Monday, October 22, 2012

Police: Nut Grafs

One of youze did a nice alternate lede, but the nut graf fell a bit short. Here was the sequence:

One left in a jiffy. And the other? Not so much.

Jiffy Foods, located in Okemos, was the target of an attempted robbery by two men early this morning.

Then, you start with the chronological narrative of how things unfolded.

First off, the lede was cute and a great teasing set-up for the nut graf.

Now, the nut graf does half of what a good nut graf does, in expanding upon the lede. It says where they left, and what they were doing there.

But the nut graf falls short in another area, and that's answering critical questions created by the lede. Like, why didn't the other guy leave, too? That question was central to your lede, and you leave the reader still guessing after the nut graf.

A better nut graf would say something like this:

Two men walked into Jiffy Foods in Okemos as part of an alleged armed robbery attempt, but only one of the suspects was able to flee after the other was beaten by a clerk wielding a cane.

Now, we can go on to the narrative. The reader knows what the lede meant.

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