MEDIUM
The Best Kickers for Medium Stories
To organize and present articles by topic, promote your stories, and gather engaged readership
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First, what is a ‘kicker’? According to the Open School of Journalism, a kicker has two purposes with regard to writing:
There are actually two uses for the term kicker in the journalism world. In the first sense, a kicker is the lead’s introduction, typically a few words or sentences leading into the main piece. It usually is formatted to stand out visually from the rest of the story, drawing in the reader’s attention much like the header does. Secondly, a kicker can be the paragraph that closes up the entire article, summarizing the important parts and closing the piece up. Both uses of the term are crucial to journalism and it is vital that journalists become familiar with them. — Open School of Journalism
For our purposes here on Medium, a kicker is defined more narrowly. It’s oddly missing from the Medium Glossary and you’ll find conflicting information on kickers, but I am with Casey Botticello on this one, “A kicker is one of the most underutilized title formatting options on Medium.” (From his article “Medium Kicker.”) (Emphasis mine.)
