One of my degrees is in Communication, and I have never heard of it. In my media writing class, the beginning of the story was always referred to as "lead" or "lead-in." I even went back and double checked all of my old journalism text books for you and found nothing.
Caveat: my major was in Comm Theory, not Journalism & Print Media, so the dabble classes I took in it may have just not mentioned it. Also, I don't work in the field, maybe it's simply acquired slang?
