A perfect no-news lede?

Sometimes the best rule is to break the rules ...

Check this lede from a story on Sen Barack Obma's visit to an Iowa church in today's Mason City Globe Gazette by staff writer Mary Pieper. It's a perfect example of a no-news lede:

MASON CITY — Today was a big day at the First Congregational United Church of Christ in Mason City.

During the 10 a.m. service the Sunday School and confirmation students presented their annual Christmas program, and the congregation participated in the 40-year-old tradition of putting mittens on the Mitten Tree.

And Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama was in the house.

Obama, a member of a UCC church in Chicago, sat in a pew near the front of the church during the service and got up to speak briefly to the congregation.

The rest of it is a fairly standard speech story. Short. Seven grafs summarizing Obama's homily. Not much to it.

No news, in fact. Hence the no-news lede? I'll bet Pieper used on on purpose.

Compare the lede on this Associated Press writeup of Obama's visit to the church in Mason City:

MASON CITY, Iowa (AP) — Democrat Barack Obama on Sunday confronted one of the persistent falsehoods circulating about him on the Internet.

He went to church.

His attendance here at the First Congregational United Church of Christ, with the news media in tow, was as much an observation of faith as it was a rejoinder to baseless e-mailed rumors that he is a Muslim and poses a threat to the security of the United States.

Obama did not address the rumors, but described how he joined Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago two decades ago while working as a community organizer.

"What I found during the course of this work was, one, that ordinary people can do extraordinary things when they come together and find common ground," he told the congregation. "The other thing I discovered was that values of honesty, hard work, empathy, compassion were values that were spoken about in church .... I realized that Scripture and the words of God fit into the values I was raised in."

And so it went. Introduced by what was, in my opinion, a no-news lede.

Main difference: The AP story is written for a national readership, so the emphasis is -- quite properly -- on the presidential campaign.

No much news in either account, though.

Another term that's commonly used for the kind of account is a "non-story." Jim Kuhnhenn, the AP reporter, chose to peg it on the persistent right-wing nattering about Obama's persumed ties to Islam ... even as he carefully pointed out the nattering had nothing to do with Obama's visit to the church in Mason City. The technical term for this kind of thing is trying to have it both ways.