Simms began by presenting the facts of the story: "Kenneth L. Peters, the principal of Beverly Hills High School, announced today that the entire high school faculty will travel to Sacramento next Thursday for a colloquium in new teaching methods. Among the speakers will be anthropologist Margaret Mead, college president Dr. Robert Maynard Hutchins, and California governor Edmund 'Pat' Brown." The students hammered away on their manual typewriters trying to keep up with the teacher's pace. Then they handed in their rapidly written leads. Each attempted to summarize the who, what, where, and why as succinctly as possible: "Margaret Mead, Maynard Hutchins, and Governor Brown will address the faculty on …"; "Next Thursday, the high school faculty will …" Simms reviewed the students' leads and put them aside. He then informed them that they were all wrong. The lead to the story, he said, was "There will be no school Thursday." "In that instant," Ephron recalls, "I realized that journalism was not just about regurgitating the facts but about figuring out the point."
( Greg McKeown )
[ Essentialism: The Disciplined ]
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