Here I sit, digging my lede out of the second paragraph — I hope it’s okay. It’s been down there since Monday with no food or water. My editor found it. He heard it whimpering under the crushing weight of a superfluous first paragraph. That’s where I usually find my ledes; poor things.
I’m actually going to bag the whole journalism thing and go into application development. I see a market for a word processor that automatically deletes the first paragraph when you hit “save.” It will also play positive affirmation recordings when a new file remains open and blank for more than 15 minutes. After a few minutes of “happy talk,” it will begin to taunt you, “Say something, please…. anything, or are you just CHICKEN?”
As for my lede, well the heavy equipment is here to move the rubble, so I’d better go move some things around.
Wait! Sparky, do you smell something, boy? Good dog!! My lede’s okay! Merciful heavens, it’s a miracle.
Beware Marc and his frying pan…
I’ve always been a fan of having dogs at work, but I thought the only benefits were stress relief and entertainment. Add search and rescue to that and you’ve got an unbeatable trio! Where are the Sci Com pups?
They’ve already developed a program that will delete random paragraphs from your article….it’s called SpeedWriter and we have it at the Herald….stupid thing delights in deleting key paragraphs about an hour or so before I need to file.
If you can do a search and rescue on your lede, then you might have to kill fewer kittens later on.