Second-Day Lede

Thursday, March 11, 2004

Refer Madness, Second Edition

It's Thursday again, and that means it's time for a second round of Refer Madness, featuring "refers" (pronounced RE-fers) to some interesting reading elsewhere in cyberspace.

First, let's doublecheck the calendar: mine says it's Thursday, March 11, 2004. Yours too? OK. Keep that in mind as you read this news item. The U.S. government says it's got a plan for 24-hour surveillance of the place they suspect Osama bin Laden may be hiding, and they'll be implementing it "soon."

Meanwhile, this photo is from my local cable channel's "community bulletin board" -- this morning!

Next, it appears that in New Jersey, salamanders of all sexual orientations have more rights than same-sex human couples. In keeping with the "Amphibian Road Kill Reduction Project" in New Brunswick, a road was shut down so that salamanders could cross it to mate. Meanwhile, although the courageous mayor of Asbury Park did officiate at the licensed wedding of one same-sex couple, the state intervened and put future same-sex Garden State weddings on hold. When I moved to New Jersey myself a few years ago, I was advised by one of the natives that technically, everyone in New Jersey is considered a "guy" -- but I guess it doesn't say that on marriage licenses here.

¶ 4:56 PM |

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...another look at the news and the industry that delivers it to us

By Janet Dagley Dagley

Read the feed...Click here to read Second-Day Lede in handy ATOM format

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.

Who's writing this stuff?

A veteran of more news cycles than she'd care to admit, Janet Dagley Dagley entered the profession of journalism as a teenager, covering local government meetings at night for the Dayton Daily News in Ohio, becoming a full-time staff writer at 18 and 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.

Recently on Second-Day Lede...

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The News Story that Wasn't

Why Same-Sex Marriage isn't for the Majority, or the States, to Decide

Homophobes Attack Heterosexual Marriage

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