In journalism, there is the concept of an introductory or summary line or brief paragraph, located immediately above or below the headline, and typographically distinct from the body of the article.
[6] The Oxford English Dictionary suggests this arose as an intentional misspelling of "lead", "in order to distinguish the word's use in instructions to printers from printable text,"[7] similarly to "hed" for "head(line)" and "dek" for "deck".
Some sources suggest the altered spelling was intended to distinguish from the use of "lead" metal strips of various thickness used to separate lines of type in 20th century typesetting.
[16] The colloquial expression "burying the lead" refers to a writer intentionally hiding the most important aspects of a news story in a later paragraph.
This could be done for several reasons: to tease the reader into reading through other information and/or viewing various advertisements, or to hide a politically inconvenient or embarrassing revelation, such as when a theory or position of the writer, publisher, or their benefactors has been revealed to be incorrect.