Robbery -- The Peanut Barrel Rule

There were plenty of decent ledes in the exercise you did Monday. You made some good decisions on how to best use the space you were allotted in creating the highest and best ledes possible.

But some were better than others. Let's look at this one:

A Lansing Community College student working at the local O-Mart faced a robbery last night, resulting in the robber being shot and killed.

It gets the basics of the story correct. It's not wrong by any means. But it's missing end result and ultimate outcome: not just that the store was robbed, but the consequences of the robbery and the latest news. This lede made it to that point:

A 22-year-old man will not be prosecuted following a robbery and shooting at an Okemos convenience store Sunday night, according to the district attorney.

That's a good lede. Concise, up to date, the whole shebang. But let's put it up against the Peanut Barrel rule: would you first tell friends that someone working at a store shot someone robbing the store and they won't be charged, and leave it at that? No, I think you'd throw in what made this story unique and different from other robbery stories -- the lcerk-being-fired element. You tried that with this lede here:

A 22-year-old convenience store clerk was fired from his job after shooting a man in self-defense during a store robbery.

Very good. But the one thing that's missing -- the one little thing that goes to what I think may be the ultimate Peanut Barrel factor here -- is the connection between saving his life and losing his job. My gut tells me that what really made this story the most unique is that the clerk legally defended himself -- and lost his job because he acted to save his own life!

That last lede could have gone that extra mile simply by replacing the "after" with a "for," like this:

A 22-year-old convenience store clerk was fired from his job for shooting a man in self-defense during a store robbery.

Now, you are fully Barreled.