FOR YEARS I WORKED as a newspaper reporter and editor.
Many of those years were spent in two newspaper towns.
My paper often got the story in print first, but when we were not the first, we started our copy with a “second day leed.”
”leed” = lead; “hed” = head(line)
Yesterday one local tv station reported on a mother who gave birth as the cops stopped her husband who was wanted for something.
This evening – more than 24 hours later – the tv station is running the same story.
Many times, the tv “news” of yesterday is the tv “snooze” of today – on the same channel.
I know about slow news days, and for everyone BUT news people, no news may be “good news.”
What to do?
Put a new face on an old story; come up with a “second day leed.”
In the case of the mother and her new baby, update the blurb by leeding off with how the baby is doing and what happened to the father. We already saw the cliche “mother and baby” shot the first day; don’t repeat it. Find something new to report if “snooze” must be rebroadcast to fill out the time between commercials.
As a print reporter and editor – I loathe the term “journalist,” it’s too high flauntin’ ’ for the trade -- I wrote second day leeds on more than one occasion, even if I wrote the initial copy. This happened when a story ran from one day to the next.
I once worked with a guy I tagged “Third Definition Gregory” who was prone to use the third definition of a word. He was a Gainesville ComSchool grad with a powerful vocabulary. Mr. Gregory, who later fell from grace by going into PR in the Big Apple, covered city hall. (I covered the county commission.)
At the time, the city fathers were discussing – in meeting after meeting after meeting – a street lighting project.
Third Definition would report on the latest council session, but often forgot to tell his readers what went before – the background on the story. Great second day leed, but he forgot that not everyone read the previous stories. Our editor prompted him to recap on more than one occasion.
We were the hometown paper in a one paper town, but we had competition from out-of-towners, ergo the editor’s prompting.
Working for this paper was one of my more enjoyable jobs. Good editor; good staff.
A second day leed is a new top, a new leed paragraph (or two) before recapping what went before.
Given the amount of time tv “news” and “snooze” allots a story, tv news writers would have to be really professional writers. I see no indication that any tv station – local or network – has personnel of that caliber. (Fact checking also is a lot art in the electronic media.)
The writers for the talking heads (vs. “heds”) – the anchors – have a long way to go before tv “journalism” can equal the quality of real newspapers – the ones for which Third Definition and I used to work.
1. Ralph Renick: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ybou3ih9hOE
2. WTVJ Channel 4: https://myfloridahistory.org/date-in-history/march-21-1949/miami%E2%80%99s-first-television-station-aired-its-first-broadcast
PLAGIARISM is the act of appropriating the literary composition of another, or parts or passages of his writings, or the ideas or language of the same, and passing them off as the product of one’s own mind.
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