Sometimes you will find yourself with only a few minutes to write something up. Here's a tip: write only one paragraph, make it sing, and publish that. The first paragraph should sum up everything that the whole article will hold, and a reader who is pressed for time will be able to read just that and move on. The details, the embellishments, and all of the hard work of getting all of the detail right in subsequent paragraphs can come later; if you have a solid lead paragraph, it sets the stage for the whole thing.
The practice of putting all of the good stuff in the lead comes from wire service copy, where breaking news will be transmitted in bursts as the story unfolds. If you subscribe directly to a wire service, you might get more than a dozen versions of the same story - first just the headline, then the first full sentence, then the first paragraph, and subsequently a series of additional versions that arrive apparently as quickly as the editor hits "save and send".
There's always more to write - you can always run another search, quote from another source, and make another phone call. The short deadline can extend to a longer one when there's time to flesh out the story with details. No matter - it's never good to "bury the lede", as newsroom editors will say, where the whole point of the story is half way down the page.
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