If you’ve taken my classes or had one-on-one sessions with me at
your office, you’ve probably heard me talk about “the best use of best real
estate” and “the kicker.”
Here’s a fantastic
example in action, courtesy of the Wall Street Journal, still my favorite
icon of clear, relevant, audience-centric writing after 25 years of almost
daily reading.
My detailed notes are below, starting with the words "two things."
Two things:
1. Best real estate
Notice that you can read just the first six words of each
paragraph – which I’ve listed for you just below -- and know what the story is
about.
You can also skim this article productively based on the “sign posts”
that let you skip directly to details about, for example, how regulatory
changes helped save lives, how the captain reacted, or how this crash compares
with others in recent history – or whatever else you want to find.
If you take it down to just the first three words, most of the
“fast starts” still meet the criteria I’ve given you in my class called
“Creating Compelling Content.”
Here’s the list of the first six words of each paragraph. Below that you’ll find my observations about “the
kicker.”
1.
A diminutive flight
attendant carried injured …
2.
Such quick-thinking heroics
in the …
3.
The crash left pieces
of the …
4.
The crash occurred with
little warning …
5.
"We hit hard and
bounced up. …
6.
Mr. Rah noticed that an
evacuation …
7.
The captain soon started
screaming on …
8.
"She was a
hero," he said. …
9.
Meanwhile, San Francisco
police officers at …
10.
Aviation-safety experts
said the human …
11.
The Asiana crash "is
the culmination …
12.
Regulators in the late
1980s mandated …
13.
Before the advent of such
stronger …
14.
Mr. Hiatt also said
improved fire-…
15.
Enhanced crew training also has
made …
16.
Other factors helped limit
the toll …
17.
Other high-profile crashes
in recent …
18.
In San Francisco,
"everyone was fortunate …
19.
"I'm just grateful I
survived," said …
2. The kicker
The first person we hear from in the story is Eugene Anthony Rah,
an eyewitness of people’s reactions during the crash.
He is also the last person we hear from. And that’s my point.
"The kicker" is a resonant last line in a story that circles back to the top of the story. The kicker is usually emotional, visual, catchy, repeatable, parallel in structure or involving a sharply juxtaposed contrast – usually one or more of these.
This WSJ story comes full circle by reaching back to
Mr. Rah for its ending.
Journalists sometimes debate whether their best quote for a long
feature article should be the first quote or the last quote.
First human voice in the story:
The crash occurred with
little warning for passengers. Eugene Anthony Rah, a
frequent flier on Asiana who was sitting in business class, said he noticed the plane
was approaching too low over San Francisco Bay, then he heard an engine noise
that made him think the pilot was trying to gain elevation.
"We hit
hard and bounced up. People were screaming," he recalled. The plane
seemed to careen out of control, skidding sideways, before stopping. Then there
was "total silence," he
said.
Last paragraph in the story:
"I'm
just grateful I survived," said Mr. Rah, the passenger. "I was 99.9% sure I was going to die. I was hoping for a 0.1%
miracle, and I got it."
In PR, your contributed article doesn’t need to end in a quote,
but the advice is the same: Reach to the top of your story for a main point,
make it image-rich or otherwise punchy and memorable, and let that be the
ending for your article.
Four more (quick) things:
Sentence length: The sentences in the quotations are five or fewer words in most cases.
The longest is 11 words. The longest full quotation (the kicker, in this case)
is just 25 words in total, taking up less than two lines across the page.
Contrast that with most press releases, Quotes are usually 80
words long, and each sentence alone often takes up two lines across the page.
Why: The central premise of the story answers the question “why,” which you’ve
heard me say is the most important question of all questions (why, why it matters, why care, why now, so what) -- certainly leaps and bounds more
important than who, what, where, when and how.
Starts in the middle: The first line is a hook (see just below) that meets almost all of the criteria
in the Compelling Content class. It starts in the middle of the action, not
with the chronological beginning, an introduction or background.
In the first three words, bam! You are already smack-dab in
the heart of the story before you’ve even finished reading the first line across the
page.
“Nut graf”: The second paragraph
wraps everything up in a nut shell and answers the question: “Why read this
story and why read it now?”
You could stop after the second graf, walk away
without finishing, accurately know the gist and purpose of the article, and be well enough informed to join the conversation when the topic comes up during your lunch break.
A diminutive flight attendant
carried injured passengers piggyback to safety while two passengers worked to
free another flight attendant pinned by an inflated emergency slide, all racing
to escape Asiana Airlines Flight
214 minutes before it burst into flames.
Such quick-thinking heroics
in the minutes after the plane's spectacular crash at San Francisco
International Airport, combined with technological enhancements in recent years
that have made jetliner accidents more survivable, likely prevented Saturday's
disaster from being far more deadly, experts said.
****
July 7, 2013
Why the
San Francisco Plane Crash Wasn't More Deadly
Quick-Thinking Heroics, Air-Safety Gains Kept
Death Toll Low
By REBECCA SMITH, JON OSTROWER, ANDY PASZTOR
A
diminutive flight attendant carried injured passengers piggyback to safety
while two passengers worked to free another flight attendant pinned by an
inflated emergency slide, all racing to escape Asiana Airlines Flight 214 minutes before
it burst into flames.
Such
quick-thinking heroics in the minutes after the plane's spectacular crash at
San Francisco International Airport, combined with technological enhancements
in recent years that have made jetliner accidents more survivable, likely
prevented Saturday's disaster from being far more deadly, experts said.
Broken Landing
The
crash left pieces of the BoeingBA +0.23% 777
strewn about the airfield and triggered a fire that burned away much of the
plane's roof. Of the 307 passengers and crew aboard the flight from Seoul, two
died, both 16-year-old girls from among a Chinese group of students and
teachers headed to the U.S. for precollege exchange programs. More than 180
others were taken to hospitals with injuries. Two local hospitals listed 30
people still admitted as of Sunday afternoon, eight of which were in critical
condition and two paralyzed.
The
crash occurred with little warning for passengers. Eugene Anthony Rah, a
frequent flier on Asiana who was sitting in business class, said he noticed the
plane was approaching too low over San Francisco Bay, then he heard an engine
noise that made him think the pilot was trying to gain elevation.
"We
hit hard and bounced up. People were screaming," he recalled. The plane
seemed to careen out of control, skidding sideways, before stopping. Then there
was "total silence," he said.
Mr.
Rah noticed that an evacuation slide had inflated inside the plane, pinning a
flight attendant against the interior cabin wall. He and another passenger
tried to free the attendant, looking for something sharp with which to puncture
the slide. Another passenger eventually found a way to let the air out of the
slide. Mr. Rah said he has been in touch with the flight attendant's husband,
who said she sustained serious injuries but is improving.
The
captain soon started screaming on the loudspeaker for everyone to evacuate. As
other passengers began exiting the plane and emergency crews arrived, Mr. Rah
saw another flight attendant, whose name he gave as Jiyeon Kim, carrying
injured passengers down the aisle to get them off the plane.
"She was a hero,"
he said. "This tiny, little girl was carrying people piggyback, running
everywhere, with tears running down her face. She was crying, but she was still
so calm and helping people."
Meanwhile,
San Francisco police officers at the scene had entered the plane from near the
back and made their way to the front, amid worsening smoke, said Lyn Tomioka,
deputy chief at the San Francisco Police Department. When they got to the
front, male crew members trying to help passengers called out for knives, and
the officers tossed their own knives to the men to help them cut seat belts off
passengers who were struggling to get out, Ms. Tomioka said.
Aviation-safety
experts said the human toll of the crash was almost certainly reduced by
efforts of jet makers, airlines and regulators to reduce the deadliness of air
accidents—from the use of flame-retardant materials and new seats designed to
withstand tremendous force, to changes in areas such as crew training.
The
Asiana crash "is the culmination of what has been done over more than 20
years to help more and more passengers survive crashes," according to
Kevin Hiatt, president and chief executive of the Flight Safety Foundation, a
nonprofit group in Alexandria, Va., that advocates for safety improvements
world-wide.
Regulators
in the late 1980s mandated all-new passenger planes must have seats able to
withstand stronger impacts than in the past—practices that the Federal Aviation
Administration ordered in 2005 be applied to nearly all passenger planes by
October 2009. As part of those rules, seats on jetliners must be able in tests
to survive collisions that slam them forward at 16 times the force of gravity,
or 16g, to ensure the seats don't collapse or detach from the floor. A Boeing
spokesman said the company has been delivering all its jets with 16g-rated
seats since 2009.
Before
the advent of such stronger seats, Mr. Hiatt said, the intense vertical and
horizontal force generated by a crash like Saturday's "would have caused
many more seats to break free and pancake into each other, probably blocking
exit paths."
Mr.
Hiatt also said improved fire-resistant materials used on seats and other parts
of the cabin "likely helped the fire from intensifying so quickly."
Enhanced crew training also has made a significant difference.
Cabin crews train to evacuate passengers in chaotic and unpredictable
circumstances, including being unsure which exits are safe to use. Airplanes
are designed to be evacuated in just 90 seconds, even when half the doors and
escape slides are inoperative or unavailable.
Other
factors helped limit the toll of Saturday's accident. Because the plane was
landing, its speed was relatively slow, reducing the force with which it
crashed. Rescue crews used cutting-edge nozzles, equipped with cameras,
attached to the end of hoses. Firefighters were able to maneuver those nozzles
directly inside the cabin and aim the spray at the most dangerous hot spots. In
addition, some crews had equipment able to pierce the plane's aluminum fuselage
to gain better access to the fire.
Other
high-profile crashes in recent years have also seen many passengers escape
alive. Everyone survived a 2008 Continental Airlines flight that veered off a
Denver runway in high winds, splitting the body of the jet in two. Two
passengers died in August 2010 when an Aires Boeing 737 landed short in bad
weather at a Caribbean island, also splitting the passenger cabin into pieces.
In April, a newly delivered Lion Air Boeing 737 crashed in poor visibility
short of a runway in Bali, Indonesia; all 108 people aboard survived.
In
San Francisco, "everyone was fortunate that the fire didn't start
immediately, so it gave passengers time to scramble out of the plane,"
said Michael Barr, who teaches air-safety courses at the University of Southern
California.
"I'm
just grateful I survived," said Mr. Rah, the passenger. "I was 99.9%
sure I was going to die. I was hoping for a 0.1% miracle, and I got it."
—Vauhini Vara, Daniel Michaels, Ben Kesling and William
Harless contributed to this article.
A version of this article appeared July 8, 2013, on page A6 in
the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Heroics and
Air-Safety Gains Kept Toll Low.
