The word "lede" was introduced in the 1970s as an alternative spelling for the word "lead" to resolve ambiguity between the leading paragraph of an article and the metal "lead" which was used in typesetting. It didn't even become popular until the 1980s.

In fact, prior to the 1980s, it was indeed spelled "bury the lead". Here for example is an excerpt from a book about newswriting from the 1970s which uses "lead" as the spelling:

https://books.google.ca/books?id=3IxbAAAAMAAJ&q=%22bury+the+...