Critics wary of changes to sex offender registry

The first of two pieces I had on the Xtra.ca national page today is a story that I have a feeling I'm going to be writing an awful lot about in the near future. It was a bit of a crazy writing process, grabbing as much commentary as possible and writing it up in the space of a few hours, and knowing that I had two more pieces to write the following day, I worked some "overtime" to get this one finished up. (Of course, overtime is a relative concept when you work for yourself, but I do try to keep regular daytime hours in order to maintain some semblance of a work-life balance).

There was some discussion after the fact about how I wrote the lede for this story. While I have no doubt that this is a significant issue for my readership, I ended up writing this to highlight how the government was using the "moral panic" as an electioneering tool. One of my editors felt that I should have instead gone for a bit more of a direct appeal to why this issue matters to the readership - though I'm not sure that I'm sold on the rather alarmist tone of his suggestion - something to the fact about how the way you or your friends have sex could land them on this registry for the rest of their lives. After all, there are still many criminalised sexual acts in this country (like, apparently, threesomes). He said that I wrote it in the style of a Globe and Mail piece - but he didn't mean that in the most complimentary manner.

I see his point - and I should better craft my ledes for my readership. But at the same time, I don't want to go the tabloid route and make every headline about how this is the end of the world. It's certainly food for thought, however, on how to better work on my craft.