When the University of Louisville canned coach Rick Pitino after yet another scandal at the school, The Courier Journal didn’t do one big opus story.  They did a ton of them. This is a great example of how to break out sidebars to dive deeply into worthy stories.

And, as Poynter.org reported, the readers flocked to the coverage:

Joel Christopher, the paper’s editor, tells me that two-thirds of a 65-person reporting staff have worked the story over two days. It’s broken all online readership records by various indices (and the vast majority are local readers), he says, and prompted surprisingly little negative response by pro-Pitino diehards in a town where college sports is everything, especially since there are no pro teams.

My former Poynter colleague Chip Scanlan explains what the nut graf is and why it is important.

The nut graf has several purposes:

• • It justifies the story by telling readers why they should care.
  • It provides a transition from the lead and explains the lead and its connection to the rest of the story.
  • It often tells readers why the story is timely.
  • It often includes supporting material that helps readers see why the story is important.

Listening is a key part of the journalists’ job.  Ben Garvin took it a step beyond.

Here is my profile of how and why he did what he did.
Here are some examples of his work.

From the NYT, an eye-opening example of how, when a big voice gets involved, a tiny tweet can take on epic proportions.