WRITING THE SPECIALISED FEATURE STORY:The Deadline Feature Sidebar

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Feature and Column Writing MCM 514

LESSON 15

WRITING THE SPECIALISED FEATURE STORY

It is 12 am, and the deadline for the late edition of your newspaper is 12:45 am. You don't have much on

your mind except late dinner when the city editor beckons you over. He is talking on the phone, but he

puts his hand over the mouthpiece and tells you, "Ali that kid who got bitten by the rabid dog just died.

Give me a piece on the rabies epidemic we had one or two years ago, will you?"

The city editor means that another reporter is writing the straight-news story of the child's death and that

you are to write a backgrounder on a previous rabies outbreak as an accompanying story. He means now.

He means in time for the late edition.

You know enough to trot to the hospitals and look under `R' for rabies (provided record is maintained).

With old news clips in hand, the lazy writer--and there are many such--would be content to rehash old

facts and hand the city editor a short review of the earlier news event.

But you're enterprising. While the clock ticks, you put in a call for a rabies expert in the provincial health

department whose name you've spotted in the old coverage. He's out, so you leave a call back and phone

the city communicable disease officer. You next phone the head of animal pathology at a nearby

university, at the veterinary university. Then you phone this year's president of your county's veterinarian

association.

Now you have fresh quotes and new facts to go with the old ones. The health department expert doesn't

get back to you, but you're able to hit your terminal and put together a fast feature about a worried

citizenry that has quadrupled its calls to animal-control officers about strays since the news first broke

that a rabid animal had bitten a boy.

You include potential danger signs in the behaviour of both wild and pet animals. And certainly you

include facts about the previous rabies outbreak that hit the city.

Instead of a simple backgrounder, you've written a sidebar.

SIDEBARS, PROFILES AND SERIES

Sidebars, Profiles and Series are three great staples of the newspaper and magazine writer. Like any

feature article, they can be thought up and proposed by individual writers, but they are among the features

most commonly assigned by editors.

Sidebars, meaning any story that accompanies a main story, might be little more than statistics, such as

listings of polling places to be run with a story on an upcoming election, but like profiles they often tend

to be "colour" stories, whether they accompany a newspaper story or a magazine article. Series can be

colourful, too, but they can also be anything at all that interests you, your editors and your readers. They

are often fact-filled and cover highly important topics.

The Deadline Feature Sidebar

Sidebars for a magazine, like any other magazine piece, are seldom written against extreme deadline

pressures. But newspaper sidebars don't always have that advantage. Because they often accompany

breaking news, they are frequently written against a ticking clock.

The subject matter of deadline feature sidebars is as varied as a day's news. They do, however, have

certain characteristics:

The sidebar can be straight fact, but it's often a feature story, strong on human interest

The sidebar is usually assigned by the editor.

The straight-news story that the sidebar is written to accompany is usually breaking news.

The sidebar may run on the same page as a straight-news story or it may run on the jump page or another

page altogether.

The sidebar must be able to stand independently. That is, it must contain a tie-back to the main story or

enough brief mention of the salient facts to enable readers to understand it even if they skipped the

straight-news story.

The sidebar often must be written with as much haste as the straight-news story it accompanies, but it can

be and often is written very well.

Feature and Column Writing MCM 514

As with any colour story, the sidebar can be bright if the main news event is a happy one or it can be grey

if the event is tragic.

The details you select to tell your tale will be dictated by the news event.

A deadline feature sidebar written by Linda Wilson of The Daily News in Longview, Washington, was

part of a massive Pulitzer entry in 1981. It is also a common type of feature written in exceptional

circumstances.

Wilson was assigned to cover a funeral.

Every reporter covers a funeral sooner or later. An assistant city editor hands you a scrappy pile of your

day's assignments, or the city editor simply yells at you, and you're off to attend the last rites of some

noted person, either famous or infamous, or some anonymous citizen unfortunate enough to have died

during a major news event.

Standing alone, the one sidebar still gleams with quality. And it wasn't an easy story to cover. As in any

funeral coverage, the writer had to interview grieving family members and friends. Not many mourners

welcome reporters at such times. To complicate the picture, the two dead 21-year-olds lived together but

weren't married, a common enough situation for the times but one for which suitable terminology and

even attitudes still hadn't been developed.

The Profile

Profiles, like sidebars, are major contenders for both newspaper and magazine space, though the term

itself may not always mean the same thing to editors and writers.

For a daily newspaper, the line blurs between the profile, the personality piece and the interview. In fact,

profiles are often referred to as personality pieces or personality sketches, the major difference being that

of length, whereas interviews may have a typical profile lead then move on to basic interview material.

Profiles are in-depth studies of miscellaneous people of whom nothing is required except that they be

interesting. Magazine profiles usually run much longer than newspaper profiles, but the major ingredient

is depth.

A true profile, whether short or long, must enable readers to see and get to know the subject, and you

can't accomplish that just by throwing in a couple of adjectives.

Most profiles are staff-written, because most newspapers and magazines have well-qualified writers on

their staffs who can handle any good profile idea.

The freelance writer who doesn't yet have a big name stands little chance of an exclusive interview or

series of interviews with a famous person. But lesser folk can be of great interest to them. The freelancer

on the spot gets the opportunity.

The profile is a staple of the writer's diet. Ways of writing them are as varied as the people about whom

they are written. Present tense is commonly used but is by no means mandatory. Attaining the necessary

depth is the trick, and this is accomplished by research, observation and skilful interviewing.

If a feature story has a news peg, the writer always is smart to make good use of it, and story has a strong,

straight-news element from the beginning.

In reading it, remember again the difficult process of selection that writers face when they have plenty of

material for a book-length manuscript but have only limited space in which to tell their stories.

It is best to interview both subjects and the subjects' acquaintances to get a fully rounded picture. But as

you have also seen, a good profile can be written without ever talking to the subject.

Several interesting writing techniques give extra punch to story.

Short paragraph style probably catches more eyes.

Half-dozen words per sentence, one sentence per paragraph!

No means boringly uniform in use of the one-sentence paragraph; frequently uses longer paragraphs; and

concentrates the one-per-graph technique in the beginning and end of the story, where needing dramatic

effect, first to interest the reader enough to start the story and then to bring it to a strong conclusion.

Although magazine writers rarely use this short-paragraph technique, you'll find it useful from time to

time in writing newspaper features.

One journalist even created a successful career as a columnist by developing a particular style that rarely

varied from the one-sentence paragraph, but it suited his material well. As with most writing techniques,

however, overuse is rarely a good idea. Overall, use extreme simplicity of presentation. Do not fuss with

Feature and Column Writing MCM 514

the situation. The apparent simplicity by no means prevents skilful use of solid literary techniques, such

as the foreshadowing. Same simplicity to the strong ending.

All this, while writing on deadline. Good writers with well-polished writing tools know they can rely on

their skills.

The Feature Series

The series is a showcase of the daily newspaper, just as it is a standard for many top magazines. Writing a

series requires great chunks of time from both writers and editors. Running a series requires great chunks

of space. Although a feature series, like any other feature, can be written about any interesting subject, the

time and space commitment usually mandates that the feature series be focused on important subjects and

issues.

What effect will budget and tax cuts have on state aid to the poor? Is our water supply running out? Is the

religious right unduly influencing the selection of a state's public school textbooks? Any topic of

profound or far-ranging influence on a newspaper's or magazine's readership can and has been

considered a suitable topic for a series.

A finely crafted multi-part series can win in almost any category--public service, investigative reporting,

explanatory journalism, national reporting, international reporting.

Series often treat subjects of lesser importance. For example, when cities or states approach major

anniversaries, a replay of history is usually seen in series form.

Beats, such as medical beats, can turn up a feature series on new treatments or threatening diseases in a

region. Spring wildflowers can be a series topic in season, and wire services can and do generate series on

both serious and frivolous topics.

When a series is specifically a feature series, it, like general features, is usually told in terms of people,

rather than numbers and statistics. No series of any type can be written successfully using a straight-news,

inverted pyramid form.

The series demands that each new instalment be read as a one-shot story by the casual reader: It must

have an attention-getting lead; it must have enough of a tie-back to preceding instalments to make the

general topic comprehensible; and it should have a solid, preferably suspenseful ending to hook the reader

into coming back for more the next day.

The ability to be divided into satisfying segments, whether three parts or seven, distinguishes the

newspaper feature series from a single magazine article on the same subject.

Apart from this, the feature series and the article both require strong feature techniques and excellent

research and writing. The prose style of a series can be deliberately simple and understated.

It can be richly textured and bristling with apt quotes and facts. Or it can be some other style altogether,

suitable to the subject matter and well honed by the individual writer. But the prose must be excellent, for

you're writing a showcase piece.

To set the mood, start each of the four "chapters" in series with a lead describing a scene. Each begins

with a different person's point of view, and then is developed chronologically from material gleaned

through exhaustive interviews, transcripts and records.

Had the preceding material been less intriguing and dramatic, many readers might not have read this far.

But a compelling mystery on your hands, easily strong enough to keep the attention of most readers.

There's one more thing to watch for. Interspersed among the quotations are occasional presentations of

thought patterns. Some of the quotes were taken from the transcripts, others from interviews and

conversations. The thought patterns were based on people's recollections.

Story types

Now that you have all the tools to write your feature story, you need to decide what kind of story you're

going to write.

It's important to understand from the get-go what form your story's going to take.

There are five basic approaches to feature writing. For almost any topic you can adopt any of the five and

come up with a good story.

Each writer will have their own favourite approach, but it's important to be versatile enough to tackle all

five. (Usual favourite is the Explanatory Piece).

Below are the five different approaches you can take for a topic like the harm effects of smoking:

Feature and Column Writing MCM 514

Profile: People who have suffered diseases as a result of smoking

Explanatory pieces: How smoking leads to diseases

Issues and Trends: The rise of smoking among women in urban areas

Investigative: How cigarette companies use innovative marketing to target teens

Narrative: The story of the first person to successfully sue a cigarette company for causing him to

develop cancer.

Remember, it is important to be clear about the type of feature story you want to write. Don't jumble the

different styles together.

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