If you happen to stumble in a newsroom and utter the words "inverted pyramid" you will catch the attention of every remaining journalist in the room.
No, inverted pyramid is not a sexual position favored by journalists – at least not yet. That is called the nut graf.
No, inverted pyramid is the way every rank and file journalist writes stories. Without it, journalists would simply rewrite their notes verbatim from their reporters notebooks, including margin notes about which councilmember smelled like garlic and details about the cute redhead in front not sporting a wedding ring.
From Day One in J-School, journalism professors try their damnedest to pound out every last ounce of creativity from young, budding journalists. And the first step in doing that is forcing journalism students to adopt the rigid inverted pyramid doctrine.
The inverted pyramid rule tells journalists to put all the important stuff – the who, what, when, where, why and how – in the beginning of a story, followed by the the less important stuff, also known in the biz as fluff. Editors tell journalists this helps readers get into a story but we all know it is because readers have the attention span of fruit flies and we lose them after two graphs. Realistically, a journalist could start a story about school cuts but after the third or fourth graf, he or she could go into a rant about the the piss-poor pay of journalists or about how his editor's favorite hobby is to schedule meetings at 7 a.m. or during lunch and the reader would be none the wiser.
Inverted pyramids are part of a journalist's life as much as budget meetings, deadlines and alcohol-induced romantic encounters. And beloved as much.
Illustration from dailywritingtips.com
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“The inverted pyramid is the best position for getting pregnant,” said Carrie to Charlotte.
Ah how they forget! The inverted pyramid was invented just to sell a story upfront – although it does do that.
It originated because, in the days when newspapers were set in hot metal, the Linotype operators in the print room needed to be able to cut stories if need be – so they would fit, or if a more important story came along to fill the space. Onscreen, that’s easy. Looking at a lump of text in black-ink-coated lead type, reversed of course because it was set for printing, is not so simple.
While experienced operators could and did do it, they weren’t journalists and weren’t in a position to judge what was important in the story and what wasn’t. So to make it easy, stories were written using the inverted pyramid because cutting a story was just a matter of slicing off paragraphs from the bottom of the copy.
I was always lucky writing sports. We were told to try and never use the inverted pyramid unless we absolutely had to. Always try to use a feature-style lede, even for game coverage. That made the job a lot more fun for me, and hopefully for the readers. After all, in the grand scheme of things, sports are supposed to be fun and not serious (save for legal and crime stories about athletes).
If everyone wrote according to the inverted pyramid no reader would ever read the full story…would they?
some of us like the fluffy bits best
I spent 26 years as a newspaper reporter.
Actually, the inverted pyramid is older than hot type. It comes from the days of telegraphs. Telegraph companies charged by the word.
Then, as now, editors were cheap. The idea was to send all the important information first to save money. Reporters sent the who, what, when, why and how, then, if there was time and money left over, they would send other stuff.
In also comes from the days of rewrite. Before laptops, reporters would have to call their stories into the paper. Since newspapers wanted to have the most current information for the next edition, reporters would call in as close to deadline as possible. Since there was often only minutes to spare, the diction was done in “just the facts, ma’am” style. The most important stuff – the tip of the pyramid – always came first.
Interesting. One of my editors once told me, “We used to think of the first paragraph on the way back from the press conference, so that we could type it out and get it right at the first instance.”
Imagine, type it out! We do take the computer for granted.
What is “the third of fourth graf”?
Older origin:
Journalists in the American Civil war had to send information to their editors using military communication wires.They often had very little time because, not only did so many other correspondents want to use the wires, but communication wires were tempting targets for the “other” side, and a wire would often be ‘cut’ moments into sending the results of the day’s battle.
I believe it was just shorthand for paragraph.
I read this to the end …
I would like to comment … that the plural of “fruit fly” is “fruit flies.”
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