My defense for Sheng would be that when you write so many articles and you want them to feel human and not like they were just churned out by AI, you're going to try different approaches, try to spice things up sometimes. And sometimes in doing so you're going to maybe get a little too clever for your own good.
Usually that wouldn't really amount to much of anything, but this time obviously it did strike a nerve. To me, though, it's a little nothingburger, but I can understand why it's bothered some. But I see on the original article that there are zero comments, no one complaining there, so that makes me wonder if this is just primarily a social media controversy, which to me is the most meaningless kind of controversy out there.
I write professionally for a living and know what you're talking about; opening lines take me a long time to edit and finalize. That said, I've never once considered writing an opening line that directly contradicted the point of the article or blog. Sorry, but I don't buy this defense in the slightest, especially from journalists who ask for supplemental monetary support from fans. I hold them to a high standard.
It was meaningless controversy, because it was 100% avoidable had he not opened the article that line. It's plain and simple.
Well, first of all, you are misunderstanding what a lede in a story is. The lede is not the first sentence in the story. The lede is whatever the most important information is in the story.
I'm not misunderstanding
what a lede is, you are. Even if we were to agree it's not the first line, taking away from your lede by injecting a first line that contradicts the lede is awful journalism. To my earlier post, why wasn't the first line a positive sentiment? The answer is because he wanted the clicks/scrolls.
The second thing I would say is that I would agree that the first sentence is unnecessary and confuses the point of the story. If there was an editor, that person probably would have suggested to just remove that sentence from the story.
This thought process is correct is my
exact point. If you agree then why defend? Genuinely confused.
The third thing I would say is that sometimes people make mistakes in stories. I had to correct a prominent journalist yesterday on Twitter a story he wrote because he accidentally wrote that someone had worked for the Biden White House when she actually worked for the Trump White House. He corrected his column and added a note noting the correction. Writers sometimes make mistakes. To presume that there was some purposeful intent to deceive on Sheng's part is an opinion, but it's not one I share.
Sheng didn't make a mistake, he wrote it this way on purpose. It's clickbait, or scroll bait. This was not a factual mistake, for if it was he would have said as much on the podcast. Instead he doubled down. He knew exactly what he was doing.
And I also think that anyone that took the time to read the full article would have understood that the main point of the article was not that the Sharks are intending to leave the Bay Area. I understood that when I watched the Youtube interview and I understood it when I read the article later.
My personal opinion is that a lot of people got their panties in a twist over nothing.
I took the time to read the full thing after listening to the full pod, that's why that line bothered me so much - it didn't reflect what Becher said. And obviously that line is what confused people and caused drama.
A lot of people "got their panties in a twist" because Sheng misrepresented what Becher said in the first line of his article! How can you not see that problem??? There's such an obvious and bold straight line here.....
I mean, Keegan literally says "at no point in that interview did I think the Sharks were leaving San Jose", yet Sheng starts his article with "The Sharks could leave San Jose in four years."
