Category: Blog Post

One of the dumb things about the New Yorker’s website is that it is virtually impossible to find recently outdated articles. You can actually guess, by looking at the naming conventions, and discover that most of the content they have published on the site remains anchored in placid waters to a permanent URL. But the site search engine does not index this material, and they have apparently put up the barricades to the Google spiders as well. (The happy consequence of this, as we’ve mentioned many times before, is that a publication like the New Yorker or the New York Times simply cannot prevent most of its content from migrating out onto the greater web. If you know what you’re looking for, you will eventually find it, because someone will have posted it.)

One of the nice things about the New Yorker’s website is their little archive feature that brings back some of the magazine’s greatest hits. As our pal TMFTML points out, this classic Calvin Trillin piece is presently screening. It is a fine, recursive piece that in the lead describes the colorful leads of two Miami Herald crime reporters. We won’t reiterate that stuff here, you can read it for yourself. But we thought we’d riff a little bit on this whole topic of story leads.

Story leads tend to be the kind of thing that editors get really excited about. There’s a sort of pointless culture of “the perfect lead” that probably contributes to hundreds of thousands of cases of debilitating writer’s block every year. True enough, you eventually have to start your story somewhere. But in terms of actually getting the thing going, you know, one foot in front of the other, qwerty-style, we prefer to just jump in wherever it feels most compelling or interesting to do it. You can worry about the perfect lead at about the same time you’re worrying about the perfect kicker–after you’ve said the bulk of what it was you were itching to say. (If you weren’t itching to say something, you should check your records and see where the assignment came from.)

When it comes to leads, the main commandment that we try to observe is to avoid anything that smells funny, that doesn’t fit, that overpromises what the reader might be getting into, that in retrospect is too self-aware of being a lead. (This is true of conclusions, too. Overarching summaries and loud pronouncements about what the foregoing all means have a sort of belittling effect on the readers, we fear, as if they weren’t smart enough to reach the same conclusions the writer has spent several thousand words trying to lead them to.) A good lead should not stand out like a big red nose on an otherwise unpainted face. Though it’s undoubtedly sacrilege to say it, we think some of Edna Buchanan’s leads were clownish in this way.

Our friend Beth, who has had many wonderful little editor-style observations in recent bloggish posts, pointed out a few weeks ago the real violence that has been done to the standard newspaper lead in recent years… you know, the devolving, inductive, anecdotal quip that is normally a newspaper’s version of, “Once upon a time, in a land far away…” We think our local daily paper has generally improved in its news sections when it comes to just getting to the point, rather than making a desperate play for our heartstrings within the first fifty words. The columnists, though… We enjoy watching a pro like Beth take ’em apart.

Maybe it’s in the air, I dunno. But I’m hoping yesterday’s storms–seen to be literally a wall of brown out the windows of Bunker’s–cleared about ten days’ worth of bad karma. You know, an accumulation of weird breakdowns, bad communication, minor automotive hiccups, moving violations, unspeakable regression, birds gathering in strange symmetric formations on top of billboards, potentially song-ending skips of the needle across the twelve-inch dance-mix of life. (Karl dying, for example.) Sometimes we try too hard, fight too much, get too wrapped up in ourselves. I do, anyway.

So I’m riding my bike, which I do instead of lunch on Tuesdays, on the bike path past Mill City Musuem just beyond the new Guthrie skyway-to-nowhere. Hot as a two-peckered billygoat. I can see four figures ahead on the bike path: One, a city worker with a weed-whacker, not far from her little John Deere lawn tractor. What appears to be a very large woman in a green tank-top, a lunch-time walker, standing nearby making conversation. And beyond, a doughy couple, recently retired yuppies on nice mountain bikes.

It goes down like this: I pass the weed-whacker and the woman in the green tank top, who turns out to be a deep-voiced man with huge breasts. She or he is holding out her hand to the weed-whacker, as if to shake hands. The weed-whacker does not take the hand, but keeps holding the whacker, not unfriendly, really, just busy–which suddenly makes me think the man-woman is pointing at something with an open hand. S/he says, “Well, don’t work too hard, it’s awfully hot out here.” His/her hair is really frizzy straw blonde, could be a wig I suppose. My thought was not cynical or sarcastic. I said to myself, That’s a transgendered person. My city. My bike path. My people. Cool!

As I peddled a little farther, I reached the yuppie couple, who were struggling against a light wind and the powerful heat, same direction only much slower. They were in shorts and tee-shirts, big bubble helments. He was ahead of her. And she called up to him, plainly referring to the person we’d just passed. “What was that?” she said, with plain disgust.

It made me sad. And a little mad. Like I said, maybe it’s in the air. It can never rain hard enough, I guess.

Sid Hartman’s in a bit of hot water over at the Strib, and we’re not talking jaccuzzi time. Sid is evidently of the opinion that certain silly ethics rules don’t apply to him–and it will be interesting to see how (or even whether) his editors manage to slap the old duffer’s wrists. Kate Parry is certainly taking her whacks, and you can bet Sid’s not going to take any lip from the upstart publisher’s reader’s company spoksperson flack representative, or whatever her title is and whoever it is she actually serves. (The Strib’s twelve summer interns, we guess.)

There is some truth to Sid’s contention that he’s been the anchor man on the team tug-o-war rope for longer than anyone can even remember, and that different rules should apply to him. It’s just that Sid is not Sid’s best apologist. Allowances have been made. This has long been the spirit if not the letter of the law, which is why Sid can continue to be such a loveable jerk in the press box of every major sporting event that ever takes place in our fair city, and why he has for five decades drawn a paycheck from both the city’s newspaper and its “hometown” AM radio station. Half the edit staff at the Strib weren’t even born before most of Sid’s grand-kids were bouncing on his knee, and Anders Gyllenhaal wasn’t even in knee-pants when Sid was general manager of the Minneapolis Lakers. (While a reporter for the paper. How’s THAT for a conflict of interest, you snotty kids?!)

See the problem here is that Sid has never been the most diplomatic fella, and this may be a case where, no matter how many stripes he figures he’s earned over the years, that ain’t going to carry a lot of water with the troops. (If Sid can juggle three or four careers, we figure we can mix our metaphors.)

Does age demand respect and deference? Sure, to a point. But when you grow cavalier and thankless in your grizzled old age, it pays to remember the little folks who will bury you. Sid, it’s never been your strong point, but a little modesty would help your cause. And lose the martyr complex, it’s not very becoming; we know and appreciate your many fine contributions to the Newspaper of the Twin Cities, but have you bought the Strib’s fact-checking department a beer recently? (They may see things a little differently.) Other than that, knock yourself out lending your celebrity to noble causes hither and tither. Just don’t forget the little people–that is, your editors.