Graded Ledes: Peanut Barrel Rule, Part 2

When you think about the Peanut Barrel rule, a part of what you consider is what stands out most to a story, where it would be the first thing out of your mouth when talking about it to your friends.

Another aspect that often overlaps the first premise is that of end result and ultimate outcome: how did the story end? After all, the lede of a news story is usually the ending, wrapping up all the loose ends. That's a major way journalistic writing differs from other forms of writing.

This next lede meets the first aspect but not the second:

A trip to the gas station turned into every mother's worst nightmare when an armed robber stole a car with six-month-old Megan Perakiss in the backseat.

If this happened to be a delayed lede, where in the next paragraph you immediately get to end result, then you are fine. If not, then the lede can be improved upon.

This next lede was predicated on end result:

A terrifying ordeal ended well for a local family on Wednesday when a massive search located their six-month-old daughter safely inside a vehicle carjacked by an armed robber.

Of course, the downside of this approach is you lose a little bit of detail of what made the recovery dramatic: how the girl went missing in the first place. I though this next lede did a good job of reconciling all the competing factors:

An armed robbery of a local Quik Shoppe convenience store Wednesday afternoon quickly escalated to a carjacking and brief kidnapping of a six-month-old infant girl.

You hook the telling on the overall incident, and the use of "brief" to describe the kidnapping gives readers the indication they need of ultimate outcome.

Often, the Peanut Barrel rule is simple and to the point, like with this lede:

A group of Michigan State University scientists have joined fellow universities in coming with with a controversial idea to transplant African wildlife to the Great Plains of North America.

But it can also pre-emptively answer an obvious question created by your reporting, like, why the hell would they do that? This lede correctly anticipates such a question, and offers an answer:

In an effort to preserve species that are facing extinction, a group of more than 30 scientists want to relocate African wildlife to the Great Plains of North America.

Which of these do you think works best? Why or why not?