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Feature Writing

An Interview about Interviewing

Layout: the rhythm section of your paper

Take your best shot

Fun With Features
By Ruth Nicastro

When I began working on a diocesan newspaper it seemed to me that the line between news and features was blurry to the point of nonexistence in our publication. If a news story is supposed to give the facts as they stand, while a feature story may analyze and comment and even reveal explicit biases, the distinction was in our case not very obvious. News stories adhered closely to the "party line," as defined by the bishop and diocesan officials; contrasting opinions had no place; subjects were selected because they enhanced that line; persons interviewed expressed it; stories that contradicted it were left to the secular press.

Two years later I had a chance to begin changing that when I became the novice editor with a firm commitment to put out a real newspaper where news was more than a reflection of official policy. It took a little negotiating, but my bishop did accept this approach and gradually came to be a strong supporter of it.

I don’t mean that I was given carte blanche to denigrate diocesan policy or publicly criticize the bishop or other diocesan officials. But then, I never wanted to do that. I always saw my work as a ministry, and tearing down the church wasn’t part of it. But thereafter we reported the news as fact, tried scrupulously to avoid the appearance of built-in endorsement, included interviews with people on all sides of an issue. In other words, we tried, as far as it is humanly possible, to keep our news stories unbiased. We introduced an Op-Ed page where opinions other than the bishop’s were presented.

And we used feature stories to elaborate on our news articles, encouraging people to express varying opinions and even allowing the writer’s own particular biases to show through. It was the feature articles that brought fun into producing the paper. After all, any diocesan paper has a certain amount of "must dos" each issue: what convention did, what council was up to, what visiting dignitaries had been around, how much shortfall there was going to be in the budget, what the ECW was doing.

In a feature article we could explain the history and background of an issue before convention. We could analyze in detail the implications of a decision, and explain why it was made. We could profile somebody who was just interesting, not official. Humor could creep in, as well as poignancy.

In a feature article we could use ADJECTIVES, which I pretty much forbade in the news pages. I used to tell people who wrote for the paper that they could say in the news report that the new altar hangings made specifically for an event were red, elaborate, in keeping with the theme, made by a group of elderly women confined to wheelchairs. In an accompanying feature they could say the hangings were magnificent, dramatic, exquisite, incredible, gorgeous, graceful (that is, if they were-if not, better skip the feature article). You could tell about the dexterity of those elderly fingers and the dedication of the women who designed and made the hangings.

Features are not a "nice addition" to the diocesan paper when space permits. They are essential. I am well aware that in any diocesan newspaper space is always a problem. There’s never enough room for all the news that should be in it, especially in a large diocese. But the larger the diocese, the more remote from its official circles people feel. It’s the editor’s job to keep those people feeling connected by making every page of the newspaper interesting and lively, a source for news not only from the center but also from the hinterlands, an introduction to some people and programs they’ve never heard about. Features help this community building more than almost anything else that a communications program can do.

You can let yourself go in a feature article. Your story may or may not have a news hook. You don’t have to give information in the order of its importance as you must in a news story. Your sentences can be little longer and much more colorful. You can argue a point and draw conclusions. The ending, to which you have carefully built, can show some ironic humor, or pose a challenging question, or state a position. The pyramid style of a good news story, in other words, is reversed in a feature.

Having said that, I hasten to add that a feature story is still a newspaper story. The writing must be clear and follow journalistic style. It shouldn’t wander. It should follow the style book used in the rest of the paper. (You can’t capitalize a certain word or title in the rest of the paper and fail to do so in a feature.) The lead is every bit as important as that in a news story: while you don’t have to answer those five "W" questions, you do have to grab the reader’s interest right off the bat.

The placement of a feature story is also critical. While it may be a sidebar to a news story, it shouldn’t seem to be tacked on. If it’s a stand-alone, try to place it where it will be the dominant story on the page. Wherever possible, it should be placed on a page that will not require a carry-over. Have fun with your features. Personally, I found a great deal of fun in all the things involved in putting out our paper; it was a ministry to which I felt truly called. But the most fun was in writing feature articles, or editing and placing those of other writers. Those articles are what you will remember doing long after you’re a retired editor, like me.

A diocesan editor must always walk a fine line between telling the unvarnished truth and remembering who pays your salary and why. Most diocesan editors also have a lot of other communications tasks to do besides putting out the paper, which is for must of us the real reason we stay on the job. Features are the one place you can follow your own inclinations, choose stories you want to print (rather than "must print"), put your heart into the task. So go for it. And enjoy!

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