Flight -- Missing Nut Grafs

Like we've been learning this term, nut grafs help amplify and support the lede by giving a second layer of detail from the lede. Like, if you make generic mention of a hero or villain in the lede, you use the nut graf to name the person, and maybe further detail what make them a good or bad person.

Having a nut graf allows for an orderly transition to the chronological narrative by giving the reader enough information where they know not only what the ending was, but they get enough detail to know how the ending came about, and who the key players are whose actions they can track in the narrative.

This story jumped straight from the lede to the narrative, minus a nut graf:

A 12-year-old girl landed a 4-passenger plane after her father slumped over in his seat while flying it today.

James Shanahan, a licensed pilot, his two daughters, Alyssa and Adrienne and his wife, Mary, were flying from Grand Rapids, Mich., when he suffered an allergic reaction from prescription medication he began taking this morning.

There's an easy way to catch if you're missing a nut graf: look at the questions posed by the lede. In this case, such questions include, which girl? Was it one of the daughters? How old is she? And how did she come to be the pilot, exactly?

This lede/nut graf combo does a better job of answering such questions before going into the narrative.

A small aircraft made a dramatic emergency landing at City Regional Airport this afternoon, the family inside escaping with minimal injuries, police and emergency officials say.

Authorities say 12-year-old Alyssa Shanahan took over the flight controls after her father went unconscious due to an allergic reaction to his medication, maneuvering an emergency landing on a field near the airport’s runway — avoiding any severe injuries for her family members in the plane.

Here's another way to judge nut graf adequacy: if you removed the lede and nut graf from the rest of the story and just showed readers those first two grafs, could they be able to accurately summarize the story?

You take lede #1 here and you couldn't. You wouldn't know for sure which girl was the hero. With lede #2, how it went down and ended up are all clear.