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Reader question: Please explain this sentence: Let’s not bury the lede here, and instead get right down to business. My comments: In other words, let’s be straight forward and call a spade a spade. Let’s not bury the “lead”, that is, lede being an old word for lead. Bury the lead? The lead refers to the lead sentence or paragraph of a news story, usually giving out the most important detail or fact. Bury the lead? Non journalists or poorly trained ones (yeah, currently it looks like a lot of the young journalists milling about are poorly trained) can be forgiven for not knowing or not being clear about it, but to “bury the lead” is to bury the most important fact deep among other, lesser facts and not to tell it first. For example, if two people were killed in a traffic accident down the street earlier this morning, say so in your report: two people were killed in a car collision at, say, 7:50 this morning. Rush hour may have contributed to this accident, and the smog, too, perhaps the drizzle likewise, but leave these details for later – if you are allowed any space for them at all. Yeah, basically, that’s the idea. Instead, talk about the drizzle, or smog or the rush hour jam first and you will be accused of burying the lead, which is a big journalistic no-no. All journalists try very hard to make their lead interesting so that readers might be enticed to read further, and that is only right. But the most important point is, be factual and accurate and tell first the reader what you most want them to know first. | 
