I'm coming in a little late her, but I thought I'd add my two cents worth.
Yes, modern day journalists use the spelling "lede" when referring to the first sentence of their articles. It was one of the first things we learned in Introduction to Newswriting and I have never seen any journalist or journalism professor use the "lead" spelling.
And she mentioned if you didn't, and used "lead," you would be ridiculed incessantly.
Well, I don't know about ridiculed incessantly, but people would definitely look at you funny and wonder where you went to school and if you had any actual experience as a journalist.
I hadn't heard that the origin was to prevent confusion with the metal lead, but it makes sense. I always sort of wondered how it started, but never cared enough to look it up. Now I know.
Also journalists have a habit of purposely mispelling words that are not intended to be printed. It's a safeguard to keep placeholders from accidentally winding up in the paper. For example, when newspapers are laid out, dummy text is used in headline spaces to show how many characters will fit. Rather than writing "Town Council Headline Goes Here" which on first glance looks like a real headline and might accidentally be overlooked in the rush to get the paper finished, the dummy text reads more like, "Twon Concil Hed Gose Heer". With that spelling, even if the copyeditors forget to write the headline that goes there, SOMEONE is going to notice that it's wrong and call attention to it before it gets printed.
Annie
