How To Write Special Feature Articles

How To Write Special Feature
Articles

The Project Gutenberg EBook of How To Write Special Feature
Articles
by Willard Grosvenor Bleyer This eBook is for the use of anyone
anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You
may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project
Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
www.gutenberg.net
Title: How To Write Special Feature Articles A Handbook for
Reporters, Correspondents and Free-Lance Writers Who Desire to
Contribute to Popular Magazines and Magazine Sections of
Newspapers
Author: Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
Release Date: April 26, 2005 [EBook #15718]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOW TO
WRITE SPECIAL FEATURE ***

Produced by Audrey Longhurst, Charlene Taylor and the Online

Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

HOW TO WRITE SPECIAL FEATURE ARTICLES
A HANDBOOK FOR REPORTERS, CORRESPONDENTS AND
FREE-LANCE WRITERS WHO DESIRE TO CONTRIBUTE TO
POPULAR MAGAZINES AND MAGAZINE SECTIONS OF
NEWSPAPERS
BY
WILLARD GROSVENOR BLEYER, PH.D.
_Author of "Newspaper Writing and Editing," and "Types of News
Writing"; Director of the Course in Journalism in the University of
Wisconsin_

BOSTON, NEW YORK, CHICAGO, SAN FRANCISCO
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
The Riverside Press CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS PRINTED
IN THE U.S.A.

PREFACE
This book is the result of twelve years' experience in teaching
university students to write special feature articles for newspapers and
popular magazines. By applying the methods outlined in the following
pages, young men and women have been able to prepare articles that
have been accepted by many newspaper and magazine editors. The
success that these students have achieved leads the author to believe
that others who desire to write special articles may be aided by the
suggestions given in this book.
Although innumerable books on short-story writing have been
published, no attempt has hitherto been made to discuss in detail the
writing of special feature articles. In the absence of any generally
accepted method of approach to the subject, it has been necessary to
work out a systematic classification of the various types of articles and
of the different kinds of titles, beginnings, and similar details, as well
as to supply names by which to identify them.
A careful analysis of current practice in the writing of special feature

stories and popular magazine articles is the basis of the methods
presented. In this analysis an effort has been made to show the
application of the principles of composition to the writing of articles.
Examples taken from representative newspapers and magazines are
freely used to illustrate the methods discussed. To encourage students
to analyze typical articles, the second part of the book is devoted to a
collection of newspaper and magazine articles of various types, with an
outline for the analysis of them.
Particular emphasis is placed on methods of popularizing such
knowledge as is not available to the general reader. This has been done
in the belief that it is important for the average person to know of the
progress that is being made in every field of human endeavor, in order
that he may, if possible, apply the results to his own affairs. The
problem, therefore, is to show aspiring writers how to present
discoveries, inventions, new methods, and every significant advance in
knowledge, in an accurate and attractive form.
To train students to write articles for newspapers and popular
magazines may, perhaps, be regarded by some college instructors in
composition as an undertaking scarcely worth their while. They would
doubtless prefer to encourage their students to write what is commonly
called "literature." The fact remains, nevertheless, that the average
undergraduate cannot write anything that approximates literature,
whereas experience has shown that many students can write acceptable
popular articles. Moreover, since the overwhelming majority of
Americans read only newspapers and magazines, it is by no means an
unimportant task for our universities to train writers to supply the
steady demand for well-written articles. The late Walter Hines Page,
founder of the _World's Work_ and former editor of the Atlantic
Monthly, presented the whole situation effectively in an article on "The
Writer and the University," when he wrote:
The journeymen writers write almost all that almost all Americans read.
This is a fact that we love to fool ourselves about. We talk about
"literature" and we talk about "hack writers," implying that the reading
that we do is of literature. The truth all the while is, we read little else
than the writing of the hacks--living hacks, that is, men and women
who write for pay. We may hug the notion that our life and thought are
not really affected by current literature, that we read the living writers

only for utilitarian reasons, and that our real intellectual life is fed by
the great dead