One of these things first

Covering traffic deaths is not the least bit pleasant. For one, you're writing about a fatal accident, which, although it comes with the job, never seems to get much easier. On a pragmatic and detached level, the stories are always lacking because there's rarely more than a police report to simply rewrite. The details are just never there.

Considering this, it's time to enact the ol' funnel method of journalism. That is, of course, a lede and then the very most important facts. The remainders will fill out the story.

Here's the beginning to Jeannette Scott's story on a fatal car crash that ran on the front page of today's Lancaster Sunday News, an example of how not to write it up.

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"One person was killed and two others injured when a pickup truck towing a trailer collided with a car in Providence Township at about 3:30 p.m. Saturday.

"The driver of the truck, Michael M. Murphy, 53, Drumore, was southbound on Route 272 when the driver of a Chrysler PT Cruiser, Pauline M. Shuffelbottom, 79, Willow Street, pulled out into the truck's path from Mount Hope School Road, state police at Lancaster said.

"Shuffelbottom was attempting to cross traffic to turn into the northbound lane of Route 272, police said.

She died at the scene."
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This may seem to scrutinizing, but it's so imperative when announcing the deaths of individuals to get the names of the deceased in the second 'graph. Especially, and I can't stress this enough, when it's a small community you're writing about.

Instead, the second 'graph leads up with Murphy, his age, hometown, what direction he was going in and the make and model of his car before the deceased is mention. And then, it's two more 'graphs before we find out which of the two were killed in the accident.

If you don't give the reader the name of who died in the story right away, he or she will just skim the story looking for it.

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Jeannette Scott's writeup of the crash