Prominence. Does the story involve people or organizations most readers would know or those who make decisions affecting our readers?
Oddity/Novelty. Is this an unusual occurrence that would pique our readers’ interest? Is it something that has never happened before or has happened only rarely in the past?
Conflict. Does the story involve two or more people/parties disagreeing? Will our readers want to weigh in on this issue with their opinions?
Human Interest. Does the story involve average people doing extraordinary things? Are there elements of tragedy, inspiration or triumph to which our readers can relate?
Helpfulness. Does this story help our readers make decisions about their lives or learn new information that might be useful to them?
News stories may contain any or all of these values. All stories should include impact. If the audience would neither be affected nor interested by the article, it probably won’t make the publication. Many articles also contain timeliness and proximity if they are published in a newspaper or magazine with regular deadlines and a specific geographic location. The other values—prominence, oddity/novelty, conflict, human interest and helpfulness—vary from story to story.
Words With Pros
“Casting” for Feature Stories
Interview with Lane DeGregory, Pulitzer Prize–winning enterprise reporter, Tampa Bay Times
Cherie Diez, Tampa Bay Times
Enterprise reporting has taken Lane DeGregory places most people never go.
During her 30-plus years in journalism, she attended a strip show starring President Donald Trump’s alleged mistress, porn star Stormy Daniels (real name: Stephanie Gregory Clifford). She sat through drug court with a recovering addict. She hung out with carnival workers at the Florida State Fair.
And, most memorably, DeGregory spent six months with the adoptive family of a “feral child” whom police discovered living in utter filth, unable to speak or communicate in any way. This is the journey that led her to write the three-part story “Girl in the Window,” for which she won a Pulitzer Prize in 2009.
In “casting” around for ideas, DeGregory has created her own system for determining whether the subject is worthy of a deep-dive feature story. Using the acronym CAST, she explains what ingredients make up a captivating feature:
Characters. “I want a really strong character. Even if it’s not a person—a place, a town, a building—I want a character, not an idea.”
Action. “I want action. Whether I can follow the action or am able to re-create the action, something has to happen.”
Setting. “Feature stories should have a strong sense of place so they can make the readers feel like they are there.”
Theme. “There has to be some piece of the human condition that people can relate to. Whether it’s fear, rage, hope or even if they can’t imagine themselves in the situation. That’s what I look for when starting to write a story—what’s the one word we can pick out to establish what the theme is?”
Writers should always look for new approaches to storytelling, but DeGregory says their own style, or “voice,” will emerge naturally. Her method for each story is to try to find the subject’s voice rather than her own. She wonders, “What is it like to be that person?”
Although it is hard for her to describe her own voice, she says readers can usually tell when a story is hers without reading the byline.
“I think it’s different for each writer. It’s different for each story. It’s like, when you’re listening to ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ and ‘I Am the Walrus,’ the songs are completely different, but you still know it’s the Beatles.”
DeGregory says the key to telling impactful feature stories is to put yourself out there. Feature storytellers need to find something they are interested in to write about. If they’re not interested, they need to find someone who is passionate about the subject to help immerse them in the story.
“You have to be willing to go along for the ride. You can’t report a feature story on your phone. You can’t report a feature story by email. It has to be in person.
“With news, it’s easy to put a shield up, but with features you have to make that human connection. That means sharing a bit of yourself.”
DeGregory hosts a podcast on journalism for the Tampa Bay Times, called WriteLane. She also offers teaching tools for aspiring journalists on her website, www.lanedegregory.org.
Distinguishing Features
Spot news typically involves elements of immediacy and is written using the inverted pyramid method, in which a news story is organized by putting the most important information at the top and working through to end with the least important information. In these stories, prominence and timeliness are prized values, as they often involve breaking news from official sources that may or may not affect readers directly. A typical hard news story might involve a car crash on the highway that is backing up traffic. It is immediate; it will likely involve police sources, who are prominent decision-makers in the community; and it will affect some people directly (those stuck in traffic or the family of those involved) and others not at all. Sometimes the fact that someone is well-known makes all the difference. Although it is rarely newsworthy when an average citizen purchases a pet, national news outlets consider it breaking news whenever a U.S. president does so. In fact, journalists are so used to covering this type of news that CNN and several other news organizations published stories in 2017 citing President Donald Trump’s departure from the norm when he did not bring a pet into the Oval Office during the first six months of his term.1
There are two types of feature stories. Soft news stories are aimed at entertaining or informing readers, typically without any urgency. Coverage of a community concert or a new-business profile on a local ice cream shop would belong in this category. Be careful when reporting soft news to avoid producing puff pieces—stories that simply offer praise or exaggerate the greatness of a person, group or organization and avoid any analysis or examination of their shortcomings.
There are also news features, which tend to be longer, in-depth stories detailing the background and impact of an issue and the people affected by it. News features go beyond the basic who, what, when and where questions prioritized in spot news coverage and focus more on why and how.
Good feature stories do not just report what happened—they take deeper dives into the reasons news events occur and what they might mean in a larger sense. They often emphasize different news values: proximity, human interest, helpfulness and novelty/oddity. Feature stories frequently reflect proximity, with reporters covering news events that affect people within their coverage area. For example, a feature story might focus on a local fundraiser benefiting a group or person in the community. Instead of simply reporting on the basic facts—where it will be held, who is involved, when it is taking place—a good feature story will explore why the fundraiser is necessary, how it got started and its significance to the community. In this way, feature stories often involve elements of human interest. Feature writers need to try to get their readers beyond the basic facts, which are organized easily at the top of spot news stories.
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