Anecdotal Leads

As Its Economy Sprints Ahead, China's People are Left Behind by David Barboza's, A Flagging Tribune, Tales of a Bankrupt Culture, by David Carr's (both in the New York Times), and Post Cards from the Cutting Edge by Wendy Lee (Star Tribune), are three articles that have strong anecdotal leads. 

The leads of these three stories all have a smaller story regarding the person that the news is affecting or the person that is making the news. After looking for anecdotal leads, I now know that I prefer them.

I feel that in each of these articles the anecdotal lead really grabs the attention of the reader. When I am browsing through a bunch of articles and looking for the most interesting ones, I often find my eyes glazing over because there are so many hard news leads that cover the who, where, when, why, and how. The anecdotal lead stands out because they are harder to find, so when I do stumble across one it catches my eye and I often read on. Also, they are more relatable to the reader. I much rather lead a quirky story about someone that is making the news rather than a sentence in which the information is all jumbled into one.

I also believe that the style of the authors writing is more transparent in an anecdotal news lead. This is nice because often times reporters are supposed to stick to such a specific guideline that their voice can be lost. 

I think the main purpose of an an anecdotal lead is to catch the eye of the reader. Sorcha’s story about The Bean was ten times more interesting when she had the anecdotal lead because it was funny, and it made me want to find out why the contractor from Starbucks had arrived. These three articles all accomplish that goal. Barboza’s article paints a picture of a Chinese family using a lot of imagery but still tying it back to the story at hand. I thought Barboza’s lead was the strongest although the other two were successful as well.