What makes a good lede?

A lede is generally the first paragraph or first several paragraphs of a newspaper story, it comes before the transition to the nut paragraph, the nut paragraph, foreshadowing, the “so what”, and the “to be sure”. A good lede should contain as much information about the story as possible in the shortest amount of space. The most important and crucial elements of the story that the lede should contain is the “who?”, “what?”, “when?”, “where?”, “why?”, and “how?” of the story. In a hard news piece, especially, the lede should be concise and too the point, making sure to cover the main and most important elements of the piece. Generally, The lede should be around 25 to 30 words and preferably one sentence long. A good lede should contain familiar words, it should be specific, and it should effectively replace generalities with concrete details of the story. Theoretically, a lede should be written in such a way that a reader could read just the lede of the story and be able to gather the main idea and gist of the article, they can then read on the rest of the story to get all the specific details. A lede is a good way to summarize the entire story in the shortest and most effective way possible.