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News features - the soft approach
A NEWS feature is a more artful or “softer” way of approaching hard news. It uses what journalists calls a “delayed intro”, in which the main thrust of the story is “delayed” until the third or fourth paragraph.
Here’s a story from the Associated Press.
RALEIGH,
North Carolina (AP) -- Home for Christmas after nearly a year in the
Middle East, Navy Reservist Paul Berkley was making up for lost time
with his family.
He
arrived Wednesday, in time to hear his 18-year-old son, Zeke, sing the
national anthem with his high school chorus. On Friday, he and
16-year-old stepdaughter Becky ate pizza, watched movies and danced.
By
Sunday, the 46-year-old sailor was dead, shot once in the head during a
walk in the park with his wife, Monique. She now stands charged with
his slaying, along with two men -- her alleged teenage lover and her
stepdaughter's boyfriend.
“It's
all just so ironic, isn't it?” Becky Berkley wrote Tuesday on her
own blog, MistressBecky, as her stepmother was making her first court
appearance.
“My
dad was in the Middle East for months and months and didn't get
shot,” she wrote. “Then he came home, where you'd assume
he'd be much safer... and then, all this happened.”
Monique
Berkley, 26, was ordered jailed without bond. Andrew Canty, the man who
moved in with her during her husband's deployment, and Latwon Johnson,
both 18, also were denied bond. They were in the process of being
assigned public defenders.
The shooting occurred early Sunday morning, four days after Berkley returned from Bahrain for Christmas break.
Notice
how the writer brings in colour, personality and emotion into the
story. It was days after the killing so it needed a softer treatment.
If this was written in hard news style, possibly as soon as police arrested the suspects, it may have read like this.
“A
US Navy reservist was shot and killed only days after returning home
from duty in Iraq. Police said the man’s wife and her alleged
teenage lover have been taken into custody.”
The
above is one of many possible intros. Of course, what can be written at
such an early stage of the story is only what the police decide to
reveal.
News
features can be of many types. The most common deal with issues –
government, environment, policies … the list can go on.
My
personal opinion is that news features are the way to go for newspapers
and media organisations who are left behind by the Internet.
I
still see so-called top newspapers using wire stories that are a day
old and no attempt made to update or add value. This was okay around 10
years ago. But with the Internet, once a major story breaks, it’s
out on the web within hours, if not minutes.
Newspapers need to find ways to add value to these stories because many of their readers would have read them on the web.
That’s my opinion, anyway.
*****************************
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