JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC

Those of you who have been following the blog for a while have heard me rave quite frequently about the quality of The New York Times.

The paper has the best news-gathering team in the world, the best editors and the best business, sports, style, features and science sections. In other words, the best in all areas.

Partly because it has deep pockets, The Times has been able to throw a lot of money at the transition from print to digital and has been much more successful at that than most newspapers. Earlier this month, for example, it passed the 1 million mark in digital subscriptions, just four and a half years after establishing a pay wall.

If the Sulzberger family ever decides to sell the paper (the company’s stock is publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange but the family controls a voting majority), it will be a gray day for journalism — and for me personally…If it does sell, I hope it’s after I’ve left this mortal coil.

Today, I want to show you just one reason why The Times stands above other newspapers.

It’s because of the quality of what people in the news business call the “nut graph.”

The nut graph is a sentence or a paragraph — occasionally two paragraphs — high in a story that tell the reader why the story is important and where it fits in the context of a broader trend or sequence of developments.

The nut graph takes a specific situation and lifts it into a broader perspective that, ideally, moves the reader toward an understanding of why a particular story is meaningful. The nut graph often prods readers to keep reading, even when they’re inclined to turn the page.

Done well, the nut graph is a soft siren song that pulls the readers in farther, ever deeper, until they’re in too deep to turn back.

Let me give you a few recent examples of outstanding New York Times nut graphs.

One of yesterday’s front-page stories, of course, was Vester Lee Flanagan’s killing of TV reporter Alison Parker and cameraman Adam Ward while the news team was on the air, interviewing a Roanoke, VA, Chamber of Commerce official. Then, before taking his own life, Flanagan posted on Facebook a video of the slayings he had recorded with a body camera.

One commenter wrote on this blog Wednesday, shortly after news of the shooting came out, “My head is spinning.” I think those words aptly described the reaction a lot of us had.

In a single sentence, before the story “jumped” to an inside page, The Times captured the essence of the story and its broader implications with this riveting line: “The shooting and the horrifying images it produced marked a new chapter in the intersection of video, violence and social media.”

If you were under the impression before reading that sentence that this was just another wacky shooting, that sentence should have brought you to a screeching, temporary halt.

Today, The Times, followed up the big, breaking story with a fascinating story about the challenge employers face when dealing with difficult, sometimes seemingly dangerous employees like Flanagan.

One of the two by-lined reporters, Erick Eckholm or Richard A. Oppel Jr., wrote this nut graph:

“It is a nightmare for any employer: what to do with a volatile, constantly aggrieved worker who has had angry, even frightening confrontations with fellow workers — yet has committed no crime.”

How can you resist reading more? For one thing, nearly all of us have worked with one or more people who seem off kilter and give us the creeps. And most managers have had to deal with such people.

One more example…

On Friday, Aug. 14, the lead article in The Times was a truly shocking story about male members of the Islamic State raping women and girls who practiced another religion and did not adhere to the Quran. The story began with an anecdote about an ISIS male prostrating himself in prayer immediately before and after raping a 12-year-old girl. In an incredible perversion of moral reasoning — not to mention common sense — the assailant told her that by raping her he was drawing himself closer to God.

Here’s the nut graph:

The systematic rape of women and girls from the Yazidi religious minority has become deeply enmeshed in the organization and the radical theology of the Islamic State in the year since the group announced it was reviving slavery as an institution. Interviews with 21 women and girls who recently escaped the Islamic State, as well as an examination of the group’s official communications, illuminate how the practice has been enshrined in the group’s core tenets.”

Having set the hook, reporter/writer Rukmini Callimachi returned to the stories of individual women who had been raped and where and how this abhorrent abuse got started.

…So, next time you pick up a New York Time or the next time you go to NYT.com, check out a major story and look for the nut graph. Chances are you won’t have to look too far; it should jump out at you.