Know your newspaper 5.0 – Features

In the past four articles of this series, we have discussed many different aspects of a newspaper in terms of hard news. Yes, news can be hard, not kidding. These are stories that are based on facts and talk about urgent things. However, there are soft stories too! Most of them come under the category of features. Although these stories are also based on facts, the writer has more freedom in choosing the structure and language of the story. There are separate sections for lifestyle, health, fashion and food — all features.

A story about the damage caused by the floods is a hard news story, whereas, one about a little girl going back to her school that has been repaired after the floods is a feature. To be more specific, it would be a news feature story because it is related to an event that is important and has been covered by hard news story sections. In terms of placement, this story can be placed near the hard news story about the damage or as a separate special.

One of the most important things to keep in mind about news is that there is a lot of overlapping. After the demise of a well-known, well-loved celebrity, newspapers are bound to have all kinds of stories — a news story announcing the demise, a feature story about the life of the celebrity and obituaries written by people who knew them well.

This is a health story which follows the inverted pyramid structure and at the same time gives you an understanding of what the family must be going through. That latter makes it a soft story.

There are various sub-categories of feature articles – we will discuss them super soon!

This article is a part of a series about the world of newspapers — read part four here.

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Jagruti Verma
With a little experience of feature writing and subbing on her resume, Jagruti strives to get better with each piece of writing she works on. You can connect with her on Twitter at @JagrutiVerma