(All the essential facts about the story are here told in a nutshell. The lead could have stood as a complete story had space requirements demanded that the succeeding paragraphs be “killed.”)
IV. Opening of a fire story from the Chicago Record-Herald in which the human-interest feature is “played up”:
Seven families were driven to the streets and two sleeping infants rescued and carried from their cribs by their terrified mothers in a fire which last night attacked the Catalpa Apartments, 1727–29 Humboldt boulevard, causing a loss of $30,000.
The fire, which spread rapidly throughout the three-story brick apartment building, was caused by a faulty boiler in the basement. The flames rushed up the air shaft, thus attacking the three floors at practically the same time.
The fire occurred early in the evening, before any of the families had retired, and this fact alone prevented probable fatalities.
(Note how the writer has jumped right into the middle of things without waste of words. While the human-interest element is made prominent, other features of the story are not neglected.)
V. Lead showing that good news style does not demand that all the salient facts be crowded into one sentence:
LONDON, Nov. 18.—An army of 350 militant suffragettes tried to storm Parliament Friday. Charging with Amazonian fury against the double line of police about the building, they made half a dozen attempts to break through the cordon. Six women were arrested.
VI. Lead from the New York Sun which begins with a direct quotation:
“If hell stood in need of a king or queen there are people on earth to-day who could take the job and hold it down,” said Bishop Quayle of the Methodist Church, in a sermon he preached yesterday morning in the Washington Heights Church. Bishop Quayle, a product of Kansas City, is considered “a typical man of the West,” one who not only ventures to slap another man on the back, but whom another Westerner would dare slap on the back.
(Here the news writer has called attention to his story by picking out and “featuring” a striking sentiment from the speaker’s remarks. The second sentence skillfully characterizes the speaker and conveys the idea that here is no stereotyped report of a sermon, as the reader might have feared, but a pleasant, informal summary of its most interesting points.)
VII. In which the story is summarized in a short opening quotation: