Never Bury The Lead!

In the movie Broadcast News, a producer played by Albert Brooks tries to convince another producer, played by Holly Hunter, not to date a handsome news announcer (William Hurt) that he has no respect for. 

Instead of dating the announcer, who Brooks believes is dim and devious, he wants her to date him.

Following an evening out, he makes his case for why she should date him. He concludes this way:

“I grant you everything. But give me this: he personifies everything that you've been fighting against. And I'm in love with you."

After that, he says deprecatingly: "How do you like that? I buried the lead.”

(See that clip from the movie here.) 

Never bury the lead. The most compelling, most newsworthy aspect of what you are trying to say must always be at the top of your press release. 

The lead is the thing that makes the reporter, editor or news director want to continue reading. It’s got to be a grabber. It has to catch their attention.

And it has to do it in about 30 seconds, the maximum amount of time most people in the media have to give to your e-mail.

This is the opposite of what they teach you in university, where an essay rises to a conclusion. In a press release, the most important information is always at the top. (See my post about the inverted pyramid style of writing.)

My friend Nick Martin, the education reporter for the Winnipeg Free Press, wrote about his experience with a buried lead recently.

On his blog, he wrote about a PR firm in the U.S. that failed to provide a local angle to a story Nick had written about.

Nick managed to write the story, about a Winnipeg company named Permission Click, but with no help from the PR firm. It was only after the owner of the local business called Nick that he managed to connect the dots.

“I reread the email pitch that had set all this off, and nowhere in it was there any mention or hint that Permission Click was local," he writes. 

"And I dug down into my deleted files, and there found a previous email from the PR people in Florida, a lengthy story pitch which, at the very bottom, mentioned that Permission Click is based in Winnipeg."

Since Nick gets 70-90 e-mails a day, it's hard to give each one the time or attention it deserves.

That's why the most important information needs to be right at the top.

As Nick wrote about his experience with Permission Click and the PR firm:

“If your client is local — and yes, we are parochial within a readership area larger than several states put together — then you should say so. Like, in the lead.”

His advice to the PR firm: “First paragraph: ‘Local Winnipeg tech startup Permission Click could have prevented the alleged theft of $24,000 in school lunch money.'

‘CEO Chris Johnson is available to talk to you about the way in which his company has already helped 12 Winnipeg schools communicate far more efficiently and easily with parents, and he can tell you about dozens of schools in Manitoba who are doing due diligence on his company and could soon be signing up.'"

Because that information wasn’t easily found, the story almost didn’t get written.

The takeaway for non-profits? When writing a press release, or proclaiming love, never bury the lead.