What's a Second-Day Lede?

"Second-day lede" is journalistic jargon for putting a new spin on a story for a second or subsequent news cycle. A 'lede" is the lead sentence of an article, deliberately misspelled to make it more easily recognizable as jargon. Once upon a time, news moved in daily cycles, but now it has become a constant flow of rewrites and "second-day ledes."

Second-Day Lede is also the name of this blog, where you'll find commentary on the news, and especially on the industry that cultivates, harvests, processes, packages, distributes and delivers it to us.

A veteran of more news cycles than she'd care to admit, Janet Dagley Dagley entered the profession of journalism at the age of 17, covering local government meetings at night for the Dayton Daily News in Ohio, later moving on to the Orange County Register and Los Angeles Times (Orange County Edition). Over the years she has worked as a freelance writer, editor, and radio producer in the U.S. and Europe. Although she has won numerous awards, she lost both times major metropolitan dailies submitted her work for the Pulitzer Prize in Feature Writing, and also lost on Jeopardy! (though she did win a trip to Hawaii). Most recently, she was editor of AIRSPACE, the journal of the Association of Independents in Radio, a U.S.-based group of public-radio producers, and a member of the AIR Board of Directors. She has been blogging independently at The Dagley Dagley Daily since February, 2003.   ¶ 3:45 PM |