I recently encountered this phrase for the first time today. It refers to information in a news report that is buried under less important, or at least less exciting, information. Here is an article on how to avoid that, because apparently inexperienced writers do that...and give their editors a lot of grief.

I can understand it for news, but I can see why this mistake would be made in the first place, and I'm even seeing the so-called lede coming up where it's not supposed to.

Most of our prose narratives, I believe, are still in past tense and third person because writing was mostly used to document history. Maybe the organization doesn't exist in our personal diaries, but a good historian would introduce readers to the context as a priority, instead of jumping right to what's exciting. History would bury the lede, being at least as descriptive as it would be informative.

On the other hand, I find the influence of visual media perhaps being an important part of how our historians (news reporters) write. What's shown onscreen should get people's interest and keep it, and much of what's shown on television, the way it's shown, hones everything to that point. I also think a lot of prose that isn't a news report will be influenced by this sort of, how do you say it, conditioned instinct to want to galvanize people's attentions. The appropriateness of that can vary depending on the form or even the story.

What do you think? How deeply do you bury the lede in your writing?