"bury the lede"

[Charles Doyle]

I noticed this in today's syndicated column by Leonard Pitts, regarding the recent televised exchange with McCain: "In answering the abortion question . . . one could argue that he [Obama]--to use a journalist term--buried the lede."

Including various forms of the verb, the phrase gets some 22,000 Google hits, with a comparable number for "bury the lead"--which was surely the prototype expression, "lead" in the sense of 'leading news story'?  Was "lede" substituted to avoid confusion with "lead" [lEd], the base metal?

No entry for "lede" (in that sense) in the OED.

--Charlie
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