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Feature writing (general)

SINCE features tend to have greater length and complexity, more time needs to be allowed for gathering the material and writing it up than in news reports. The required skills are also more varied. The work is often specialized both in subject and market; feature writers on top of reporting ability, have to be versed in finding ideas and fitting them to markets, in researching at greater depth, in planning an effective structure and evolving a style for articles that analyse, explain and argue with conviction and readability, and do these things in terms of a targeted readership. (See notes on style and structure on pages 61–3.)

Some young writers find they are better at originating ideas than in buiding on them, or better at accumulating material than in communicating it effectively. Your first attempts at feature writing will reveal which areas need to be given extra attention.

You will need from the start to adopt a professional attitude: write articles that are aimed at real readers; market study your targets, be they newspapers or magazines, to make sure your topic has not been covered there recently.

Record how long it takes to research and get an article together and compare the work hours with the fee you would expect. Find ways of speeding up tasks that are taking too long. It is a myth to assume that feature writers, with their looser rein, have all the time in the world compared to reporters. Timeliness is of the essence; deadlines must be kept.

The labels given in this book to the various kinds of feature writing assignments are for convenience of presentation. Some will overlap; a particular article may have the elements of several kinds.

 

Whether you work on the staff of a publication or are being taugh feature writing on a course, however, it is the briefing for the feature in hand that counts, be it from your editor or your college tutor. From this must stem your approach and handling of the subject.

An important note on purely writing exercises: students rehashing stories from newspapers or magazines or from press release as pieces of work for tutors should attach cuttings and relevant sources so that a writing exercise is not made to look like original investigative work. It is a good idea also to include, with any work, a cover sheet listing useful background information such as the source of the idea, the briefing (even if it is your own), research sources and contacts with names and telephone numbers. These are useful for a subeditor trying to settle queries on a feature or for tutors assessing the work.

The summary sheet format on page 26 is somewhat filler than that recommended by the Royal Society of Arts for NVQs to Journalism but it can be modifed for less complex pieces of work.

BACKGROUNDERS

BACKGROUNDERS or ‘current situation’ articles are timely features pegged closely to a current event that bear with them something of the urgency of a news report. They may explain the causes of the news events analyse its implications, predict its consequences. They may go alongside the news item on the page or appear on another page, perhaps with a cross-reference, or they may follow in the next issue.

On local newspapers or in periodicals a backgrounder may follow up a news item on an accident a disaster, an unusual crime or perhaps some Government legislation that impinges on the community. It might even take the form of a personality piece following the advancement or retirement of an important local figure and will thus qualify under two headings in the assignments that follow.

A train crashes in your area leaving several people dead and many injured. The reporters have ascertained the main facts and interviewed people on the scene.

 

TASK

Provide a 250-word background piece by visiting some of the houses overlooking thetrack to see what effect the disaster has had on their lives, what impressions they can give of events leading up to the disaster, and to what extent the crash has disrupted the lives of the people involved in it.

Notes: Disasters do not happen to meet your requirements as a student or trainee journalist and so this has to be a simulated ‘event’ in which your colleagues and fellow students have to do some role-playing. In talking to the ‘people’ you are probing beyond actualities; looking for opinions, worries, speculation even. For interviewing techniques see Hennessy: Writing Feature Articles 2nd Edition (Focal Press, 1993), chapters 9 and 13 and 162–76, and Harris and Spark: Practical Newspaper Reporting (Focal Press), pages 36–48.

 

A new garden tool factory opens on the outskirts of your town. Your paper has reported the main facts including what it is likely to do for employment in the area.

 

TASK	Provide a 350-word follow-up feature for the paper’s next issue based on an interview with the managing director giving his/her impressiom of the area, his/her own view of the factory’s potential and items of general and local interest about their products.
	Notes: Very much a personality piece in which atmosphere and description can interlace with Information, As a student, you need a good ‘simulated’ managing director for this one. See Hennessy and Harris and Spark (as above) on interviewing.

 

Backgrounders in consumer magazines and the national tabloids will sometimes present complex national issues in human terms by looking at the effects of legislation through interviews, examples and anecdotes. An article in the magazine Time Out, for example, looked at the way, in its view, Londoners were suffering from the effects of the Government’s health reforms. Borrow this idea and set it in the context of the readers of your local paper.

 

TASK 1	After checking corefulfy through newspaper cuttings files, or the files maintained by your course, on the Government’s recent health reforms, set up local interviews with, say, two doctors and two nurses, or other knowledgeable medical personnel (explaining that you are carrying out a student exercise) and write a 600-word backgrounder on the way reforms in the health service have affected your local area
TASK 2	Alternatively (or as well as), check through recent newspaper cuttings on any controversial local council decision reported in the press, set up interviews with people involved or affected by it, and write a 600-word backgrounder on local reaction to the decision.
	Notes: The idea of this assignment is to produce a follow-up backgrounder by gathering information and interviewing people Involved in an actual rather than a simulated event until you have enough material to produce a feature which will cast light on or demonstrate reaction to a situation. Task 2 might be easier to set up.
	Points to watch: 1 Beware of drawing weighty conclusions from too little evidence. 2 Be prepared to admit that on the basis of what you have found opinion appears to be divided. 3 Let the evidence you gather form the basis of the conclusion (rather than bend the conclusion to support a preconceived idea).

 

Several policemen were charged during 1994 with assaulting members of the public. Among them was a widely covered case of a constable who slapped the face of a 14-year-old boy who tormented old people by ringing doorbells. The constable was fined £100 and ordered to pay the teenager £50 compensation. Find similar cases from files and cuttings noting both the official police view and public reaction. Talk to at least two interviewees, including a senior police officer, to get opposing viewpoints.

 

TASK	Write a 1000-word article aimed at a broadsheet Sunday feature page considering whether the police code of conduct in these matters needs to be relaxed.
	Notes: Avoid oversimplifying this complex question. Explain clearly where the limits are drawn in police behaviour and the reasoning behind them. Help readers to see all sides of the argument, but help them also to make up their own minds.

SPIN-OFFS/FOLLOW-UPS

WHETHER you are a staff or freelance journalist, you should be on the lookout for spin-off or follow-up features from material you have gathered and used as a feature writer. Some specific aspect might warrant being developed for an entirely different market.

For students and trainee journalists it is difficult to exploit this side of feature writing but it is useful, as an exercise, to take a published feature and inject new material into it to re-angle it as for a different publication – provided that it remains a student exercise and that your source material is clearly identified.

 

Take a published feature from your local paper which you think could be adapted or developed for a consumer magazine, and:

TASK 1	Write a 500-word article for the publication you have in mind incorporating suitable new material
TASK 2	Explain in 200 words why you think your idea is suitable for the market chosen.
TASK 3	List the sources you have used to rework the feature, including legwork and interviewing.
	Notes: This could be a model for a variety of spin-off and follow-up feature exercises and is useful marketing practice for intending freelances.

 

A reverse form of spin-off is one that has its origins in a more general article, perhaps in a national paper or magazine. Assume you have seen a piece in The Guardian of the causes on truancy. You decide to look into truancy in your local paper’s area.

 

TASK 1	Explain in 200 words how you would go about creating such a feature, the sources you would use andthe angles you would look for, and also ideas for illustration.
TASK 2	Write a 600-word feature using the material you have turned up, aimed for use in four local paper.
	Notes: Again, a useful model and one easy to set up for those on courses since there is no need for simulation. Provided your approach is right most organizations are sympathetic to students working on projects for the class or college magazine. See Hennessy, pages on marketing, chapters 2 and 13; also Davis: Magazine Journalism Today (Focal Press, 1992) pages 44–5.

INTERVIEW FEATURES AND PROFILES

UNLIKE reporting in which interest in an interviewee is usually shortlived, the feature interview in its various forms requires a good deal of planning and concentration.

A news angle on which an interview is pegged – the opening of a play, publication of a book, escape from death, release from prison, etc. – will give a good start but even in these areas people come in all sorts and types. There are the rude and difficult, the ebullient talkers, the publicity seekers, the shrinking violets, the suspicious of the press.

Different people – and indeed different purposes – require different text formats. Most common is quotes embedded in a descriptive/expository text with parts summarized in indirect speech. This is the normal format for the rounded portrait or profile.

Some feature interviews are edited into one long quote with a stand-first giving the main facts about the interviewee and setting the scene. The more formal questions-and-answers format is suitable for interviews focusing on argument rather than personality.

Whatever the format, the questions should reflect what the reader of that particular publication will want to know. It is best for interviewers to see themselves as being there on the readers’ behalf. And it is the subject’s views that are wanted, not the interviewer’s.

It is important to research the interviewee’s background thoroughly before the interview and to plan at least the main questions, mixing leading questions with open-ended ones such as, ‘What do you think of…?’

Some interviewers prefer to let the subject talk away with just a few signposts on the route. This can produce unexpected gems but can land the journalist with a mountain of tape to edit. The best advice is for the interviewer to be prepared to be flexible to suit the occasion and the time available. It is also important to agree at the interview which answers are to be off the record.

CELEBRITIES, whether national or local, provide plum material for journalist interviewers but celebrities are hard to come by for student or trainee journalists.

Here is one way in which the handling of celebrity material can be tried.

 

Collect and file over a given period of newspaper and magazine interviews with a number of celebrities – Richard Branson, Sir John Gielgud, Salman Rushdie and Elton John are examples, but choose your own. Consult the British Humanities Index or similar and collect and file cuttings of your own about your chosen names. Note the questions asked in interviews and the sort of information revealed. Note interviewers who seem to bring out the boring and the stereotyped and those who bring out new or interesting material. Where possible seek material from agents and publicists, mentioning that you are engaged on a student project.

TASK 1	Write a 600-word scissors-and-paste story, based on published inter-views, about one of the celebrities you have chosen aimed at the readers of a popular magazine.
TASK 2	Take three of the celebrities you have chosen and list the contracts (agents, press officers, film companies, etc.) you would use to try to obtain an interview in each case, List ten questions you would ask each of the celebrities.
	Notes: By this means you at least get some way inside their lives and can formulate the approach you would take if you were conducting an actual interview. But beware of stealing other writers’ work; such projects are strictly for student use only.

 

Showbusiness people and authors are good subjects but they plan their publicity carefully and are fussy about which publication an interview appears in.For the purposes of these assignments they are on the whole unapproachable, but it is quite possible that a student or trainee journalist, combing through the people they have met or are connected with, will find they know someone who acts, sings or writes books, or has celebrity status of some sort.

It is possible that such a person will be happy to be chosen as a subject and will be pleased to oblige if they know it is a student project. It is worth a try.

TASK 1	Write a 600-word interview with a celebrity you know as if it were to appear in The Guardian newspaper.
TASK 2	Write up the interview at the same length as if it were to appear in The Sun.
TASK 3	Write up your material a third time and aim it for use in your college magazine.
	Notes: It is a good idea to look at several issues of each publication chosen to study the style, the sort of slant usually taken and to try to assess the readership market. The arts section in The Guardian and the showbiz pages in The Sun are two different worlds, while a college magazine with a different readership again, might provide some useful local leads and angles, not to say ‘in’ references.

 

As a likely route to interviews with real persons, choose one of the following five people in your area (i.e., the one to whom you can most likely gain access) as an interview subject:

1 A Church of England minister who is against women clergy.

2 An AIDS patient who has contracted the disease from a lover.

3 A GP who has views on the over-prescription of tranquillizers by the profession.

4 A geriatric nurse wiling to talk about mistreatment of elderly patients in homes.

5 A school teacher willing to talk about how the National Curriculum could be improved.

 

TASK 1	Conduct an interview with your chosen person and write a 500-word feature module aimed at forming part of a larger investigation into the subject.
TASK 2	List ten questions you have asked your interviewee on the chosen subject.
TASK 3	Explain in about 600 words the sort of questions you would expect to have asked the other four interviewees.
	Notes: This assignment contains both the possibility of an actual interview (those on courses would have to stress it is for a student project) and the opportunity of planning questions for interviews dealing with specific subjects – i.e., rather than personal profiles.

 

A usefull personal profile interview could be set up like this: Choose someone you know only as a colleague or classmate but who is willing to be a subject. Formulate questions that go further than the obvious and build up from the answers a picture of the real person within. Supplement your questions and answers with some discreet inquiries among friends and colleagues of your subject.

TASK 1	Using selected interview material and supplementary sources, write a 600-word personal profile aimed at a college or course magazine.
TASK 2	Go through the same process in reverse with yourself as the subject.
	Notes: This sort of interview could be duplicated endlessly with each student or trainee in turn becoming a guinea pig, spreading around the experience. A useful spin-off result could be the publication of a selection of the profiles in the college magazine or student newspaper.

 

Choose as an interview subject an expert practitioner of one of the less common sports such as archery, croquet, royal tennis, hang gliding or snorkelling and fortify yourself with a book on the sport.

TASK 1	Write a 500-word ‘what makes them tick’ piece based on your interview material and aimed at a local paper’s sports page.
TASK 2	Explain briefly any special points you would have to keep in mind in interviewing for the sports page and the sort of information you would fry to bring out from your practitioner.
	Notes: Another interview project that can be done with real subjects. It would be worth seeking the co-operation of the local paper’s editor to try to get an arrangement for the best to be published.

 

The comic and the odd can be exploited in an interview feature if you have the right sort of person. Such interviews are easier than most to set up since those doing out-of-the ordinary things are often quite happy to talk about themselves. Select one (or two) of the following, if they are willing:

 

◊ A much tattooed person.

◊ Anageing punk rocker.

◊ A steeplejack.

◊ A collector of garden gnomes.

◊ A snake lover.

◊ A dude cowboy.

 

TASK 1	Write a 600-word interview feature on one (or two) of the above characters aimed at a popular magazine.
TASK 2	Explain in 300 words the approach you would take and the sort of questions you would ask of the person(s) you have chosen.
	Notes: With such characters avoidat all costs making fun of them. Your aim is to get the person’s confidence in the hope that an unusual interview will result

SEASONAL FEATURES

FEATURES pegged to the season or time of the year, including anniversaries, are always in demand and are a lucrative source of income for freelances. Dates of murders, disasters, inventions, births, deaths… the list is endless, as is the parade of activities and events through spring, summer, autumn and winter that give timeliness to many a features page.

The trick for the young freelance is to come up with something new, or with a new angle on the familiar. Remember, however, to come up with your idea in good time. Newspapers might work a few days ahead on their features pages but with magazines you have to suit the gestation period of the one you choose. There is many a Christmas number that has been set up in September.

Good tip: the active freelance keeps a folder of cuttings and other materials supporting seasonal ideas – perhaps a concertina file with a pocket for each month.

School, university and careers provide landmarks in young lives. Select one of the following subjects and work out ideas for a seasonal feature:

◊ Starting primary school.

◊ Starting secondary school.

◊ Starting university.

◊ Starting work.

 

TASK 1	Write a 600-word feature aimed at your local evening paper.
TASK 2	Write a 1,000-word feature aimed at a general interest magazine.
TASK 3	Select a second subject from the four and repeat tasks 1 and 2.
	Notes: Back to school/university articles, as well as anumber of other seasonal subjects, havean added draw for editors in that they encourage seasonal advertising – not a thing to be sneezed at if you are trying to sell an article. Remember, however, that writing an independent feature is quite a different thing from writing, or contributing to, an advertising feature in which you might be expected to mention certain merchandise.

File and study cuttings of seasonal features in a variety of publications on the following subjects: seasonal shop sales, the summer holidays, Easter and Christmas.

TASK 1	Write 800 words on how you would go about finding something new to say, and ideas you would want to try, if asked to write on these subjects.
TASK 2	Think up an idea on a seasonal theme – as original as you can make it – and write a 700-word piece aimed at the week-end magazine page of your local evening paper.
	Notes: This can be the fun side of earning a living for a freelance but real ingenuity is called for. It is too easy to look at Christmas and spring-cleaning through jaded eyes. Find some fresh information or a new way of approaching the familar, although solid information needs to be given to the reader, too.

 

Bank Holiday Monday is the occasion for some dotty, publicity-seeking and sometimes dangerous events. You see an advert: ‘Wakehurst Gliding Club is holding its annual charity day for Mencap. There will be trial fights for £20 – free if you raise £50 in sponsorship…’

TASK	Find out what odd or unusual events are being arranged for May or August Bank Holiday in your area and write a 600-word ‘silly season’ feature about them aimed at your local paper.
	Notes: Light-hearted or fun pieces are welcome at holiday times – known in newspaper offices as the silly season – and here is a subject you could really stretch yourself on. But beware again of making fun of people who are genuinely doing their bit for a needy charity. Let the bizarre or the unusual speak for itself.

 

The following anniversaries have been selected from Chambers Dictionary of Dates:

 

28 January, 1596: Death of Sir Francis Drake at sea from dysentery.

15 May, 1895: Death of Joseph Whitaker, founder of Whitaker’s Almanack.

19 May, 1795: Death of James Boswell, biographer of Dr Johnson.

14 May, 1895: The first stage knighthood conferred on Henry Irving.

24 June, 1895: World heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey born in Manassa, Colorado.

11 September, 1895: The original FA Cup stolen from the window display of a shop in Newton Row, Birmingham.

 

TASK 1	Suggest in 200 words for each date your idea for a 600-word feature targeted at a particular publication. Say what research you would do. Include one person you would try to interview by telephone. Say why you have chosen the particular publication.
TASK 2	Select one date and write a 600-word feature as targeted.
	Notes: You need more than just history and anecdotes for this sort of feature article. The best idea is to link the anniversary to a contemporary topic or event or to find some means of casting new light on the original event. Such features are often much used in mass-circulation publications so if your feature is aimed at one of these be sure your style and content are correctly geared.

OPINION PIECES

OPINION and comment can be found in most newspaper and magazine features but there are specific types of features – the leader or editorial opinion is one – in which the writer’s main aim is to promote or support an idea or to build the whole text round an opinion.

The writer has perhaps been given rein to be controversial, or is noted for his/her forthright views. A ‘think piece’ in a contrasting voice can boost a publication’s claim to be independent. Often, the idea is to set people talking and create feedback in the form of readers’ letters. See Hennessy, chapter 5 on themes and chapter 11 on writing techniques.

The following leader appears in your local paper:

‘Collective worship should be carried out daily in schools. That was given the force of law by the 1944 Education Act. Yet head teachers are almost unanimously of the opinion that morning assembly should be a matter for the discretion of individual schools.

Religious education teaching, they argue, including study of the world’s major faiths, ensures that Christianity continues to enjoy a dominant role. But we believe that assemblies are the only way children will experience the benefits of worship, and that they are necessary for a fall appreciation of Christianity. Parents will keep their right to withdraw their children from such assemblies if they are against their principles. But the Government should be supported in this.’

Read this carefully and tackle the following tasks:

TASK 1	Describe what inquiries you would make to provide facts and background to help you.
TASK 2	Adopting broadly the style of the leader, write one of a similar length taking an alternative view of the subject.
	Notes: With an editorial opinion there is seldom room for sitting on the fence. What the reader expects to see – and what the editor requires – is the newspaper’s policy firmly spelt out. You are the persuader, even if the opinions to which you are giving word do not entirely coincide with your own.

Your weekly paper is running a news story saying that the Tory-run Catewoodham district council, in the wake of increased burglaries and muggings, have decided to establish uniformed community safety patrols in the town. They will be in marked vehicles with radios. Exact powers have yet to be decided but the patrols will probably be able to make citizens’ arrests. It is estimated that it will add £25 to each householder’s annual tax, Police chiefs are for it but Labour councillors are against it. Your paper supports the idea.

TASK 1	Write a 200-word leader in favour of the council’s proposal. It is needed in 40 minutes for the edition. Try to stick to this deadline; it is how leaders are born.
TASK 2	You are appalled at the idea and you also secretly write a 200-word leader opposing it.
	Notes: Either way you need to adopt a punchy approach to what is a controversial scheme. Be prepared to put up good reasons and arguments.

Consider the following arguments suggesting that the Commonwealth is more important to Britain than is the EEC:

 

1 We have snubbed the Commonwealth since joining the EEC.

2 There are historic links with Britain that make the Commonwealth uniquely strong.

3 The Commonwealth has been turning against us since its members have had independence.

4 The Commonwealth countries are now grown up and are no longer suspicious of hidden imperialistic motives in our relationship.

5 The most rapidly growing economies in the Commonwealth are its Asian members.

6 ‘The British Commonwealth, with about a billion and a half people largely concentrated in areas of high potential growth, is a brilliant twenty-first century concept’ – Lord Rees-Mogg.

 

TASK	Write a 600-word think piece, aimed at a political weekly, outlining the argument either for or against strengthening links with the Commonwealth.
	Notes: The think piece does not need the partisanship and verbal punch of a leader but it needs nevertheless to be persuasively argued with opposing views and arguments being noted and dealt with. It is often effective to begin by standing up the opposing argument and then knocking it down or revealing the holes in it.

 

The following are some of the points made at the time of writing by people in favour of decriminalizing soft drugs:

 

1 Drug seizures are expensive and raise the price of dregs on the streets.

2 The seizures do nothing to reduce demand.

3 More than half British teenagers use cannabis and Ecstasy.

4 Alcohol and tobacco would not be legalized if introduced today.

5 Ecstasy-using teenagers will not listen to smoking-and-drinking adults who warn them off it.

6 The law does not deter drug users.

7 A Sunday Times survey revealed that four out of five chief constables are in favour of decriminalization.

8 In the US it is estimated that more than three-quarters of all crime is related to illegal drugs.

9 Legalizing drugs would reduce use and control misuse.

 

TASK 1	Add to each of the above nine points two further sentences incorporating:   (a) The ‘but’ of it, or reservation or argument against. (b) Ẏour own off-the-cuff attitude.
TASK 2	Do some selective research through cuttings and reference sources on the nine points and devise a schematic outline for a feature taking into account the points, or those of them you want to use.
TASK 3	Put together a 1000-word opinion piece aimed at a general-interest magazine on your attitude to decriminalizing soft drugs in Britain, weather for or against.
	Notes: Drugs is a subject that has wide exposure in the press so you need more than just a mop-up of the current situation to grab the reader. You need a firm point of view, some potent figures and some persuasive writing. More personalized arguments are dealt with in Chapter 3, pages 45–63.

FORMULA AND HOW-TO ARTICLES

AMONG the general features in demand by popular magazines (and a great incentive to freelance beavering) are formula pieces on the lines of ‘TheWorld’s Biggest…’, ‘TheTruth About…’, ‘Where Are They Now?’, ‘A Day in the Life of…’ and similar.

A topical peg is still a useful prop upon which to hang such a feature but it is not essential since the reader’s expectations are already whetted by the formula title. The essential thing is to go for the mysterious, the bizarre and the unusual and to keep the writing pithy and well paced.

A rival in courting reader attention in this lighter end of the market is the ‘How-to’ feature: how to improve your love life, your dinner parties, your health, your popularity, your child’s behaviour, even your brain power.

Formulas are covered by Hennessy, chapter 4 and how-to articles in chapter 5.

Consider the title ‘Before you Kill Yourself’ – once used in a Reader’s Digest series -and use it to practise this light-hearted and potentially lucrative side of feature writing.

TASK	List ten points you want to make under the above title and embody them in a 900-word feature aimed at a popular magazine.
	Note: See below.

 

The ‘how to complain’ formula has spawned a number of amusing magazine articles and books. Consider the title ‘How to Complain about Your Neighbours’.

TASK	Write a 700-word amusing but slightly barbed feature with this title based on at least one interview and such research as you can carry out.
	Notes: See below.

 

‘Did You Know?’ makes a good potential title for a series of formula features. Some fact in a newspaper or comment in conversation strikes a chord that reminds you of a childhood experience or sets you beavering through reference books for something you half remember. Or it gives you a sudden insight into an aspect of human behaviour. Here is a did-you-know that may do none of these things – but consider it an ingredient of a short formula feature:

‘The drumming of the fingers by nervous people boosts blood circulation to the bain by a quarter. This makes for better, more agile minds and improves the memory.’

TASK 1	Fine out more about this assertion and turn it into a 200-word fixed spot magazine feature.
TASK 2	Pursuing the medical theme and using the same research sources dig out three more ‘did you knows’ and write 200 words on each.
	Notes: Formula features like the above ones, often anchored in a fixed regular spot and sometimes accompanied by a line drawing, can make compulsive reading in a popular newspaper or magazine. Whether they are thumbnail ones like Assignment 22 or full length articles they require accurate sourcing, mainly in reference books, and a light compact style.
	The writer must be able to pursue ideas through sources, to translate quite technical information into conversational language and to be able to spot oddity and absurdity in unlikely contexts. Above all, where the formula is part of a series the writer must store up ideas or references for future use. A much-liked long-running formula feature can gobble up material.

REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING

Chambers Dictionary of Dates, 2nd Edition (Chambers, 1990).

Davis, A: Magazine Journalism Today (Focal Press, 1992)

Harris, G and Spark, D: Practical Newspaper Reporting, 2nd Edition (Focal Press, 1994).

Hennessy, B: Writing Feature Articles, 2nd Edition (Focal Press, 1993).