Murder: Mystery Of The Missing Nut Graf

One concept we're still struggling a bit with is that of nut grafs. That's not unusual for a JRN 200 class; it's a concept that many new journalists seem to struggle with.

Still, it's not an excuse, either. We need to get better with 'em. And we'll try to do that now, by looking at one of our ledes from this exercise:

A cook at Detroit’s North Point Inn was killed yesterday morning during a robbery.

Bookkeeper Nina Cortez was counting the previous day’s revenue yesterday morning like she had done every morning for the last seven years when a man carrying a knife approached her.

Then the narrative continued.

Now, here's the problem. At this point, the reader is asking himself or herself, who was killed? What was his or her name? How were they killed? 

Those are all questions best answered in a nut graf, which is needed here between the lede and the start of the narrative. The second graf here isn't a nut graf; it's the start of the narrative, which laid out how things went down, in order.

In the lede, we go straight to end result and ultimate outcome, as this lede does. But then we need a nut graf to fill in the details of the lede; in this case getting more specific with the factors we brought up in the lede, like the cook (Kevin Blohm), yesterday morning (just after 9 a.m.), and the killing (by stabbing, just after Nina Cortez last saw him alive).

So, a good nut graf would answer those questions, along these lines:

Kevin Blohm was found stabbed to death at the restaurant around 9 a.m., just minutes after being last seen alive by a coworker.

Now, we'd insert that nut graf in right after the lede. Now, the reader not only has the end result, but the most critical details to support the end result. As they read along, they will immediately know who Blohm is and his role in the story, as opposed to trying to piece it together as the story goes along.

So now, in totality we have this (with the nut graf added):
 

A cook at Detroit’s North Point Inn was killed yesterday morning during a robbery. 

Kevin Blohm was found stabbed to death at the restaurant around 9 a.m., just minutes after being last seen alive by a coworker.

Bookkeeper Nina Cortez was counting the previous day’s revenue yesterday morning like she had done every morning for the last seven years when a man carrying a knife approached her.

If the reader does no more than read the lede and nut graf, they have the bare minimum of what they need to know. If they read on, they further fill out the details.