Today’s NYT article on Rick Perry begins like this: “COLLEGE STATION, Tex. — Rick Perry arrived on the campus of Texas A&M University in the tumultuous fall of 1968, cut his hair short, regulation army style, and donned a uniform. College students across America were rising up against the Vietnam War, but Mr. Perry, a member of the Corps of Cadets here, would not be among them.”
At first it seems like we’re about to be told a certain kind of story about Rick Perry — probably some laudatory piece about how he defied his college peers and stood up for what he believed was right— but then out of the blue, the article veers off into another direction entirely. That’s what I like so much about this lede; that it keeps you on your toes a little.
Though the article begins with a snapshot of Perry’s college years amid the tumult of the 1960’s, what it’s really about is his military service and how it shaped his later politics (or maybe how his politics influenced his decision to enlist). But his college years at Texas A&M are quickly abandoned after the first couple grafs.
This narrative shift reminded me a little of Robert Caro’s “The Power Broker.” In Caro’s biography of Robert Moses, he begins by sharing a brief but revealing anecdote about an argument Moses got into while on the swimming team at Yale, and the way Moses ends the argument lays the groundwork for “the man he would eventually become.” Although it's a little novel-y I think this kind of coming-of-age storytelling device works well in a profile of an important political figure like Perry, because it gives us exactly the kind of colorful description of Perry that we want to hear: the man he was becoming before he entered into the military or politics (assisted by a great visual detail about his haircut, and an amusing photo of him in his corps of cadets uniform ). It's a good example of how an anecdotal lede doesn’t necessarily need to sum up a ‘thesis’, but can help set up the rest of the story.
The lede in today’s business article “A Voice Suggests Door-Busters Can Wait,” (a story about the employee backlash against Black Friday hours) was less successful. My problem with the lede, which begins “Anthony Hardwick never thought of himself as an activist or even much of an organizer...” is just that it seems like such a boring choice out of a million ways to begin a story. The article itself is such a relatable human-interest story (who wouldn’t sympathize with a guy making minimum wage who had to work through Thanksgiving?), but the lede fails to capture any of that sentiment. And to be completely honest, I tune out a little when I hear the word “organizer” or “activist,” because they're so overused, so I have to wonder why the author chose to use them to hook us.
I also liked the anecdotal lede in “The Witch Wears Silk Suits”, an article that ran in today's metro section of the Times, even though it was pretty cheesy: "It was the night before Thanksgiving, and the Witch Queen of New York was not stirring her brew or flying on her broom. Well, she did have her broom, but she was using it to sweep up the Pagan Center of New York, her headquarters in the Bronx..." I don't usually like campy writing like this, but I think this writer pulls it off by going 100% into it. (The following line doesn't disappoint either: "'Where the heck is that dustpan?' said the witch, Lady Rhea, 60, a Wiccan high priestess who was pulling off a nearly magical level of multitasking..." Another obvious difference about this piece is that the off-beat subject matter demands a little humor. A jokey lede here is more permissible than it would be in either of the above articles. Overall, I didn't think the tone detracted from the piece at all, especially because the woman profiled sounds like such a character that it seemed like the tone fit her personality rather than being condescending.
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