Robbery: The Mystery Of The Missing Nut Grafs

Nut grafs are important. Nut grafs do two important things: they fill in some of the blanks and details from your lede, and they offer a smooth transition to the body of a story.

In this exercise, a few of you had inadequate nut grafs -- or none at all.

What many of you did was write a lede, and then directly go into the chronology of what happened, like here:

A robbery turned into a self-defense shooting late yesterday at O-Mart on 1284 East Forest Blvd. in Haslett.

When 22-year-old, Michael Layoux was working last night, a customer came in to purchase a pack of cigarettes just after 11 p.m.

Whoa, wait a minute. In the lede, you say there was a robbery that turned into self-defense. Who was robbed? Who defended himself? Who was the robber? The lede created those questins, and a nut graf could have answered 'em. Instead, you dive right into the play-by-play. Essentially, you're holding the reader hostage by not making it clear what conclusion they're reading toward. They need to read the entire story to find out what happened.

The body of a story offers details and evidence that supports your lede. Your nut graf offers just enough of the 5 w's -- who, what, when, where, why, plus how -- so that if a reader goes no further than the nut graf and never reads the chronology, they still know what happened and how it ended.

A nut graf would have been a perfect place to say something like this:

Using a contraband pistol, store clerk Michael Layoux shot and killed Robert Wiess as the latter man fled the store after robbing the register of an estimated $20 in cash around 11 p.m. Wiess' body was found nearby.

Here was a better use of a lede-nut graf sequence by one of youze:

A 22-year-old store clerk killed a man in self-defense after the man robbed his store at gunpoint late yesterday in Haslett.

Michael Layoux, a clerk at O-Mart on 1284 East Forest Blvd., shot Robert Wiess after he said he was threatened with a pistol, and Wiess demanded the money in the cash register.

The lede suggests a pair of whos (clerk, a man who was killed), a what (killed a man), a when (yesterday), a where (in Haslett) and a why (self-defense).

Then, the nut grafs details the whos (naming the clerk and gunman), the what (the killing was done by shooting), the where (at the O-Mart, address noted) and the why (threatened with a pistol, demanded cash).

Only then does the story continues with the chronology of how things unfolded, in time order. You get a bit more information in the nut graf to help establish the lede -- and to let people know how things ended up -- before getting a blow-by-blow of how things went down.

After placing that next to the lede, then you can dive into the chronology. Basically, your lede/nut graf combo should read like a mini-story. (And if you ever write for broadcast, that's what they typical 30-second TV news story is: a lede and a nut graf, and maybe one sentence of additional information.)