Today’s Worst News Ledes: 7/16/09

News reporters like to catch readers’ attention with a few zingy lines at the start of an article. Sometimes, these so-called “ledes” go horribly wrong. In Today’s Worst News Ledes, we highlight some of the biggest offenders:

3. From The New York Times:

AT a recent party at the downtown club China Chalet, two attendees stood out from the rest of the hipsters. Among those gathered to see the group Salem perform were two individuals who, at first glance, had no eyebrows.

As a rule, the word “hipster” is pretty grating. The word has become more or less meaningless, a code word to dismiss someone you think is vapidly trendy, shorthand for ‘a cool person,’ as defined by the author of a piece, or both. In a trend piece, it becomes a mitigation of responsibility: if the point to prove that whoever you’re writing about is at the cutting edge, it’s a bit silly to start out by saying “these people are cutting edge.”

Also: no eyebrows? Really?

2. From Chicago Now:

Can you say the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences gives Emmy nods to “Flight of the Conchords,” one of its stars, Jemaine Clement, and one of its songs, “Carol Brown?”

Yes.

1. From the AP, via CBS News:

The first battered bodies were found on a small Australian beach, the white sand around them stained crimson with their blood.

A few days later, the killer struck again – this time on the nearby cliffs overlooking Sydney Harbor. The cluster of victims were covered in bite marks, their tiny tummies slashed open.

Through blood-spatter evidence and DNA testing, a profile of the killer began to emerge: Stealthy. Fast. Furry.

From start to finish, this article (“Mysterious Penguin Killings Vex Australia”) is a great guilty read and secretly well-written, the sort of piece that “Oddly Enough” sections of news websites were made for. Snipers being enlisted to protect penguins? Drunks urinating on them? (The penguins, not the snipers.) The line “Officials can almost certainly rule out humans; the bite marks and blood patterns point to foxes”?

The overblown beginning is too much, though, maybe because it can’t decide if it’s trying to be cute or dramatic. There’s something inescapably queasy about the phrase “their tiny tummies slashed open.”