-COVID times, a kitchen where quality meals are prepared for film watchers. Down the hall and to the left is the older part of the theater, where retro movie posters line the walls of a small, intimate space. The red carpeted floors create a cozy feeling that only grows when you enter a theater about a quarter of the size of what you get at a Regal.”
It’s perfect.
Krista is on Twitter here. Bravo, kid …
Random journalism musings for the week …
Musing 1: Dick Vitale has been around for many moons, and while he has often been dismissed as cartoonish, buffoonish, a clown, a … whatever, the man is a sports television icon who has managed to span generations and somehow remain fresh and important.
He recently returned to the booth after a recently announced lymphoma diagnosis, and it was—lovely.
Musing 2: The best biographer of my lifetime has to be Robert Caro, whose series on Lyndon Johnson is absolute gold and whose attention to detail puts anything most of us (myself included) do to shame. Someone shared this on Twitter, and it blew my mind. There’s a reason legends become legends, and it has nothing to do with Twitter followers, TikTok views or hot takes. It’s all about doggedness.
This is doggedness.
Musing 3: A few minutes ago Michael Harriot shared this on Twitter, alongside the thought: “I will always believe these words by @SACrockettJr are among the greatest 3 sentences in the history of American journalism.” And, well, he’s right. Find me anything that tops this thought from the outstanding Stephen Crockett of The Root …
Musing 4: Cecil Hurt, the Tuscaloosa News’ University of Alabama football and basketball beat writer, died this week after a battle with pneumonia. We all tend to celebrate the national stars of this business while overlooking hard-working, talented, devoted men and women in regions that live and die with coverage.
It’s a mistake.
"In pro football, teams put a 'franchise' tag on their most valuable players, and at The Tuscaloosa News, Cecil was the franchise,” said Ken Roberts, city editor of The Tuscaloosa News. “Our readers considered his column an essential part of being an Alabama football fan. I've attended Alabama football games for more than 30 years and many, many times I've overheard a fan in stands saying, 'I wonder what Cecil Hurt will say about this.' I think that shows the power of his skills as a writer. The University of Alabama has that slogan, 'Where Legends Are Made," and whenever I see that I think, 'The only legend I've known personally is Cecil Hurt.’”
RIP.
Musing 5: One thing that’s starting to really drive me crazy is people dressing up and playing “reporter.” Or, put different: Calling yourself a reporter doesn’t make you a reporter. There are endless examples to cite, but today I’ll focus on Mary Margaret Olohan, a “reporter” for the Daily Signal. If you visit Mary’s Twitter feed, you’ll see she’s a “reporter.” But being a reporter doesn’t mean what she thinks it does. Or, perhaps she knows exactly what it means—and doesn’t care.
These days, “reporters” like Mary commence assignments knowing precisely what they’re after. Their publications have targeted not merely readers, but the emotions of readers. So they hammer those feelings with a mallet, fully aware nothing draws eyes to a screen like shit that’ll really piss them off. Inflame anger, you get page views. Get page views, you make dough. So “reporters” pretend they’re reporting, when in truth it’s mere propaganda (I’m not referring to columnists, to be clear).
I’m sure, at some point, Mary thought, “I really want to be a journalist.”
Instead, she turned into this.
PS: Not for nothing—always a bad sign when your work appears directly above this type of advertisement …
Musing 6: The new Two Writers Slinging Yang podcast stars Michael Kay, one of the best interviewers on the planet. Take a listen here.
Quote of the week …
“Never trust anyone who buys ink by the gallon.”
— Tommy Lasorda
If you’re ever in the position to sit in on a prostitution sting, do it, x 1,000,000.
I have given the editor a name.
Rain.
He remembers the rain. It fell from the sky, droplets of love coating his paper-like skin.