FEATURE LEADS 1

LITERARY ALLUSION• Relates a person or

event to some character or event in literature.

• To have been ordered into battle to attack a group of windmills with horse and lance would have seemed to Joe Robinson no more strange an assignment than the one given to him Thursday by Miss Vera Newton . . . (The literary allusion is to Don Quixote.)

FEATURE LEADS 2

HISTORICAL ALLUSION• Relates a person or event

to some character or event in history.

• Napoleon had his Waterloo. George Custer had his Little Big Horn. Fortunately, Napoleon and Custer faced defeat only once. For Bjorn Borg, the finals of the U.S. Tennis Open have become a stumbling block of titanic proportions.

• Washington's trip across the Delaware was child's play compared with Dave Jason's span of the Big Lick River. Astride a six-foot log, he chopped his way across the ice-bogged river yesterday.

FEATURE LEADS 3

CONTRAST• Compares extremes -

the big with the little, the comedy with the tragedy, age with youth, rich and poor - if such comparison is applicable to the news event.

• His wealth is estimated at $600 million. He controls a handful of corporations, operating in more than 20 nations. Yet he carries his lunch to work in a brown paper bag and wears the latest fashions from Sears and Roebuck's bargain basement.

FEATURE LEADS 4

PUN

• Uses a pun, a clever or quirky play on words.

• Western High's trash collectors have been down in the dumps lately.

FEATURE LEADS 5

DESCRIPTION: (Site)• Uses vivid word choice to

create an immediate sense of setting.

• The road to Nsukka in eastern Nigeria is rutted and crumpled, the aging asphalt torn like ragged strips of tar paper. In the midday heat, diesel trucks hauling cassava and market women to the next town kick up clouds of fine yellow-orange dust that lingers in the air.

Strings of one-story cement buildings in dull pastels with brooding eaves hug the roadside here and there marking small pinpoints of commerce; hand-lettered signs proclaim the "Decency Food Canteen," "God's Time Hotel," "Praise the Lord Watch Repairers.“

FEATURE LEADS 6

DESCRIPTION: (Person)• Uses vivid word choice to create

an immediate sense of character.• Diana Ross is wearing no lipstick. She

is lounging around on a hot and muggy late afternoon. The windows are raised high throughout her Fifth Avenue apartment. She is dressed in black short shorts and a matching sleeveless blouse that plunges low in the front. She is also wearing fishnet stockings and burgundy suede boots.

She is 37 years old, divorced, the mother of three children, who this afternoon are out at the country house in Connecticut.

She leans back and puts her hand to her forehead. "There's just so much I don't know about. It's so funny. I was really a pampered, chaperoned, protected teenager - all the way through my twenties. I'm just now beginning to take on responsibility. And it's time. It's right. It's in order. I finally know it's not healthy to be pampered.“

FEATURE LEADS 7

DESCRIPTION: (Event)• Uses vivid word choice to create an

immediate sense of plot.• The air inside the darkened gymnasium is

heavy with the heat of an uncommonly prolonged North Carolina summer. Smoke from some tin containers placed around the basketball court lends a touch of mystery to the scene.

The thick smoke rolls into the intense light of floor-level arc lamps, then up against a raft of lights hovering like a Steven Spielberg spaceship. Out of the dark, a white-clad figure appears, bounding a basketball.

Michael Jordan drives for the basket in one of his many crowd-pleasing moves, ball tucked under his arm, then scooped up and over into the hoop. All of the way to the basket, Jordan's tongue sticks out, curled up in an expression of pure joy at his defiance not only of imaginary defenders but of gravity itself.

FEATURE LEADS 8

CAPSULE OR PUNCH LEAD

• Uses a blunt, explosive statement to summarize the most important idea then follows with more information.

• The dream is over.Following a

crushing loss to conference rivals…

• The Beatles are back!Thousands of

screaming fans stood outside of record stores…

FEATURE LEADS 9

ONE WORD• Uses a blunt,

explosive word to summarize the most important idea then follows with more information.

• Relentless. According to

coaches, that's the best term to describe Rattlers midfielder Gloria Grissom, who helped the girls soccer team to its 15th consecutive win Friday night.

FEATURE LEADS 10

MISCELLANEOUS FREAK LEADS

• Employ ingenious novelty to attract the reader's eye. This list can be extended indefinitely, to the extent of the reporter's writing ability and imagination (tempered only by accuracy and relevance).

• For sale: one elephant. The City Park

Commission is thinking about inserting that ad in the newspaper. A curtailed budget makes it impossible to care for "Bobo", a half-grown elephant lodged in special quarters at Westdale Park.

FEATURE LEADS 11

PARODY LEAD

• Mimics a well-known proverb, quotation or phrase.

• Whisky, whisky everywhere, but 'nary a drop to drink.

Such was the case at the City Police Station yesterday when officers poured 100 gallons of bootleg moonshine into the sewer.

FEATURE LEADS 12

DIRECT ADDRESS LEAD

• Speaks directly to the reader on a subject of widespread interest or appeal, most effective WITHOUT using “you.”

• Do not expect any pity from the weatherman today. He forecasts a continuation of the bitter Arctic cold wave that has gripped the city for a week.

FEATURE LEADS 13

STACCATO• Consists of a series of

jerky, exciting phrases, separated by dashes or dots.

• Midnight on the bridge . . .a scream . . .a shot . . .a splash . . .a second shot . . .a third shot.

This morning, police recovered the bodies of Mr. and Mrs. R. E. Murphy, estranged couple, from the Snake River. A bullet wound was found in the temple of each.

FEATURE LEADS 14

ANECDOTAL LEAD• Uses an event to represent the

universal experience or theme of the story.

• It was 1965, and the Dallas Cowboys were making good use out of an end-around play to Frank Clarke, averaging 17 yards every time a young coach named Tom Landry pulled it out of his expanding bag of tricks.

One day, Clint Murchison, owner of the Cowboys, wondered aloud in Landry's presence how successful the play might be if Bob Hayes rather than Clarke ran with the ball. Hayes, after all, was the world's fastest human.

"Tom gave a lot of mumbo-jumbo about weak and strong side, and I nodded sagely and walked away," Murchison told the Dallas Morning News three years ago. A few weeks later, Landry called a reverse. Bob Hayes got the ball. "We lost yardage," Landry recalled this week, "and I haven't heard from Clint since.“

FEATURE LEADS 15

SEQUENCE OR NARRATIVE

• Places the reader in the midst of action.

• Trainer Eddie Gregson was walking 10 feet behind his Kentucky Derby horse, Gato del Sol, when they emerged from the quiet of the stable area at Churchill Downs and began that long trek around the clubhouse turn toward the saddling paddock.

There were 141,009 people packed into the Downs last Saturday afternoon - a warm, bright day in Louisville - and thousands lined the clubhouse turn, a few yelling at Gregson as the colt strode by.

"What's the name of your horse?“

Less than an hour later, that nameless horse stood in the champion's ring.

FEATURE LEADS 16

THEN AND NOW• Uses descriptions of the same

person, place, or thing at different times to show change or consistency.

• The Rio Grande once flowed through here, a wide and robust river surging between steep banks as it followed a southward course hugging the state's curvy profile.

No more. Four-plus years of drought in

West Texas and the neighboring Mexican state of Chihuahua have turned the storied river into a trickle meandering through mud and gravel fields adorned here and there with discarded tires.

• The year was 1964. Lyndon Johnson had swept into the White House by the largest landside victory in American history. The Beatles owned the Top Ten. And a 23-year old ex-Marine opened up a small westside Mexican restaurant.

Today, Luis Alvarado is a millionaire many times over, and his restaurants are found in cities from Boston to Austin to San Diego.

FEATURE LEADS 17

QUESTION• Serves best when a problem with reader appeal is the crux of

the story. The question should have direct relevance to the reader - not a cliché like, "Have you ever been poor?“

• You think you have it bad? Consider Ron Mullens. Once vice president of a major real estate corporation, he is

today penniless. Once married to a beautiful model, he now wanders the back roads of America alone in search of a smile and whatever odd jobs fall his way. You think Ron Mullens is upset by this turn of events? Not on your life. "I gave it all up - the money, the glamour, the security - for the opportunity to see America as it really is," he said.

• Are you tired of hormone as cultural myth, as shorthand for swagger and machismo, ferocity and obnoxiousness, the bearskin beneath the three-piece suit?

Do the ubiquitous references to "testosterone poisoning" and "testosterone shock," to "testosterone-fueled heavy metal" and "testosterone-crazed oppressors" make you feel a bit, well, testy? Do you think it unfair to blame one lousy chemical for war, dictatorships, crime, Genghis Khan, Gunga Din, Sly Stallone, the NRA, the NFL, Stormin' Norman Schwarzkopf, and the tendency to interrupt in the middle of a sentence?

Ready to give the so-called male hormone a break and return all testosterone clichés with a single pound of a drum?

As it turns out, testosterone might not be the dread "hormone of aggression" that researchers and popular imagination have long had it. It might not be the substance that drives men to behave with quintessential guyness, to posture, push, yelp, belch, punch and play air-guitar. If anything, researchers say this most frightened of hormones might be a source of very different sensations: calmness, happiness and friendliness, for example.

FEATURE LEADS 18

QUOTE• As a general rule, avoid quote

leads. When used, the quote should be dynamic and capture the theme of the story. The following lead comes from a story about Joely Fisher, who played Paige Clark on the TV series, Ellen.

• "People usually have two completely different opinions of what my life must have been like growing up," said the actress Joely Fisher, 28, a child of the short (1967-69), unhappy union between Connie Stevens, the sex kitten of 1950s TV, and Eddie Fisher, the singer and former matinee idol.

"Half think it must have been so difficult, and the rest believe I got everything I ever wanted," added Fisher. "I see my life as wacky yet grounded."

She was raised in a mansion in Beverly Hills and was well-fed, well-educated and well-traveled. so what was the problem? An absentee father was a self-confessed drug addict and a mother whom Fisher describes as a "sexpot."