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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A feature story should help readers relate personally to the sources and issues involved, reflecting the human interest news value. At The (Toronto) Star, social justice reporter Laurie Monsebraaten focuses her stories about policy and data around humans.2 For instance, she told the story of a 22-year-old man with disabilities whose single mother was no longer eligible for child support payments from the man’s father:
Joshua Coates is a polite and friendly 21-year-old who reads and writes at the Grade 2 level. He has trouble paying attention, suffers from anxiety and obsessive compulsive behaviour and “will require the care and supervision of others throughout his life,” according to his doctor.
Joshua was born with Di George Syndrome, a genetic abnormality that causes multiple medical and psychiatric problems that his doctor says are “chronic, severe and debilitating.”
He is also at the heart of a constitutional challenge launched by his mother in a bid to have his biological father continue to support him.
—LAURIE MONSEBRAATEN, The (Toronto) Star3
Monsebraaten’s use of the family in her story resonated with readers, and her work prompted supporters to introduce an amendment changing the law to allow adult children with disabilities to receive support.
Many feature articles can also be considered enterprise stories. Enterprise stories are
