In many forms of written discourse, the opening line(s) are not as important as the body or the conclusion. Take this paragraph, for example. Total fribble – I’ll make up for it later.
But in journalism, the lead paragraph of an article is make-or-break. It contains the who, what, when, where, why, and how of the news event. This formula allows readers to skim a newspaper and quickly decide if an item is of interest. After the lead, journalists tack on details in order of importance, to assist copy editors who must lob off content to physically layout the newspaper. Hence, most news articles start spastically and ramble to an abrupt, boring finish.
The modus to which journalists must operandi doesn’t allow for much creativity, so when I see a lead paragraph that satisfies all of the traditional criteria while establishing itself as hard news and soft news and using compelling literary devices like active conditional second-person voice, well, I must applaud it. The following lead belongs in journalism textbooks:
Drive across Virginia with an outsized rubber replica of testicles dangling from your trailer hitch and you face a fine under a bill before the General Assembly.
