Editor & Publisher, the increasingly left-wing newspaper trade publication, announced today that The Associated Press, in its never-ending search for its lost credibility, is going to begin providing two ledes for selected stories on its newspaper wire. Ostensibly, this is to give papers a choice between the Joe Friday, just the facts, ma’am, lede or a turgid, “literary” lede for those who like facts to come at them by a less direct route.
Here’s the example AP gives of a traditional lede:
MOSUL, Iraq (AP) A suicide attacker set off a bomb that tore through a funeral tent jammed with Shiite mourners Thursday, splattering blood and body parts over rows of overturned white plastic chairs. The attack, which killed 47 and wounded more than 100, came as Shiite and Kurdish politicians in Baghdad said they overcame a major stumbling block to forming a new coalition government.
Here’s their example of the new alternative lede for the same story:
MOSUL, Iraq (AP) Yet again, almost as if scripted, a day of hope for a new, democratic Iraq turned into a day of tears as a bloody insurgent attack undercut a political step forward.
On Thursday, just as Shiite and Kurdish politicians in Baghdad were telling reporters that they overcame a major stumbling block to forming a new coalition government, a suicide attacker set off a bomb that tore through a funeral tent jammed with Shiite mourners in the northern city of Mosul.
Call me skeptical, but this seems designed to allow reporters to get their opinions grafted onto the front of a story so as to “frame” it for the poor benighted reader who won’t grasp the full meaning without the AP scribe putting his spin on it. AP already does this to excess with what they call “news analyses.” We don’t need more of it.
