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Category: PR Fundamentals

Lede

TL;DR: The opening sentence or paragraph of a news story or press release — the single most important sentence in the piece.

What is Lede?

The lede (intentionally spelled to distinguish it from "lead" type) is the opening sentence or paragraph of a news story or press release. It carries the most important fact, the news hook, and the reason the reader should keep reading. In the AI era the lede has gained a second job: it is the chunk LLMs are most likely to extract and cite, which makes lede craftsmanship a discoverability investment, not just a copy chore. Crackle PR writes ledes as if they will be extracted by an LLM (because they will be) — one clean fact, no throat-clearing, no adjective spam.

Related terms

  • Press Release — A formal, distributable announcement of company news in standardized format.
  • AEO News Release — A press release explicitly structured for Answer Engine Optimization with AI-extractable Q&A and data.
  • Byline — A contributed article published under an executive's name in a third-party outlet.