Journal 1

I love when I can take something I learned in school and actually use it in my every day life. Excitement from such a seemingly usual idea probably branches from the lack of being able to do so during my high school years.
Now that I know all about the concept of the "lede," I find myself simply reading the first sentence of an article to see whether or not it sparked my interest instead of stopping at the mere headline. A drawn-on and uninteresting article can catch my attention with a great lede, and that technique is something that I'm determined to master.
The music section of The Guardian included an article on the Mercury Prize and talk about the live-music industry and how the internet is not ruining the live music genre that is usually broadcasted on television, James McMahon believes the internet is saving it. The way he started his article, titled "Forget Television - The Gig Scene is Live and Kicking Online," caught my attention because although it is clearly more of an opinion piece, he did start it off with a question, "What was the most exciting thing about the Mercury Prize?" And although McMahon's lede was not a typical who, what, where, when, why sentence, it did make me as a reader want to know the answer of the question! Or his, at least.
Continuing with my lede interest, I saw an article in the New York Times called, "Recession May be Over but Joblessness Remains," and this lede took me by surprise as well. It simply stated the fact that "The U.S. economy has lost more jobs than it had added since the recovery began over a year ago." This way of beginning an article made me realize that when there is a simple shocking fact that needs to be boldly put, it is enough to spark the readers interest. Catherine Rampell continues her seemingly unprofessional article by insisting, "Yes, you read that correctly." A sentence placed directly after her lede, and in its own paragraph. Rampell is making it clear that it is a sentence that needs to be read over again, her article is not something to over look and assume as an event going on somewhere else in the world, it is something that is affecting all of U.S. citizens and it is happening right now. Her situation as a journalist is rare, but it is a perfect situation where professionalism does not count and realization of the public is more important. I got the message and I'm sure every one else did. She ended the article just as strongly as she started it with a quote from an economics professor, also in its own paragraph, where he stated "we have a long way to go."
Another article that caught my eye in the New York times was one about the bleaching of coral reefs, but you don't have to be an environmental science enthusiast to read this one with interest. Justin Gillan used phrases such as "From Texas to Thailand" to simply announce how widespread the problem of Coral Bleaching is. I thought it was ironic as well as interesting when he said the bleaching was "linked to climate change," with a hyper link to climate change. But maybe that was just me thinking too much about the idea of blogging and links. If some one wanted to know how it was linked with climate changed they could just click on the link and find out all about it! When I did so, it led me to a page explaining Global Warming, with a description similar to one that would be found on Wikipedia. Simple as that.
Gillan also placed historic references to past coral problems with explanations as to why it is newsworthy right now, and scientific explanations as to how it is happening, making it readable to all sorts of people.
I love reading ledes now, I've read so many ledes and knit-picked the full articles. And I know that blogging is a sort of extension of the blogger so the variety of ledes that make me read the entire article are all personal to me in some way. That's the importance of journalism, to make it important to the individual and their lives.