Write Stuff

If, threatened with waterboarding, I were forced to choose the biggest writing problem I see, it would be the nut graf. It’s talked about a lot in Craft classes but I still find myself questioning students about why their stories don’t explain to readers why they should care.

What makes a good nut graf? I use the words sweep, context and road map. I want to know how the story will help explain the importance of an event, incident, or personality (the “sweep”). I want to know how the story fits into the history and culture of our times (the “context”). Finally, in a rich nut graf, I want to discover the themes, the landscape of the story, the “road map” that tells me where the story is going and whether I want to take that journey.

Said even more simply, a good nut graf tells readers what’s in it for them, what they’ll learn, and why they ought to take the time to read your story.

Read almost any consequential story in the Times, WSJ, or Daily News, and you’ll see good nut grafs. The same goes for broadcast scripts. In profiles of people, such as the live-ins that Craft I students are now working on, Prof. Svoboda calls the nut graf the “Joe is not alone” graf. What is it about ‘Joe’ that reflects a larger theme, a recurring pattern, an emerging trend? That’s a useful way of thinking about it.

The nut graf – btw, it’s not always just one graf, but one cohesive idea — is so important that I often recommend that reporters write it first, or at least make notes for the themes and details to include. That can start as you take notes, and can continue as you come back to the newsroom to file your stories. It’s important to think about what you’re about to write. Put yourself in the minds of the reader and ask why they should care. Force yourself to take the helicopter view, to see the story in all its dimensions, and then provide that perspective to the reader.

The nut graf also benefits the writer. By organizing the thinking about what makes the story important, the nut graf will give the writer a structure and organization that will allow the story to flow naturally from one theme to another. It also will allow the writer to more easily choose the best story-telling quotes and details to advance the arc of the story.

Rima Abdelkader’s recent story on how foreign media handle American colloquialisms – a story that helped push page views at NY City News Service to record levels – did a nice job of explaining why a reader should care:

Joe Sixpack. Hockey Mom. Maverick.
Even for those passionately following the presidential election, the definition of these campaign buzzwords can change with the voter, pundit or reporter who interprets them.
Imagine, then, how foreign language journalists must struggle to put the terms into context for their audiences when such words often have no direct translation.
That problem faced Al Jazeera reporter Abderrahim Foukara when he wrestled with how to describe “maverick.” The world’s most watched Arab network finally decided to define the American colloquialism as “a bird that sings outside the flock.”
For Al Jazeera, and foreign-language media throughout the world, the issue of how to translate the language of American politics is more than just a matter of journalistic accuracy. Their decisions reflect their own diverse histories and cultures, as well as their ethical guidelines about bias in translation.

The last three paragraphs provide a cohesive summary of why the reader should care: the sense of the story, a specific and interesting example and the sweep and context of the issue. It caught the attention of readers as diverse as the editors of the Huffington Post to an individual American blogger in Guatemala.

Last point: Whenever you read stories in print, scripts, online or blogs, find the “nut graf” and ask yourself whether it succeeded, and why. Take away those lessons and apply them to your own stories.

Writing Tips
Use storytelling quotes, not quotes that simply convey information better paraphrased by the writer. Craft professors, appropriately, urge students to make sure to put quotes high in their stories. But student reporters often overcompensate with too many boring or rambling quotes rather than a few sterling, storytelling ones.
My advice is to establish a very high standard for any quote. It must help you tell the story, reveal a personality or express outrage or joy. With many quotes, you can capture the essence and write it far stronger yourself.

Karina Ioffee used strong storytelling quotes in her story about Colombian parents who attended the sentencing of the man who had killed their son seven years ago:

Residents of Bogota, Colombia, Leonor and Armando Garzon got on the first flight to New York after hearing about the attack. Both parents sat with their son — one of three children — as he lay in a coma for weeks.
“I caressed him and talked into his ear, in case he might hear me,” Leonor Garzon said. “But he never woke up.”
“Our lives the past seven years have consisted of knocking on doors seeking help to bring to light this merciless and cruel crime that you committed,” Leonor Garzon said at the sentencing, speaking directly to McGhee. “You’ve deprived us of living a full life in our old age and of family unity….we can never be together again.”

Shout Outs

Everyone contributed mightily to our lights-out election coverage, which makes it hard to single out any one person. But Jere Hester deserves a loud shout out for the planning and leadership he provided for the entire effort.

I’m always looking for a felicitous phrase that shows writing chops. Here’s how Carla Murphy summarized what happens at a storefront church headed by the Rev. Terry Lee:

All rely on Lee’s storefront church, in which the Holy Spirit is invited to enter, wipe its feet, disrobe, chat, eat, drink, dance, jump and relax, for up to six hours at a time.

That satisfied my craving for active verbs, and whetted my appetite for more.

When the news flashed across my screen Monday, I did a fist pump when I saw the name Gene Weingarten as the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing. Gene is the resident humorist and writer extraordinaire at The Washington Post and a former colleague of mine at The Miami Herald, editor of the magazine when the paper had one.

I rushed to the blogosphere to see what people were saying about Gene’s piece, a tour de force in which he observed what happened when he got famed violinist Joshua Bell to play, anonymously, at rush hour at a crowded Washington, D.C., Metro station.

What I found was The Post’s Joel Achenbach, a Weingarten disciple and a former Herald colleague, talking about how Gene and his Post colleagues won six Pultizers last Monday. It’s worth repeating:

The Post has just won six Pulitzer Prizes, which looks like a typo. It was a newsroom-wide triumph — Metro, National, Investigative, Foreign, Financial, Magazine. Within that Variety Pack of journalism, there’s a common ingredient — something we too seldom discuss when we cogitate about how to reinvent the business model: Reporting.

Original reporting still matters. It’s probably our best gimmick. It’s what we do (imperfectly to be sure) better than anyone else in the news business. It also can’t be easily replaced on the cheap by some other information-delivery system.

Achenbach then explained what made Gene’s story such an exquisite piece of writing:

The story is immaculate. There’s not a loose word in the whole thing. You could pick that story up, turn it upside down, and shake it and nothing would drop out. Maybe there’s something in there I missed – but it sure looks like everything’s bolted down.

Moreover, nothing gets into the Post magazine without going through a fine filter of editing, revision, copy-editing, fact-checking, and proof-reading. . . A lot of that labor is unglorious [inglorious? Paging the copy editor!]. So I’d put, as a newspaper virtue right up there with Original Reporting, what you might simply call Sweating the Small Stuff. Which also isn’t cheap, or easily automated.

We’ve talked a lot about these themes in The Write Stuff. I know you’ve heard the same exhortations from your Craft professors, and others. It’s not that we’re ignoring the challenges to the media business these days. Far from it. That’s why there’s so much emphasis on learning how to be comfortable in all the platforms — print, online, blogs and broadcast. Yet, if you learn nothing else at CUNY but how to report and write accurately and effectively, and sweat the small stuff, you’ll be armed with the skills and the mindset that can’t be duplicated by any distribution system or marketing scheme. There’ll always be a place for a good reporter.

Shout Outs

In that spirit, we salute examples of good reporting that led to strong writing. Kate Lurie literally got the name of the dog in her delightful piece in Chelsea Now on how pet-pampering seems recession-proof:

As she tried to usher a large, freshly coiffed dog named Humphrey into a kennel, Elle Wong, a bubbly co-owner of Towne House Grooming, asked brightly, “So, is it official? Are we in a recession?”

Similarly, we liked the details Linnea Covington got in her story about up-and-coming songstress Shara Worden. In a quick paragraph, a reader learned a lot about what shaped Worden’s musical life:

Worden’s love of the music scene isn’t surprising as she grew up surrounded by musicians, listening to Top 40 on her radio, and indulging in the Michael Jackson and Joan Jett records her father, a national accordion champion, would bring home from the library. Musically inspired since the age of 3, when she composed her first song using the sounds from a toy cash register, Worden was performing in community musical productions by the age of 8 as well as studying the piano.

Heather Appel captured the scene at a Passaic coffee shop with the kinds of observation that put you inside the scene:

It’s 8:30 on a Thursday morning, and Joe Nazimek and John Mancuso are sitting at Marina Stationers, coffee cups in hand, chuckling over a handwritten sign that reads “Trespassers will be Shot. Survivors will be shot again.”

Writing Tips

Last week we shared with you four key questions that award-winning writer David Von Drehle uses to help himself craft a nut graf. To refresh you, they are:

1. Why does it matter?
2. What’s the point?
3. Why is this story being told?
4. What does it say about life, about the world, about our times?


Fittingly, we asked Gene Weingarten this week what advice he gives budding feature writers:

Every feature story, no matter how small or limited the subject matter may seem to be, should really be about The Meaning of Life. That is my signature line, and I believe it.

While that may sound daunting, it’s Gene’s way of saying that you’ve got to ask yourself what you want readers to take away from your story. When you can answer that question, you’re on your way to a good nut graf and a more compelling read.

Writing Tips

During my deep dive into Southern writers this spring, I’ve often been struck by the juxtapositions they make between the grotesque and the ordinary, the cosmic and the insignificant. It’s an important reminder to stay alert in your reporting to disparate elements that play off one another to create a dramatic effect.

Consider this passage in Willie Morris’ autobiography, “North toward Home,’’ in which he recounts seeing a tragic train accident that killed a little boy in the Bronx as Morris commuted from his New York editor’s job to his summer home north of the city:

In the orange glow of late afternoon the policemen, the crowd, the corpse of the boy were for a brief moment immobile, motionless, a small tableau to violence and death in the city. Behind me, in the next row of seats, there was a game of bridge. I heard one of the four men say as he looked out at the sight, “God, that’s horrible.” Another said in a whisper, “Terrible, terrible.” There was a momentary silence, punctuated only by the clicking of the wheels on the track. Then, after a pause, I heard the first man say: ‘Two hearts.

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Shout Outs

Details. The Write Stuff loves reporting details that put readers at the scene or help them understand what makes a person, business or organization work. We’re reminded of the standing orders to reporters at the St. Pete Times to “get the name of the dog.’’

That wisdom has been passed down by Roy Peter Clark and others. Such details add authenticity to your story and help produce compelling writing. We’ve got lots of good examples this week. Here, Mat Warren in the New York Times painted a vivid picture of a funeral of a Thai-born U.S. soldier:

While four Buddhist monks in orange robes chanted and fanned incense, family members and friends gathered in a Queens funeral home to pray for the soldier, Chirasak Vidhyarkorn, an Army specialist. Sitting silently, mourners bowed their heads before his coffin, which was draped in an American flag. White and yellow Thai orchids surrounded the coffin, and a small statue of the Buddha sat on a mantel underneath a picture of the soldier in his uniform.

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