Professional Feature Writing

Professional Feature Writing provides an essential introduction to the basics of news media feature writing and establishes a solid foundation for students and writers making feature writing their careers.

This sixth edition offers a thorough and up-to-date look at newspapers, magazines, newsletters, and online publications, with emphasis on daily newspapers, consumer magazines, and online news. Special attention is paid to writing skills, feature story types, and the collegiate and professional writing life, and the text is filled with practical guidance for writing a wide variety of features, drawing on insights from both junior and experienced writers, editors, and publishers. Alongside a solid tour of forms and approaches to feature writing, the author includes lists of tips, observations, guidelines, sources, and story ideas.

New to this edition are:

• Three chapters covering interviewing and observation in features, social media in feature writing, and writing social trends features;
• Updated international examples of feature writing, integrated throughout the text;
• Additional and expanded discussion about writing features for online publications and the uses of social media in gathering information and reporting;
• Increased attention to multimedia and the impact of new technologies on the industry.

Building on introductory writing and reporting skills, this text is appropriate for upper-division journalism students learning feature writing and advanced writing topics. It will also serve as a valuable resource for freelance writers.