Journalism Today! Chapter 10

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Journalism Today! Chapter 10

• Writing Feature Stories

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Feature Stories Humanizing the News

• Feature Vs. News Story
• Lighter
• More human
• Usually funnier
• Usually not related to any current event
• Usually not written in inverted pyramid
• Can be about anything, anybody

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Timelessness

• Most features are evergreens
• News-Feature connected to a specific item of
  current news often published as color sidebar

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Creative Style

• Feature writers have more freedom with language!
  (voice, tone)
• More opportunity to be creative, clever, colorful
  with language (not so boring, dry as news stories)

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Creative Style

• Still NO opinion or speculation!
• Fanciness beware!
• Writers (esp. beginners) can kill features if too
  creative style/voice/cleverness overpowers the
  content of the feature itself . . .

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Subject Matter

• No subject matter limit
• Can be historical throw new light on old
  subject or review a past event
• Remote places, remarkable or obscure people
• Can be written in first person (water-skier
  example)
• Above all, subject must interest people!

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The Personality Feature

• All people are possible subjects for feature
  stories
• Incident, idea, problem, thought, opinion, hobby
  that will make an interesting reading
• Students or teachers at school and their special
  accomplishments

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The Personality Feature

• Lots of stories include published quotes about
  principal, superintendent, class president, etc.
• But . . . Usually no personality feature
• Most students probably dont really know anything
  about these people
• Who is this person anyway? What does
  Mella/Reinke do on the weekends?
• If you ask enough questions, youre bound to get
  something for a feature story
• THERE IS NO SUBSTITUTE for the hard work of
  digging for facts!!!

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Finding subjects . . .

• Gather ideas from your own experiences or the
  experiences of relatives/close friends these
  are the best places to find ideas for features
  (the human interest elements)
• Never stop thinking of ideas for
  features/evergreens!

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