Jargon of the day: sidebar
The sidebar is a story that accompanies the main story. This story might detail a specific angle or aspect of the main story.
Say your local paper is running a story about a local fire fighter who saved a bunch of people from a burning building. A sidebar for that story might be a brief history about the fire fighters life. This would talk about how he became a fire fighter and maybe mention some other heroic things that he had done. The main story is about the fire fighters heroic act of saving people from the fire, but the side bar is just a little bit of history and information about him. Get it?
Okay, so now that you know what a side bar is, lets talk about a story that actually used a sidebar that worked well. This winter, I read a story in the Pocono Record about ice that had slid off of someones roof into the windshield of the car behind them. The person driving the car was not hurt, but the car had serious damage and the person driving could have been killed.
The sidebar that went along with this story was about how to be safe while driving in the winter, and gave a detailed description on how to safely clean your car off to prevent ice sling off your roof onto other cars. This worked well because it was directly related to main story about the driver almost getting killed, and it gave helpful tips on how to stay save in the winter.
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