Just as in the fire story, the lead of any news story is the most important part. It must begin with the most striking part of the event and answer the reader's _Where?_ _When?_ _How?_ _Why?_ and _Who?_ concerning it. All the rules that apply to the fire lead apply to the lead of any story.
It would be impossible to classify all the news stories that a newspaper must print. The very zest of reporting comes from the changing variety of the work; no two assignments are ever exactly alike--if they were only one would be worth printing. Newspapers themselves make no attempt to classify the ordinary run of news or to work out a systematic division of labor; a reporter may be called upon to cover a fire, a political meeting, a murder, a business story, all in the same day. Each one is simply a story and must be covered in the same way that all the rest are covered--by many interviews for facts. For our study it may be well to divide news stories into a few large groups. The groups overlap and are not entirely distinct, but the stories in each group have some one thing in common that may aid us in learning how to write them. At most, the list is only a very incomplete summary of the more important kinds of news stories and is intended to be merely a suggestive way of supplying the student with necessary practice.
=1. Accidents.=--Accident stories may be anything from a sprained ankle to a disastrous railroad wreck, but they all depend upon one element for their interest. They are all printed because people in general are interested in the injuries and deaths of other people--physical calamity is the common ground in all these stories.
The number of possible accidents is infinite, but there are some common types that recur most often. Among these are: railroad, trolley, railroad crossing accidents; runaways; electrocutions; explosions; collapse of buildings; marine disasters; cave-in accidents; elevator, automobile, aviation accidents.
The feature of any accident story is always, of course, the thing that made the story worth printing, and that is usually the human life element. The feature of an accident story is almost always the number of dead and injured. Most reports of railroad wrecks begin with "Ten persons were killed and seventeen were injured in a wreck, etc." The same is true of any accident story; if more than one person is killed it is usually safe to begin with the number of fatalities. In this connection it may be noted that the death of railroad employees seldom makes a story worth printing; they may be included in the total number, but if no passengers are killed, fatalities among trainmen seldom give a story any news value.