Lead Length and Voice in U.S. Newspapers

Notes for "Lead Length and Voice in U.S. Newspapers"

¹This topic emerged during a discussion of active and passive voice in a beginning news writing class. A perusal of U.S. prestige newspapers revealed little adherence to traditional lead principles. The examples described are from editions published during the week of Dec. 13, 1999, after this study began, to emphasize that similar examples will be found currently. The prestige papers were: The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post.
²Charles E. Swanson, "Readability and readership: A controlled experiment." Journalism Quarterly, 25:4 (December 1948), 339-345; Wilbur Schramm, "Measuring another dimension of newspaper readership," Journalism Quarterly, 24 (December 1947):295.
³Rita Wolf and Tommy Thomason, "Writing coaches: Their strategies for improving writing," Newspaper Research Journal, 7 (Spring 1986):43-49.
⁴Ray Laakaniemi, "Letter from the coach," Newspaper Research Journal, 8 (Spring 1987):53-58.
⁵The overall agreement belies differences in the eight categories shown in Table 1. Five of the eight categories received 100% reliability. Most coder discrepancies were in categories that required counts. Number of pages (due to counting partial pages) had only 43% exact agreement, but 14 of the 15 decisions were within two pages. Number of sentences on leads had only 57% agreement, but 14 of the 15 decisions were within three sentences. Number of active-passive voice paragraphs had 77% agreement, but 10 of the 11 decisions for books that had such paragraphs were within one paragraph. Therefore, the results shown in Table 1, which average discrepancies between the two coders, can be considered a reliable description of how the textbooks handle these issues.
⁶Melvin Mencher, Basic media writing, 6th ed. (Madison, WI: WCB Brown & Benchmark, 1998), 136.
⁷Fred Fedler, John R. Bender, Lucinda Davenport and Paul E. Kostyu, Reporting for the media, 6th ed. (Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1997), 118, 127.
⁸Bruce D. Itule and Douglas A. Anderson, News writing and reporting for today's media, 3rd ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1994), 65.
⁹Gerald Stone, Newswriting (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), 24.
¹⁰Carole Rich, Writing and reporting news: A coaching method, 3rd ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2000), 147.
¹¹The Missouri Group: Brian S. Brooks, George Kennedy, Daryl R. Moen and Don Ranly, News reporting and writing, 6th ed. (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999), 129.
¹²Earl R. Hutchison Sr., Writing for mass communication, 2nd ed., (New York: Longman, 1996), 27.
¹³Harry Stapler, "The one-sentence/long-sentence habit of writing leads and how it hurts readership," Newspaper Research Journal, 7 (Fall 1985):17-27.
¹⁴Kevin Catalano, "On the wire: How six news services are exceeding readability standards," Journalism Quarterly, 61 (Spring 1990):97-103.
¹⁵Timothy Gillman, "The problem of long leads in news and sports stories," Newspaper Research Journal, 15 (Fall 1994):29-39.
¹⁶The Missouri Group: G. Kennedy, D. R. Moen and D. Ranly, Beyond the inverted pyramid: Effective writing for newspapers, magazines and specialized publications (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993), 228-230.
¹⁷Lauren Kessler and Duncan McDonald, When words collide: A media writer's guide to grammar and style, 5th ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2000), 85-93.
¹⁸Brian S. Brooks and James L. Pinson, Working with words: A concise handbook for media writers and editors (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993), 37.
¹⁹Carole Rich, Writing and reporting news: A coaching method, 3rd ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2000), 158.
²⁰George A. Hough 3rd, News writing, 5th ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1995), 394, 398.
²¹Conrad C. Fink and Donald E. Fink, Introduction to magazine writing (New York: Macmillan, 1994).
²²Sheridan Baker, The practical stylist: Third Canadian edition (New York: HarperCollins, 1991), 123-125.
²³Wayne A. Danielson and Sam D. Bryan, "Readability of wire stories in eight news categories," Journalism Quarterly, 41 (Winter 1964):105-106.
²⁴Guido H. Stempel III, "Readability of six kinds of content in newspapers," Newspaper Research Journal, 3 (Fall 1981):32-37.
²⁵Wanda M. Brandon, Journalism learning experiences and newspaper job success. Unpublished dissertation, Southern Illinois University Carbondale School of Journalism (1997).
²⁶"Prestige" dailies in the study were: The Christian Science Monitor, Louisville Courier Journal, Philadelphia Inquirer, Pittsburgh Post, Charlotte Observer, Sacramento Bee, Detroit News, Chicago Tribune, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Miami Herald, Nashville Tennessean, St. Petersburg Times, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Denver Post, Baltimore Sun, Kansas City Star. Others that qualified for the prestige designation arrived too late to be included in the study. Although critics might argue about including several of these papers, the study's purpose in designating these is their recognition of credibility and general excellence. A case might be made that only half a dozen U.S. newspapers qualify as "prestige" papers, but the study's hypothesis required a group large enough to warrant statistical testing.
²⁷Michael Singletary, Mass communication research: Contemporary methods and applications (New York: Longman, 1994), 295.
²⁸Roger D. Wimmer and Joseph R. Dominick, Mass media research: An introduction, 4th ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing, 1994).
²⁹Harry Stapler, op. cit., 17-27.
³⁰Rudolf Flesch, The art of plain talk (New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1946), 38, 135.
³¹Readability formulas' reliability was questioned in R. F. Smith, "How consistently do readability tests measure the difficulty of newswriting?" Newspaper Research Journal, 5 (Summer 1984):1-8. For a discussion of history and use of readability formulas see: Gerald C. Stone, "Readability formulas a clue, but not a cure-all," The Academic Author, 2 (1997):13-14.
³²Kempa S. French and June H. Larrabee, "Relationships among educational material readability, client literacy, perceived beneficence, and perceived quality," Journal of Nursing Care Quality, 13 (August 1999):68-82.
³³Frank Grazian, "Frequently asked questions (FAQ) about readability," Public Relations Quarterly, 41:3 (Fall 1996):19-20.
³⁴Timothy Gillman, "The problem of long leads in news and sports stories," Newspaper Research Journal, 15:4 (Fall 1994):29-39.
³⁵Karla Aronson, George Sylvie and Russell Todd, "Real-time journalism: Implications for news writing," Newspaper Research Journal, 17:3-4 (Summer/Fall 1996):53-67.
³⁶John V. Bodle, "How readable are online college dailies?" Paper presented at the College Media Advisers convention, New York (March, 2000).
³⁷M.R. Taylor, "Write for the Web - and sell!" Writer's Digest, 78:2 (February, 1999):18. See also: C. Weinkopf, "Synthetic Rags," National Review, 49:36 (July 28, 1997):36.
³⁸John Morkes and Jakob Nielsen, "Concise, scannable, and objective: How to write for the Web," (1998), http://www.useit.com/papers/webwriting/writing.html. See also: Jakob Nielsen, "Be succinct! (Writing for the Web)," (1997), http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9703b.html; Jakob Nielsen, "Report from a 1994 Web usability study," (1994), http://www.useit.com/papers/1994_web_usability_report.html; John Morkes and Jakob Nielsen, "Case study: Applying writing guidelines to Web pages," (1998), http://www.useit.com/papers/webwriting/rewriting.html.