During the summer of 1889 in New York city, Charles H. Dow started a small publication, whose aim was to bring news on business and finance to the average person. Although the Wall Street Journal’s first post was in 1889, it really found its footing during the Great Depression, following the crash of the stock market, because finance became suddenly relevant and important to everyone in the 1930’s.
According to Encyclopedia Britannica, “The journal rarely ventured beyond business and economic news” because that was not what Dow had in mind when he created his journal. Every so often, The Journal would feature an article on another topic, such as war, which became increasingly popular during WWII. However, by the 1960’s, the journal regularly featured two articles on subjects other than business and finance. Now, in the 21st century, subscribers regularly look to the Wall Street journal for all kinds of stories from economics, to justice and politics, to medicine and research. However, the Wall Street Journal is only one of hundreds of other journals. How did this single journal find itself head and neck above so many others?
A journal at its core is a source of reliable relevant information on any number of topics. There are medical journals, art journals, business journals and many others; but there is a unique aspect of the Wall Street Journal that placed it in its own bracket. In 1941, Barney Kilgore, managing editor of the Wall Street Journal, declared that “It doesn’t have to happen today to be news. If the date is essential, use the exact date.” This did not simply mean that journalists couldn’t use the word today or yesterday in there leads, it meant so much more. It was the introduction of the nutgraf to the world, a method of journalism that would revolutionize the way we write news articles. The nutgraf is a method first used by the Wall Street Journal that puts more power in the reader’s hands. A nutgraf summarizes the main idea of the article without giving too much away. It allows the reader to decide from the beginning whether he wants to read the story or not. If not, he comes away knowing the general point of the article, if he does, then he already knows what the article is about, allowing him to track along with the body much more easily.
This method delivers a promise. It sets up the thesis of the story, promising to explain it later. It puts explanation over information and understanding over knowledge. However, the most important piece of this method is how compact it is. It’s like a nut from a tree. One oak tree nut is no more than 4 centimeters wide, however it produces some of the most beautiful trees standing sometimes up to 40 meters tall. In the same way, a nutgraf is a short, compact paragraph or two – depending on the length and depth of the article as a whole – that holds many paragraphs worth of explanation and understanding within it. For example, in an article about clean energy, the nutgraf would do three things. It would connect the lead to the rest of the article, it would very briefly summarize the topic of clean energy and its relevance to today’s society and it would clearly state the thesis of the article, without being too argumentative. An article can have a thesis, or a standpoint, without arguing anything. If it were about clean energy, it might say: “Clean energy came onto the electrical scene in the late 20th century bringing with it a Pandora’s box of both new unforeseen benefits and issues. Nevertheless, clean energy is one of the 21st century’s hot topics.” This thesis statement has a clear point, clean energy is a prominent piece of 21st century society, but it does not argue whether it is good or bad, whether it should be researched or not. It simply states the purpose of the article. For the last eight decades, the Wall Street Journal, among many others, has used the nutgraf to create engaging, relevant and significant articles that have both informed and given the gift of understanding to millions of people.
The Wall Street Journal was only the beginning of this new age of journalism. When they began utilizing the nutgraf, thousands of other journalists followed the trend as they saw the success the Wall Street Journal had with their method. Now, with the popularity of reading online, tens of thousands of websites, online journals and online newspapers use this method or a similar version of it to entice the reader, to give the reader a good experience and most importantly to help the reader understand.
J. Fletcher Brown 