When writing a news feature story, one of the first things you must consider is the target audience. Is it for the general public or is it for a specific group of readers? If you are writing for the readers of a lifestyle magazine or for the lifestyle section in the newspaper, for example, you would need to consider whether you should write from the view of a third person or second?
Most feature stories are written from the third person. Exceptions where the second person is used instead is when the story is about 'what you should get', say, for an occasion or a festive season. Seldom is the first person used for feature writing except when the author is the narrating his or her own experience.
Take for example the first paragraph of a feature story on entrepreneurship written in the third person:
John lost his job two years ago due to the economy downturn. Believing it to be only temporary, he actively seeks employment while upgrading his skills through short-term courses. Today, he is still unemployed. Now at the age of 41, he is forced to consider self-employment and entrepreneurship but is hesitant because he has been an employee his entire working life.
If this first paragraph is written in the second person, it would read:
You have been an employee your entire working life. Two years ago, you lost your job due to the economy downturn. Believing the downturn to be only temporary, you actively seek employment while upgrading your skills through short-term courses. Today, you are still unemployed.
As you can read from the two approaches, the third person's voice draws the readers into the story better than the second person because there is no need for personal involvement in the story unless it is a call to action. It works fine to use the second person if you are writing for a lifestyle magazine showcasing shopping goods, but not quite fine for a news feature story that aims to convey a message containing facts and advices.
When writing for a news feature story, four components should be considered: anecdotes, quotes, facts, and statements of theme.
An anecdote in a news feature story should be written from a third person as the narrator. The purpose of this is to use content 'pull' to attract readers to a sense of reading a novel or a storybook. For a feature story to be successful, at least one anecdote should be included to help readers visualize the 'reality' of a situation or the life of the person being told in the anecdote.
A feature should also include facts and quotes for angles of human interest. Facts may be research finding that quantify the content of the story, official statistical figures, or actual events witnessed by people:
According to official figures from the manpower department, unemployment is now at 4.5 percent.
Quotes are actual account of events by witnesses or spoken comments of people interviewed. Quotes can be direct or indirect. For a feature story to be credible and interesting, both direct and indirect quotes are necessary.
A direct quote is the actual spoken words by persons interviewed:
"I have been an employee my entire working life," said John Doe, 41, a retrenched worker.
An indirect quote is a paraphrased or rephrased writing of actual words spoken by persons interviewed:
John Doe, 41, said he has been an employee his entire working life.
Statements of theme are sentences that links original theme of the story to various parts of the feature. This is especially useful when there are multiple sections or story points that need to be expanded in different areas of the feature. The objective of statements of theme is to draw the readers back to the main theme of the story.
The feature story is usually written with each paragraph pulling the readers forward to read on to the point of closure or a conclusion or instructions to proceed further. It is usual to end the story by drawing the readers' attention back to the points being told at the lead paragraph, but with added knowledge on the subject.
The media need not and usually do not publish a large part of what you write in the press release. Catching the media's attention or interest to your piece of news therefore should be your first objective, and that will require the news to be noteworthy.
If the news is about a new product or service, then you as the writer must highlight what is different that makes it stand out from the rest. If there is nothing worth highlighting, such as a unique selling point, then there is unlikely any news going to get published. Journalists always seek out only what is newsworthy.
One of the greatest mistakes vendors of products or services make is to have press releases contain too much technical details or the over emphasis of numerous features or functionalities. If there is nothing different or outstanding among the many things mentioned, then there is nothing much that will attract or draw the journalists' attention to write about it.
Vendors often think that information in the press release is what the end users want to read about, but frequently such details are not newsworthy for publish. Even if it does get published, it will often be placed at the end of the story. Information or text placed at the end of the story, depending on the space available in the newspaper or other media, may be lifted off by the editor or gatekeeper to give way to other more noteworthy news.
When writing a press release, therefore, a good approach is to use the 'reverse pyramid' methodology, where the most important is placed at the top and the less important at the bottom. The first paragraph, as the intro of the press release, should summarize the key points of the entire story to answer at least three of the 5Ws and 1H—who, when, why, what, where and how.
Within the press release, at least one quote or two from a spokesperson should be included as a standard practice. This is because journalists in general prefer to have someone say something within the story so as to eliminate the monotony. This is especially true for a feature story.
In short, it means when writing press releases, always remember the media plays an important role of what gets published, therefore, the content must be newsworthy.
News agencies often use archived pictures and video clips for re-publishing in general news articles. This method of placing back-dated clips or pictures however can mislead audience to perceive the visuals as occurring only recently.Just yesterday, a friend of mine was perturbed when she saw her picture appear in an article of a local newspaper which was taken by the press two years ago for an event. Although the picture from the archive is appropriate for the theme of the article in illustrating the dependency of good teacher-pupil relationship in providing effective teaching, it is seemingly 'incorrect' to portray it as part of a recent news relating to a subject discussed in Parliament concerning a new method of assessing teachers under the Enhanced Performance Measurement System, especially when it is published without prior permission from the person in the picture. This, however, is how it is with news reporting. Where a piece of news has been accepted for publishing by the press, all its content essentially becomes the property of the news agency, in which the agency reserve all rights to do anything they want with it. Such content once published is deemed to be for the 'public' eye, hence, can no longer be considered private, which would require the agency to seek permission before re-publishing. However, if the picture is being misused to convey something not relating to the original intent, the matter can then be brought up for scrutiny.Take the example of the news station that presented an archived video clip of the celebration by Iraqis after the September 11, 2001 event where the twin World Trade Center towers were destroyed in New York. This piece of news was telecast throughout the world and created much hatred, resulting in Gulf War II. The video clip in question, however, is not shown 'live' from Iraq, but from an archive in the library. In reality, nothing of that celebration took place, yet by telecasting the clip immediately after showing the video of what happened to the World Trade Center, audience's perception was misplaced, resulting in hate.The issue being discussed here is not to determine the extent in which the journalism code must be adhered or about what is and what is not ethical. It is about how audience must perceive news that is found in the newspapers and television news. To this end, my hope is for all of us as readers of news, to learn to see beyond what is written in the text, so as to decipher for ourselves what is true and untrue, what is real and unreal, and what is right or wrong.
Writing hard news is very different from writing features because it does not contain content of ideologies, anecdotes, or thoughts. It is not an editorial of opinions. It is all about facts.
The purpose of the inverted pyramid style of writing primarily serves the audiences and editors in the ways they read and edit articles. For the journalist, this method of writing reduces the time in processing thoughts and planning of how a story needs to be written. To the editors and gatekeepers, it allows a quick cut-off of content at the lower end of the story to fit the availability of space for print. To the readers, it allows quick content reading at a glance, with the gist of the story starting right from the beginning of the story, allowing them to move on to the next story even before the article is fully read.
For easier visualisation of how hard news is written, read my article on a court judgement at www.edvencomm.net.
