Take a look at this lede:
In hopes of clearing many vagrants from downtown city streets, a number of bus tickets will be offered to homeless individuals. Mayor Datolli recently announced that she will introduce a new panhandling ordinance to the city council on Tuesday.
Now, is this a lede, or a lede and a nut graf smushed together?
I'd argue it could be the latter. Let's split the graf into two grafs:
In hopes of clearing many vagrants from downtown city streets, a number of bus tickets will be offered to homeless individuals.
Mayor Datolli recently announced that she will introduce a new panhandling ordinance to the city council on Tuesday.
The first graf is a bare minimum account. The second graf expands on the first and offers additional details. That's a pure definition of a lede/nut graf combo.
Here's a very general but good rule of thumb on whether you have a lede or a lede/nut graf mashup: is your lede more than one sentence? If so, most times it's the latter.
I know it looks weird to have such short paragraphs, but that's how we do it in journalism. It's to more clearly have each new idea and/or unit of thought stand out for readers, and for ease of editing via editors who can simply cut out an entire short graf instead of having to take out parts of a long graf.
(BTW, if you get a paper back from me and see I've written in an L-shaped figure at the start of one of your sentences, that indicates a point I'd create a new paragraph.)
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