The Worst Lede Ever?
Posted on October 22nd, 2009 in Uncategorized | 13 Comments »
“While there wasn’t much news on Tim Wakefield’s back surgery yesterday, a Red Sox spokesman did say in an e-mail that the procedure was “’successful.’’’
—Amalie Benjamin, today’s Globe
13 Responses
10/22/2009 8:12 am
Richard, you’d be more kind to AB if you knew what she looked like
http://www.survivinggrady.com/2007/09/theyll-name-city-after-us-and-later-say.html
10/22/2009 8:13 am
Oh, my . . . definitely the most dull . . . yawn . . .
10/22/2009 8:14 am
But I am glad the surgery went well.
10/22/2009 9:19 am
Looks as if Ms Benjamin is a slice of a different, much healthier moral universe, in which it’s the sportswriters who are weak with conceptual structure and sentence muscularity, but appealing personally, while the hard-news types lack telegenic charisma but are brainy as hell.
In this universe, usually, it’s the sportswriters who know how to handle concepts and the language, and the hard-news reporters who are nitwitted eye candy.
Here’s to the Amalie Benjamin Universe! and to her, for she is indeed fetching and covers baseball for a living. Would that for Richard’s sake her prose was less irritating — but let’s count our blessings. In the normal order of things she’d be covering the Senate HELP Committee, and ruining lives.
Standing Eagle
(not actually much of a baseball fan, because it’s only good in person and on the radio)
10/22/2009 11:26 am
I thought the sentence was refreshingly honest: she had to write an article, but there simply wasn’t much to say.
Still, how about a competition to see who can do the best rewrite of her opening sentence?
10/22/2009 12:33 pm
Did you have a bad personal experience with her? There are a lot of crappy writers out there, but you’ve dedicated two posts — one of which made the point well — to her already. Seems like you have a vendetta.
10/22/2009 12:39 pm
I really don’t, Roark. I’m just passionate about the quality of writing and editing in public fora. I care about newspapers, and I think that good writing, subjective though that may be, is one thing that may help them survive.
10/22/2009 12:47 pm
Anon 8:12, I’m sure she’s lovely. More power to her.
Here’s a response to Judith: “Tim Wakefield had back surgery yesterday, and the Red Sox weren’t saying much about it. The procedure was ‘successful,’ one team spokesman said—but that doesn’t mean Wakefield will be able to pitch again.”
That’s off the top of my head. You know, give me a minute, I could probably come up with something else.
10/22/2009 1:59 pm
Yeah, Judith, give him a minute already! Why so much pressure?
Oh, wait, it’s the Internet.
How about:
“By medical standards it was ‘successful,’ but Tim Wakefield’s Tuesday back surgery resulted in a baseball prognosis that would have to be called guarded. In the hours following the operation, team officials refused to speculate about the knuckleballer’s prospects for 2010 and beyond. They would say, however, that they find my ivory complexion and wistful distaff Clark-Kent vibe not merely alluring, as some have contended, but positively aphrodisiac. As of press time there was no word on communications-office initiatives to do something about that paunch and maybe pick up the tab once in a while.”
10/22/2009 2:03 pm
I like it, SE! If that whole academia thing doesn’t work out….
10/22/2009 2:10 pm
Good work, SE!
For some years, I wrote book reviews for a journal that wisely forbade us to begin with the words “this book.” They kept sending me novels about women in mid-life crises, so one time my review began with the word “raunchy”…
10/22/2009 2:32 pm
Sounds like one of those backward-facing sentences from the heyday of Time magazine, Judith: “Raunchy is the word for this book…”
10/22/2009 6:19 pm
Speaking of back surgery, looks like Dr. Obama’s spine implant for Harry Reid was successful.
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/10/source-leadership-poised-to-add-public-option-moderates-mostly-mum.php
SE vindicated again (tho of course the outcome isn’t final yet). Guess if academia doesn’t work out I might be much in demand as a jackass unpaid online prognosticator.
SE — seriously pretty much batting 1.000