The lede (pronounced lead) is the most important part of a news story and usually found in the first graph: Man bites dog! – CEO Resigns under fire – Factory explodes, hundreds hurt – you get the idea. But sometimes, the lede is buried, way down at the bottom.
When I read this story I thought the important part was the fact that city employees were stealing parking. Seems that they were parking in a loading tow away zone and were leaving expired parking tickets on their windshields. Citation folks, being what they are, simply skipped the cars, figuring that someone else had written them up.
This was all discovered by a local TV investigative reporter. Local authorities were incensed that such a crime had taken place and took decisive action against the perps, ensuring that this would no longer happen again. The head of the local Transportation department was aghast and, well, you read the last line in the story:
Tinlin (head of the dept of trans) told us that as a result of our investigation, the city installed new signs along Nashua Street. Free two-hour parking is now available to the public.
That’ll show em.
JVH
