In news writing, a story’s nut graf can be just as important as the lead sentence. But many students, I find, have never heard of the term.
In journalism, we call the first sentence of a story the lead sentence. In the United States, we often spell it as lede rather than lead. Perhaps that’s to enforce that it’s pronounced with a long E like meet, rather than with a short E like led. But the next sentence (or paragraph) is just as important. We call it the “nut graf.” But I’m finding that many up-and-coming journalists walk into a newsroom never having heard the term.
When I started in journalism school, my professors apparently all operated under the same assumption: If you were in J-school, you must want to be a newspaper reporter.
I didn’t want to be a reporter. I didn’t want to work at a newspaper. Instead, I wanted to work in television, and more specifically, the production and entertainment side of it. They waited until the end of my junior year to tell me that I should have considered a Media Arts major instead. The problem with that, for me, was that at that time, Media Arts focused more on film. I had zero interest in filmmaking.
So there I sat in journalism classes, learning all about writing for print. It turns out — though they couldn’t have known it all those years ago — that it was a much better thing in hindsight than it felt as it happened. For the past decade, I’ve managed digital news content. Writing for a news website is essentially the same as writing for print. The presentation may be a little different depending on the story, of course. But one writes for the web much closer to the way he’d write for print than he would for broadcast.
The lede vs the nut graf
First, I should explain the odd name. The nut graf is an abbreviation for nutshell paragraph. It begins providing the most important fine details in the story that the lede intentionally omits.
The lede and the nut graf have very different goals in a news story. One summarizes the story at a glance with few to no specific details. The other starts loading the details in so the reader has a clear understanding of what the story is about. Together, they help the reader decide whether they want to keep reading. (Hopefully, they do.) But even if they don’t, together, they provide details the reader needs to be able to decide.
The lede sentence paints the details of the story in broad strokes, expanding on the headline, which likewise uses broad strokes to explain what the story is about.
The nut graf then starts filling in those details.
Combined with the “inverted pyramid” format, it allows for the most important, newest information to be stacked toward the top and the important, though less-critical background information to be placed toward the bottom of the story.
Consider a couple of examples
A recent Associated Press story with the headline, “Suspect, 15, arrested in shooting near Ohio high school that killed 1 teen, wounded 4.”
Here’s the lede sentence:
A 15-year-old suspect has been arrested in a shooting that killed another teenager and wounded four others near an Ohio high school campus about an hour after a football game, authorities said.
The nut graf immediately begins filling in details:
Police in the Cleveland suburb of Euclid said Sunday that investigators had identified the lone suspect as the 15-year-old male. He was taken into custody at about 8 p.m. Saturday at a Euclid home and was taken to the Cuyahoga County juvenile detention center, police said.
Let me give you a made-up example just so you have more than one to examine. Let’s suppose that police arrest a woman for robbing a bank while wearing an usual costume.
The lede might be something like this:
Anytown Police arrested a Hopeville woman they say robbed a downtown bank while wearing a gorilla costume Thursday morning.
The nut graf immediately starts filling in the details:
Joan Doe, 49, is charged with bank robbery and possession of a weapon during a crime in the robbery, which happened at the Fifth Federal Bank on Edmund Street.
Depending on how you structure the lede, it can almost serve as a roadmap for the nut graf and beyond. The lede first mentions police arresting a Hopeville woman. You might immediately wonder, “Which woman?” The nut graf, then begins with that information. The writer continues laying out the details so they’re easier to follow and understand.
You may not think that much planning goes into most news stories. The way some get written these days, I can understand that doubt. But in terms of the way they’re supposed to be written, there’s a design that makes them easier to digest by the readers.
I think journalists would do well to review those basics from time to time to ensure that the stories they publish are as clear as possible.