Lede: How would you fake cancer? Shave your head? Pluck your eyebrows? Install a chemo port into your neck? These days you don’t need to. Belle Gibson’s story is a masterclass on faking cancer in the modern age. She fooled Apple, Cosmopolitan, Elle and Penguin. She fooled the hundreds of thousands who bought her app, read her blog and believed that her story could be their story.
This lede is unusual. As journalists, we are often told not to start with a question, but there is something striking about the way the Guardian writer starts with the question, “How would you fake cancer?” The last four sentences that make up the graph sums up Belle Gibson’s crazy stunt well, and sucks the readers in. However, I don’t think leading with four sentences was necessary. The first question would have carried the shock.