adoption by newspapers of the summary
beginning, or "lead," for news stories has accustomed the average reader
to finding most of the essential facts of a piece of news grouped
together in the first paragraph. The lead, by telling the reader the
nature of the event, the persons and things concerned, the time, the
place, the cause, and the result, answers his questions, What? Who?
When? Where? Why? How? Not only are the important facts summarized in
such a beginning, but the most striking detail is usually "played up" in
the first group of words of the initial sentence where it catches the
eye at once. Thus the reader is given both the main facts and the most
significant feature of the subject. Unquestionably this news story lead,
when skillfully worked out, has distinct advantages alike for the news
report and for the special article.
SUMMARY BEGINNINGS
(1)
(_Kansas City Star_)
A FRESH AIR PALACE READY
A palace of sunshine, a glass house of fresh air, will be the
Christmas offering of Kansas City to the fight against tuberculosis,
the "Great White Plague." Ten miles from the business district of
the city, overlooking a horizon miles away over valley and hill,
stands the finest tuberculosis hospital in the United States. The
newly completed institution, although not the largest hospital of
the kind, is the best equipped and finest appointed. It is symbolic
of sunshine and pure air, the cure for the disease.
(2)
(_New York World_)
STOPPING THE COST OF LIVING LEAKS
BY MARIE COOLIDGE RASK
After ten weeks' instruction in domestic economy at a New York high
school, a girl of thirteen has been the means of reducing the
expenditure in a family of seven to the extent of five dollars a
week.
The girl is Anna Scheiring, American born, of Austrian ancestry,
living with her parents and brothers and sisters in a five-room
apartment at No. 769 East One Hundred and Fifty-eighth Street, where
her father, Joseph Scheiring is superintendent of the building.
The same economic practices applied by little Anna Scheiring are at
the present time being worked out in two thousand other New York
homes whose daughters are pupils in the Washington Irving High
School.
(3)
(_The Outlook_)
THE FIGHT FOR CLEAN MILK
BY CONSTANCE D. LEUPP
Two million quarts of milk are ship
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