S.T.O.P. Leads
Ever read MAD Magazine?
There is a regular feature in it called "Madlibs." It uses a formulamatic
writing style to create funny stories. It goes something like this:
- The(insert a adjective from Column A) (insert
a noun from Column B) (insert a verb from Column C)
his pants and everyone (select a phrase from Column D).
Column A
red
funny
scared
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Column B
clown
astronaut
bank president
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Column C
set fire to
buckled
forgot
|
Column D
left the room
bought a train ticket
called the police
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The formula is the key. Just plug in the words and you've got a brand new story.
Newswriting should NOT be like that. It can be. You can get lazy and fall into a pattern
of writing. Take the following possible formula for sports writing:
- The Cerritos College (insert sport) team (insert "won" or "lost") to
(insert opponent) (insert day or date of the the game).
Coach (insert coach's name) was ("happy" if the team won, "upset" if
the team lost) with the ("win" or "loss"), which brought the team's
record to (insert record).
"(Insert a quote)," (insert coach's name) said.
It works. But if every sports story on the page started with the same formula, you'd have
a pretty boring sports section. So, as a general rule, we want to stay away from formula
writing.
There are times, however, when knowing that a particular formula works is helpful. In a
sense, what we've been learning about blind and delayed identification leads is
formulamatic.
Your text introduces another formula style that works for a particular type of story. It
is called the S.T.O.P. formula and is used exclusively for stories about upcoming events.
You'll find a discussion of it in Chapter 7 of your text.
The S.T.O.P lead puts greater focus on where and when an upcoming even will take place
than another form of the summary lead would. S.T.O.P stands for
- Speaker
- Topic
- Organziation
- Place
What the fomula says, simply, is that of these four elements, the speaker should be
introduced first, using a blind, delayed or (gasp) naming lead. I'm trying to emphasize
blind or delayed ID leads, so let's try to stay away from the naming lead for now.
Next, of those four elements, you introduce the topic. Again, you can specifically name
the topic, as you would in a delayed ID format (you'll delay the detailed description of
the topic for later), or with a generic description/blind lead format where you give the
exact title later. For instance the exact title of a speech might be "A 12-Step
Program for Keeping Your Car Spotless and Looking Like New," but the generic/blind
description might be "car care."
Next, of those four elements you introduce the organization sponsoring the upcoming event.
Again, it can be the exact name of the organization or a more generic description.
And finally, of the four elements you indicate where the event will take place.
Note that nowhere in the information above does it say that you try to squeeze all of that
into one sentence or into one paragraph. Sometimes you can do that, but most often you'll
have other details to include in the story, so you'll want to stretch the information over
several sentences/paragraphs.
Also note that I have not included "when" the event will take place. Certainly
that is important. The author actually suggests that you include the day and hour of the
event at the end of the story. He suggests S.T.O.P.d.h.
I disagree. The "when" of the event is pretty important, and you need to give
the reader at least a clue of when it will happen high in your lead.
Let's look at an example of how you would use the S.T.O.P formula to write a story about
an upcoming event. Look at Workbook Exercise 5.5.
Here you've got what might be a typical phone conversation between you --the reporter--
and a source. You find out that a local club is going to have a guest speaker your readers
might be interested in. Missing from the notes is whether the 7 o'clock time is morning or
night, but since I've looked at the instructor's manual I know that the author meant
evening. A good reporter would have asked the source that question.
We could start this story as either a blind lead or a delayed identification lead. The guy
might not be well known, so a blind lead might be called for. On the other hand, if we use
his full title --"community health representative of the Washington County Mental
Health Department" we're adding a lot of words to our first paragraph, so a delayed
identification lead might be called for. (Note that I inserted a fact in there that
logically flows from the facts presented. We've learned from previous stories and from the
introduction of the workbook that Carolton is located in Washington County).
I like to keep my leads on the simple side, so for this example I'm going to use a delayed
identification lead. First I'm going to start off with the speaker.
- James L. Wilson will . . .
- Next comes the topic. Remember, I can use the full title and describe it with details
later if necessary (delayed ID) or a short description and save the formal title for later
(blind). I'll use the latter here.
- James L. Wilson will speak on mental health . . .
- I want to get the "when" in here some place.
- James L. Wilson will speak on mental health Thursday.
- Yuck! That's a pretty dull lead! Maybe I should reconsider some of my choices. Maybe I
should put that title in the lead.
- James L. Wilson will speak on "Legislative Trends in Mental Health"
Thursday.
- Better.
The next of our four elements to be introduced into the story is the organization. But
I've got to be true to the delayed identification lead I set up, too. I need to tell the
reader who Wilson is.
And we normally would want to include some details of what he will talk about about, but
we really don't have them here. Ideally, we'd call Wilson and talk to him a bit about his
upcoming speech and we'd get some details and/or quotes. Unfortunately, we don't have that
option here.
So, let's just complete the delayed identification obligation and get our next element
- James L. Wilson will speak on "Legislative Trends in Mental Health Thursday.
-
The community health representenative of the Washington County Mental Health Department
will speaking to the Carolton Chapter of the National Challenge Club.
- Okay, now we've introduced Speaker, Topic and Organization over two paragraphs. We've
really only got two elements left in our story --time and place-- and one of them is the
last of our elements for the S.T.O.P formula. The place is the Eagle Restaurant.
- James L. Wilson will speak on "Legislative Trends in Mental Health Thursday.
- The community health representenative of the Washington County Mental Health Department
will speaking to the Carolton Chapter of the National Challenge Club.
- The club will meet at the Eagle Restaurant at 7 p.m.
- It probably would be good for us to include where the Eagle Restaurant is located in
case some of our readers don't know. Unfortunately, we aren't given the address. Our
source probably figured everyone knows where it is located. The reporter should have known
better. We COULD look it up in our directory in the back of the book, but it is not listed
there. We cannot conveniently make up facts, so we're going to have to hope our readers
do, indeed, know where the restaurant is located.
This is not an indeal situtation, but it is not uncommon. Learn from this. As a reporter,
think ahead to your final story as you are gathering information. Make sure you leave the
source with all the information you will need.
No speaker or topic
With some stories about upcoming events you don't have a speaker per se or you don't have
a topic, but a theme. Sometimes in place of a speaker you have multiple speakers, such as
a panel. How do you deal with such eventualities with a S.T.O.P. lead?
Well, in case of the no speaker scenario, just skip it. You can't introduce it if if
doesn't exist. But introduce the remaining elements in the proper order.
If what you have is a theme instead of a topic, just substitute it.
And in the case of the multiple speakers? You should know how to deal with that by now.
You certainly don't want to clutter your lead paragraph with a whole lot of names and
titles. So you use a really blind lead and say something like "panel of
experts." Exercise 5.8 would be an example of that situation. Your story might look
like this:
- A panel of women (speaker) will discuss the merits of
establishing a "women's commission" (topic) Thursday
at 8 p.m.
- The Washington County Democratic Women's Organization (organization)
is sponsoring the debate about the upcoming ballot proposal at its headquarters at 128
N. Meade (place from the directory in the back of the workbook)
at 8 p.m.
- Panelists include Christine Harris, chairman of the county Democratic Committee;
Nancy Smith, chairman of the Carolton Women's Caucus; Francis Norton, member of the state
Democratic committee; and Sue Ellen Dendramis, state representative from Carolton.
- (That last paragraph requires you to look up some names from the directory. Drop the
"Mrs." and use first names when you can. Two other elements of note are the
capitalization of titles and punctuation. The titles are all lower case because they
follow the names. Names of organizations that would otherwise be capitalized are
capitalized. And the punctuation includes semi-colons, in addition to commas, to help
separate the speakers. We'll learn more about that in the lecture on lists.)
Answer and e-mail the following questions to me.
- What does S.T.O.P. stand for?
- When do you use S.T.O.P.
- What if one of the elements doesn't exist?
rCameron@cerritos.edu
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