Archive for April 15th, 2008
Changing the pace: feature stories
Based upon our class discussion of feature stories and different leads, Nanci Hellmich’s human interest piece on a man’s struggle with weight loss, “Coming right up: Improved health,” was the most interesting. Found in the Life Section of USA Today, the story discussed the life changing eating habits of a restaurant chain owner.
Hellmich began with a narrative lead explaining the point of interest, the location of the story, as well as the focus and direction of the story.
In her second paragraph she introduced details that would induce interest and appealed to human emotion. She begins her story by explaining who she is focusing the story around. Instead of introducing the nut graf in the second paragraph, she explains the newsworthy quality of the topic.
Her third paragraph is the nut graf, explaining the basis for the story, more details, and other emotional appeals. However, I found her feature story to be jaunting after reading several articles in the inverted pyramid style. In addition, Hellmich uses a chronological order to format her details.
Furthermore, the use of present tense and more details led the diction in the article away from concise, and efficient wording. The wording was extremely free flowing, and excessive, yet still left questions for the readers.
