Leo Alexander, candidate for mayor

Ah, the search for the perfect lede. It’s tough — the pressure for a journalist to craft a snappy opening that will make people want to keep reading can be immense, depending on what you’re writing about. Maybe people aren’t talking, maybe the material’s a little dry, maybe you’ve just got writer’s block — all are common impediments to getting that awesome hook.

Then again, sometimes the subject of your story makes it easy. To wit, the first paragraph in Alan Suderman’s Loose Lips column that hits news stands today:

No sooner has Leo Alexander sat down with Loose Lips than he starts telling LL he’s not supposed to be there. “One of my supporters said: ‘Don’t talk to the City Paper, their readership is gay,’” the long-shot mayoral hopeful says during an interview at his Brightwood home.

Well, then. I imagine Suderman didn’t have to wrestle too much with the quote that he’d be placing at the top of the page this week. Of course, the whole column is worth a read: Alexander awkwardly teases Suderman (at least, we think he was teasing) that he’d give money to community papers — including the City Paper — if he is elected mayor, and Suderman does a pretty nice job of profiling of one of the District’s most blindly confident political losers.

But wait, I still need clarification: if I read Suderman’s freshly-minted new Loose Lips blog and don’t pick up a paper, does that still qualify me as a part of the City Paper’s exclusively gay readership? That information would really come in handy going forward.