After completing this chapter you should be able to:

• Apply audience centricity to your understanding of news and focus on what matters most to your readers.
• Write a lead for a news story based on the concept of the 5W’s and 1H.
• Identify various approaches to lead writing and understand which lead formats work best in which situations.
• Identify and repair problematic leads, such as quote leads, question leads and “held a meeting” leads.
• Apply the basics of the inverted-pyramid writing format to your stories.
• Define and differentiate among the forms of quotes (direct, indirect/paraphrase and partial), and understand when to use each one.
• Understand the purpose of attributions, and apply them properly in terms of structure, verbiage and placement.