Mr Anti-Vax discovers his mistake
Oops.
A conservative radio host from Florida who criticised coronavirus vaccination efforts – and called himself “Mr Anti-Vax” – before contracting Covid-19 himself has died, his station said on Saturday.
Another crappy first sentence. Allow me. “There’s this radio host in Florida who criticized Covid vaccination efforts, calling himself ‘Mr Anti-Vax.’ Then he contracted the virus himself, and he died yesterday.”
Anyway. However you word it, don’t be that guy. Don’t campaign against vaccinations during a pandemic, and if you won’t refrain for moral reasons, refrain so that you won’t look like a pathetic jackass if you get Covid and die.
These people didn’t think this would be their legacy, to die ironically.
Some people will do anything for their 15 minutes of fame. Or should that be ten? Five? Am I bid five? Do I hear one?. One minute of fame? Will somebody give me a bid?
Sad when one’s life comes down to just being a cautionary tale.
James @ #3:
That depends, I suppose, on what the action taken was which led to one’s demise. I agree that the loss of life in the OP was a very sad cautionary tale. I hope to be the cause of an hilarious one.
I don’t see what is wrong with the lede. It is clear and definite and captures all the essential elements of the story. No dangling participles, no ambiguous or fabulous pronouns.
You tell a story: introduce character; relate a sequence of events concerning that character. The lede recasts the story as a statement of fact and adds an attribution (his station). You could argue that stuffing the entire story into a single sentence leads to some awkward phrasing, but that’s journalistic convention: that’s how newspapers write; that’s what their readers expect.
There is a steady stream of stories like this on https://www.reddit.com/r/LeopardsAteMyFace/
What’s more, the case fatality rate for COVD-19 is still only ~ 1%. So for every story like this where a (radio personality, Republican party leader, whatever) got COVID and died, there are 99 more (unreported) stories where someone in that category (radio personality, Republican party leader, whatever) got COVID and didn’t die. Which is a lot of COVID in some rather small groups (radio personalities, Republican party leaders, etc.)
I find this startling. I’ve presented this argument to others, and they don’t seem as startled by it as I am. I’m not sure whether I startle too easily, or I’m not making the point effectively, or the argument is fallacious, or they just don’t startle.
What I think is wrong with the lede, speaking as reader and writer and sometimes editor, is that it clutters up the punchline, which is that the guy died. You’re right, it is the stuffing too much information into one sentence that I object to. I know it’s a newspaper convention but I don’t love the convention. I think it would have been a better opening without either ” – and called himself “Mr Anti-Vax – ” – or “his station said on Saturday.” Ditch one of those and put it in the second sentence. It’s an aesthetic and reader-oriented opinion as opposed to a newspapery one.
Then again maybe the headline did the punchy part, so the lede can go ahead and be overstuffed.
I’m with Ophelia, Steven.
I had to stop reading mid-sentence and go back to check that I hadn’t missed something. I think many readers would do the same. We have to plough through a 20-word subject before we get to the verb (and the point) ‘has died’. But it’s not so much the length as the complexity.
That subject has just too many embedded clauses in it. We have that ‘who criticised’ clause, in the middle of which we have a parenthetic ‘and called … ’ and then we got that ‘before contracting Covid-19 himself’ bit.
This is where I got momentarily lost and had to go back. Which bit happened before what where? That second redundant ‘himself’ didn’t help. Whomself? Can you contract the disease on behalf of a third-party?
That. I would think the whole aim of a good lede is to grab the attention, to make the reader want to keep reading. Clutter isn’t the way to do that. I keep seeing ledes that are instead summaries of the whole article, which…why? Why not let the subhead do that so as to focus on making the lede INTERESTING above all?