Summary Leads and Short Reports

A summary lead is one sentence that sums up the whole article and that also can grab your attention to make you want to read the rest of the article. Leads are usually declarative sentences that contain a subject followed by a verb. A short report is two or more sentences use to sum up a story when there is a lack of time, space or information. Bulletins, E-mail alerts, Crawlers and Newspaper briefs are all examples of short reports. These examples are usually short and get straight to the point about the story.

An example of a lead I found was at www.baltimoresun.com. The article is called, City raids yield arrests, heroin. I believe the lead for this article is the first little paragraph which says, "Law enforcement officials Thursday arrested nine people -- including at least one police say is part of the city's 'dirty dozen,' Baltimore's most elusive violent repeat offenders -- after 18 federal raids that netted heroin, automatic weapons and bags of cash." Even though it's a little long it has a subject, verb and object.

An example of a brief can be found on the New York Times website at http://www.nytimes.com/pages/todayspaper/index.html. The article is called Bush Said to Give Orders Allowing Raids in Pakistan. I think the brief might be this, "The order allowing Special Operations forces to act without the prior approval of the Pakistani government underscores U.S. concerns over Pakistan’s ability and will to combat militants."