"You find the most important thing that really grabs you, and put it right up top. Don't bury the lead. Put it at the top. Best thing to do. Never go wrong that way. It's an immutable law of journalism. It just always works"
About this Quote
Loder’s “immutable law” isn’t really about writing; it’s about power. “Don’t bury the lead” sounds like craft advice, but it’s also a worldview that treats attention as the scarce commodity and the reader as someone you have to catch before they click away, turn the page, or change the channel. The repetition - “Put it right up top... Put it at the top” - performs the very principle he’s preaching: no delicacy, no slow build, no romance about discovery. Just the hook.
The subtext is a quiet argument against a certain kind of institutional evasiveness. Burying the lead isn’t merely a bad stylistic choice; it’s a way organizations hide the uncomfortable part inside “context,” “background,” and soothing chronology. Loder’s certainty (“Never go wrong”) carries a moral edge: tell people what matters first, then earn the right to elaborate. In an era of spin, that’s a small act of transparency.
Context matters here: Loder came up through magazine and broadcast cultures that had to compete with spectacle - most famously MTV’s news apparatus, where journalism had to be fast, legible, and unmistakably about what the audience actually cared about. “What really grabs you” is telling: it centers human urgency, not institutional procedure. It also hints at the tension in modern media between significance and sizzle. The lead can clarify truth, or it can become bait. Loder’s line works because it refuses to pretend that those pressures don’t exist; it simply insists that, handled honestly, clarity beats coyness.
The subtext is a quiet argument against a certain kind of institutional evasiveness. Burying the lead isn’t merely a bad stylistic choice; it’s a way organizations hide the uncomfortable part inside “context,” “background,” and soothing chronology. Loder’s certainty (“Never go wrong”) carries a moral edge: tell people what matters first, then earn the right to elaborate. In an era of spin, that’s a small act of transparency.
Context matters here: Loder came up through magazine and broadcast cultures that had to compete with spectacle - most famously MTV’s news apparatus, where journalism had to be fast, legible, and unmistakably about what the audience actually cared about. “What really grabs you” is telling: it centers human urgency, not institutional procedure. It also hints at the tension in modern media between significance and sizzle. The lead can clarify truth, or it can become bait. Loder’s line works because it refuses to pretend that those pressures don’t exist; it simply insists that, handled honestly, clarity beats coyness.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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