Weeding through bad intros

I said early in the year that I wanted to keep a running tab on overwritten leads in the local papers. Apparently we’ve been doing pretty well so far this year, as there haven’t been too many stories with awful, awful leads.

As such, I’m expanding the category (at least for now), just so I can include this story about a girl who found pot in her hat. The AP story out of Syracuse concerns a girl, six, who opened her locker to find 20 bags of marijuana in her hat. To be fair, the bags contain a “leafy substands [police] suspect is marjiuana,” so who knows what’s in there.

So there’s the story. Now what’s the lead? None other than this:

SYRACUSE, N.Y. — It’s not a case of Cat in the Hat – but pot in the hat.

Get it! There was pot found in a hat, so the writer replaced cat with pot and — bingo! — instant journalism!

Pot in Student’s Hat [AP via 6 ABC]
Jan. 11: Why we’re all jealous of Smarty Jones