Monday, September 15, 2008

Blog #4 - Summary Lede/Short Report

Summary Lede
A summary lede is a sentence that typically contains the follow things: a subject followed by a verb and an OBJECT. It basically sums up what the following article is going to be about in one well thought out sentence. I decided to find my information from baltimoresun.com because I'm from around here. An example of a summary lead that is currently posted on the website is:

"2 city sheriff's deputies shot in West Baltimore"

Just by reading that statement I already know what I'm reading about. The "2 city sheriff's" are the subjects. "Shot" is the verb and "West Baltimore" is the object.




A man was taken away in handcuffs after the reports of the shooting.









Short Reports
Short reports can be presented in a few different ways but no matter how they are presented, they all are basically the same. Short reports may be a result of limited time, space or information. These are the different types of short reports:
  • Bulletin-runs only one or two sentences in a broadcast or online news to get the information to the public quickly

  • E-mail Alerts- some news operations send news-bulletins by e-mail for those more likely to have access to their e-mail than a television.

  • Crawlers- shortest reports that pass for a story that you can find sliding across the bottom of the screen during a news report (like Fox 45)

  • Newspaper Briefs- summaries of interesting stories but don't cover the full report

An example of a short report in "The Baltimore Sun" online would be "Harford man, 21, killed in two-car accident." The article only contains 97 words but still gives a lot of information even though it may not be full coverage. This article would fall under the category of a newspaper brief.

1 comment:

The Girl Next Door said...

I liked how you bullet-ed the different types of short reports. It made your blog easier to read. Also, I liked your picture of the man in the handcuffs. Great dramatic shot :)