Curiosity killed the cat

By: Katie Anthony

For this particular blog entry, I decided to do a little bit of investigating. After story two for class and hearing "TOPIC LEAD," "TOPIC LEAD," "TOPIC LEAD," over and over again, and getting frowned upon for leads that were more than 30 words, I wanted to see how true those rules stand for real journalists. Honestly, I'm grasping at any straws I can get my hands on that will help leads not suck as much for me.

The one thing I struggle the most with leads is writing a mere topic lead. Some of us don't have the creativity like Gabe Gilson does, and if you don't believe he's creative, I'm 90 percent sure he's the only student who has hyperlinked the urban dictionary in his blog.

For my investigating, I went to GoogleNews and made a collaboration of random leads that consisted of one or two leads per section (news, entertainment, sports, etc). Overall, my findings weren't what I wanted them to be. Simply put, we've been taught correctly in class.

I was hoping to find that in at least one section the leads would run over 30 words, but all of the leads were 30 words or less. In the sports section, the two leads I pulled were both under 20 words.

There is no hope for people like me who suck at leads.

In simple terms the media may be changing, but AP style is here to stay.