Tuesday, 11/19

I may have found the second greatest opening paragraph in news writing history.

Nothing catches my eye like a good opening line or a great opening paragraph, especially in a news story. Fiction, essay, and feature writers get to do it all the time, but in the world of news writing, which tends to be dry and factual, you don't get to see it often. It's only when a bizarre set of circumstances come together that you get to string together words like what I'm about to share, something I saw 13 years ago, and something I still consider to be the greatest opening line in a news story ever--

“A jazz musician was injured Friday after jumping from a burning motor home driven by a one-time roller skating stripper’.

I mean, it has everything you need—it's factual, it tells a story, and it's so absurd that it can't have happened. Yet, it did. In the 13 years since I've seen it I've thought of it often, especially when trying to come up with opening lines for these things. I never thought I'd come across another quite as bizarre, until I saw this NPR headline over the weekend--

“Three Indiana judges have been suspended after a failed attempt to visit a strip club led to a drunken brawl outside an Indianapolis White Castle that ended with two of the judges being shot.”

I mean, I know Indiana can be a strange place, but THAT strange? Why did the judges—in this case, two male and one female—want to go to a strip club? Was there a reason they couldn't get it? Why did they end up drunk at a White Castle? And why did two of them get shot there?

I mean, that one line is filled with sooooo many questions that you HAVE to read the story, right?

Right?

I can just imagine the reaction of the reporter assigned to the story, thinking it was just another hum-drum piece that said reporter could probably do in their sleep. Luckily for them, it wasn’t. And luckily for us, that person had the wisdom, the foresight, and the, well, uncommon mind to put all the details of the story together in such a way that makes the rest of us riveted with just 33 words.

I hope—nay , I aspire—to write something that good some day. I know I'll probably never get the chance, but a boy can dream, can't he?

8-)

Tomorrow, more proof that the internet is NOT making people smarter. Not you, of course, but some people who ask Google strange questions. Details then.

(jim@wmqt.com)