I was starting to think your prof was pulling your leg, but I decided to do a net search for the word itself. Most of the first 15 hits were about the name Lede or other random things. A few actually mentioned journalism:

This one, called "Fundamentals of Journalism," was actually the first hit, and it has some interesting info.

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The first paragraph of a news story is the lede. It is often just one sentence, but it can be two.

* (Lede is often spelled lead. The odd spelling was adopted when newspaper type was set in lead. To keep from confusing the word for the metal with the word for the beginning sentence, the spelling "lede" was used.)
This one is part of a text book on journalism, or something like that. It's a PDF file, though, which I decided not to download, so I've only read the few sentences that came up on the search page.

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CHAPTER 6: LEDE WRITING The lede is the beginning of a story. In most hard news pieces that means the first sentence. In some. features it may take the first few paragraphs. Whatever its format, your lede must be compelling enough to
This one is a page about writing ledes.

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Readers give you just a few seconds to capture their interest before their eye moves on to the next story or photo. You need a crisp lede and a strong focus to keep the reader going.
So, it looks like it's a technical journalistic term which refers to the beginning of an article. It's not a lead like a source or a clue.

Paul

When in doubt, think about penguins. It probably won't help, but at least it'll be fun.