PART THREE: STORYTELLING
CHAPTER 8 The Inverted Pyramid
Overview
This chapter is probably the most important in the book. Students who have not mastered the
basic skill of using the inverted pyramid in their writing will suffer throughout the rest of the
semester, as well as in their careers. You may want to devote extra time to this chapter and
draw up additional supplemental exercises that you can give to any students who are having
trouble.
The chapter starts with a discussion of the value of the inverted pyramid format and goes
on to explore how to find the lead in a story. It also covers variations on the inverted pyramid
lead as well as story structure. The text gives numerous examples, and the four annotated
models provide an opportunity to analyze stories as a class.
Teaching Tips
For students who have some experience writing for publication, the inverted pyramid story
will be natural, even simplistic. For others, however, it will be a mystery, at least at first. We
urge you to push students hard to make their leads clear and short. Too many of the examples
they find in newspapers will be long and confusing.
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Students also need to pay attention to the length of the sentences in the leads and to the
lengths of the leads themselves. Journalists sometimes defer answering all six questions
who, what, where, when, why, how until later paragraphs to keep the lead short and
readable.
Lecture Notes
I. INTRODUCTION
A. The inverted pyramid is still widely used throughout journalism.
II. IMPORTANCE OF THE INVERTED PYRAMID STORY
A. Information in a story is arranged from most to least important
B. Increased chances of showing up high in an Internet search.
C. Readers newspaper and Web skim.
D. The lead (one or two paragraphs) sits atop other paragraphs arranged in descending
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F. Still valuable and viable perhaps 80 percent of stories in newspapers and almost 100
percent of stories on the wire services for target audiences such as the financial
community use the inverted pyramid.
G. There are other options (see Chapter 10), but master the inverted pyramid first.
III. FINDING THE LEAD
A. Find the relevance, usefulness and interest for readers.
B.
C. Writing the inverted pyramid lead
write the lead.
1. Always check names.
2. Keep leads tight, preferably less than 25 words unless you use two sentences.
3. according to whom? Attribute opinion.
4. Find out the who, what, where, when, why and how (but include only the facts that
have some bearing on the story).
IV. VARIATIONS ON THE INVERTED PYRAMID LEAD
A. use the informal second person to make the lead more relevant; but
B. The immediate-identification lead is most important when
someone important or well–known makes news.
C. The delayed-identification lead is usually used when the person or organization has
little name recognition.
1. Delay names until at least the second paragraph.
2. Also delay identification when the lead is too wordy.
D. The summary lead is the whole of the action more important than any of its parts?
1. When there are several important elements, a general statement is preferable to
specifics.
E. The multiple-element lead allows for more information in the first paragraph, but it
must be clear and simple.
1. Graphic devices and sidebars can take on some elements of a story, reducing the
need for a multiple-element lead.
F. Danger signals question leads, speculation leads, overreaching leads.
G. Leads with flair used especially when there is a novel element to the story.
V. STORY ORGANIZATION
A. The one-subject story involves news judgment and analysis of the who, what,
where, when, why and how.
B. The memo structure hybrid useful on the Web; effective when there is no narrative,
few voices.
C. The multiple–element story creates options for journalists.
1. Write more than one story.
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VI. WRITING A STORY ACROSS MEDIA PLATFORMS
A. Tweeting breaking news limited to 140 characters.
B. Initial online story first three or four paragraphs.
C. Full story with ongoing updates to appear online and in print.
VII. CHECKING ACCURACY
A. Go over notes at end of every interview.
B. Carefully check the story against your notes and documents to avoid introducing
errors while writing.
Class Activities and Discussion Questions
Activity 1: Collect eight different inverted pyramid leads from newspaper stories, and post
them on the walls of your classroom. Try to choose leads that include several of the
–identification leads, multiple-
element leads, summary leads and so on. Put your students in pairs or groups of three, and
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three minutes to review the lead and their answers to the activity questions. They should also
score the lead for its effectiveness on a 1 to 5 scale and offer a rationale for their score. Have
each group quickly present its findings to the class. Discussion questions: Which lead was the
best? Which was the worst? Why? Which lead variation was most effective? Which was least
effective? Why?
Activity 2: Have students meet in their groups. Then have each group member write a new
lead for the story he or she has chosen. Students must choose a different variation of the
inverted pyramid lead for this new lead. Students should get feedback on their leads within
their groups and then share the leads with the class. Discussion questions: Which lead was the
Activity 3: Give each student copies of two news stories from your local daily newspaper.
lead, and one should use some kind of alternative lead. For each story, have students work
backward and write a three- to four-paragraph initial online story and then a 140-character
Activity 4: Print or copy the leads for the same news event from three different publications
(for example, The New York Times, USA Today and The Wall Street Journal). Alternatively,
use three local news sources (newspaper, local radio station, local website) for a local story.
Divide students into pairs or small groups, and give students a set of leads. Ask students to
compare, within the group, the length of the leads, the information included and which of the
six interrogatives (who, what, where, when, why, how) are in the lead. Then conduct a class
Activity 5: Put students in pairs and give them the following background information. They
should then consult with one another and compose two different types of leads. Have each
pair of students join with another pair, share their leads and then choose the two best to share
with the class. Discussion questions: Which leads made you want to read the rest of the
story? Why?
Background Information
You are a reporter for The Sacramento Bee
you to report on a program that organizes volunteer workers to clean up the bicycle
trails and river along the American River Parkway. She gives you a press release from
the organization sponsoring the program.
You read the press release and take the following notes:
You decide to call Evan Rajan before Saturday to get some background information.
Your notes:
plastic beer holders
nment agency.)
On Saturday, Oct. 1, you go to the American River Parkway off Sunrise Boulevard in
Rancho Cordova to witness the cleanup. These are your notes:
Bright, sunny skies; strong wind, but not too cold. Looks like most of them are
working as opposed to people just at the river. Can tell volunteers by the red
rubber gloves they are using. Some people have blue bags and others have green
bags to put garbage in. People are fanned out from just below the bicycle bridge
east of the Sunrise Boulevard automobile bridge to as far down the river as I can
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see. Looks like hundreds of people. Will need to get estimate from organizers
later.
About noon speak with a woman and two daughters. They have a blue bag of
garbage collected and a smaller amount in a green bag. Woman says the blue bag
is for regular garbage, and the green bag is for garbage that can be recycled.
Woman: Sadie McFarland. Girls: Marissa McFarland, 6, Leah McFarland, 8. Why
tty. The animals
gathering at the end of the day. Stop along the way at the Watt Avenue Bridge and
the Howe Avenue Bridge, and see lots of volunteers along the river in both
locations. Interesting folks in the crowd at Discovery Park: Gov. Jerry Brown is
People are marking down types of garbage found on survey sheets, which the
organizers gave them. One collector explains she was told the ARPF officials
think they can cut the garbage at the source better if they know the kind of garbage
that is left along the river.
Items being found: Cigarette butts; spent fireworks left over from the summer; lots
of paper trash; aluminum cans; lots of plastics, like juice and water bottles; a few
About 3 p.m. find Rajan where they are collecting bags of garbage. Confirms
is washed down through the storm drains from nearby residential neighborhoods.
Rajan estimates that 1,000 or so people are there helping, based on the number of
bags and gloves checked out earlier. The American River Parkway Foundation
supplies the bags.
Activity 6: In a computer lab with Internet access, have students write an inverted pyramid
story using the lead of their choice (their own or one written by another student) from
exercise 5. Tell them they are on deadline, and they have 45 minutes to complete the story.
When they are done, have them print their stories, read them to a partner and choose one to
share with another pair. The two pairs should share their selected stories with each other and
choose one story to share with the entire class. Discussion questions: How does the inverted
Solutions to Textbook Exercises
1. You need to be sure that your students do not attempt to assess the same story. Students
should be able to spot clear differences between media outlets.
2. Who: United Jewish Appeal.
What: sponsoring a walkathon.
When: this morning.
3. Who: Missouri man, 72, unidentified.
What: killed in auto accident.
Where: 300 block of William Street.
When: Sunday afternoon.
4. Rewrite possibilities:
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a. You will see a number of people walking through Springfield this morning who are
trying to raise money for the community Soup Kitchen.
b. Have you ever wondered why the Soup Kitchen in Springfield doesn t serve more meals
5. Sample tweet: Test nuke detonated in Nevada desert, just 40 miles from gathering of
peace activists protesting ongoing U.S. nuclear testing. (126 characters including spaces)
6. Your journalism blog. Students should be able to find different kinds of leads and work
7. Sample paragraphs:
One hundred forty passengers were evacuated safely from a jet at the LaCrosse, Wis.,
Municipal Airport after a landing tower employee spotted smoke near the wheels
Monday.
8. This exercise asks students, perhaps more of whom are writers, to focus on visual
storytelling. Possible photographs: of the gathered protesters; of the barrier preventing
people from getting too close to the detonation site; of soldiers and/or law enforcement
guarding the area.