How To Write Special Feature Articles

ven't anything to write about, why write at all?" might be an easy answer. Most persons, as a matter of fact, have plenty to write about

the apparently prosaic round of everyday life will be found a variety of themes. A circular letter from a business firm announcing a new policy, a classified advertisement in a newspaper, the complaint of a scrub-wo

, for instance, are many topics. A year's experience with the family budget, a home-made device, an attempt to solve the servant problem, a method of making pin-money, a practical means of economizing in household management, are forms of personal experience that may be made interesting to newspaper a

other relevant material. When news comes from a distance, he can write to the persons most likely to have the desired information. In neither case can he be sure, until he has investigated, that

organization, the approach of the anniversary of an event, the election or appointment of a person to a position, an unusual occupation, an odd accident, an auction, a proposed municipal improvement, the arrival of a well

ons, and other forms of research, are to be found in printed bulletins, monographs, proceedings of organizations, scientific periodicals, and new books. Government publications-federal, state, and local-giving results of investigative work

rt, editor of Popular Sc

or our American engineering and chemical societies that cannot be made dramati

uable information that remains quite unknown to the average reader unless newspapers and magazines unearth it and present it in popular form. The popularizati

alism," Dr. Edwin E. Slosson, literary editor of the Indep

ed societies. The real revolutions are hatched in the laboratory and study. The papers read before the annual meetings of the scientific societies, and for the most part unnoticed by the press, contain more dynamite than was ever d

ratory and of the street. The modern journalist knows that anything can be made interesting to anybody, if he takes pains enough with the writing of it. It is not nec

ills. Ignorant we must always be of much that we need to know, but there is no excuse for remaining ignorant of what somebody on earth knows or has known. Rich treasure lies hidden in wha

of a cablegram is shortened. But how much more important it is to gain a few years in learning what the men who are in advance of their age are doing than to gain a few seconds in learning what the people of Europe are doing? This la

ture and magazine articles are (1) personal observation and experience, (2)

r feature articles in the course of his daily routine by being alive

an writer a good subject for a special article

an article on the task of getting out the annual directory in a larg

school in Kansas City was evidently the origin of a special feature s

building in Seattle suggested a special feature in the Seattle Post I

o desired to have a prescription filled, an incident which led him to write a special feature for the New York T

Herald, and from a story-telling hour at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts was evolved a feature sto

ing on about him. The specific instances given below, like those already menti

d sneak thieves in gaining entrance to houses and apartments, as he heard them related in trials

corn gave a writer a subject for an article on this "co

ced a concrete storage cellar for vegetables, and from an interview with the f

was from a woman on a farm five miles from town, who could easily have made the slight repairs herself if she had known a little about the water-supply system

en and case lots, suggested an article, afterwards published in the Merchan

nly afford good subjects and plenty of material but are more easily handled than most other subjects, because, being very real and vital to the writer, they ca

rolling street band to impersonating a convict in the state penitentiary. Thirty years ago, when women first entered the newspaper field as special feature writers, they were sometimes sent out on "freak" assignments for special features, such as feigning injury or insanity in order to gain entrance to hospitals in the guise of patients. Recently one

eriences, as is shown by the following newspaper and magazine articles b

ot in the residence district of a city of 100,000 popu

related in Good Housekeeping unde

se furnished a writer with the necessary informa

neer the suggestion for an article on the term "horse power" as appli

" was the title of a personal expe

ces of a farmer's wife in moving during the very early spri

uffalo was embodied in an article by a woman writ

ollege expenses have served as subjects for many spec

seful information. Results of experiments in solving various problems of household management are so constantly in demand by women's magazi

ty is the so-called "confession story." Told in the first person, often anonymously, a well-writte

given in confession form if the writer is able to secure sufficientl

nd of subjects that have been present

e life were given anonymously in the Outlook under

as "a frank exposure of real life below stairs in the average summer hotel," told how a student in a

er Buyer," an article exposing the methods employed by some

tobiography of a Young Business Man Who Nearly Went to Smash through Jea

of three confession articles, in Sunday issues of the Kansas City Star, written by

short articles on such topics as, "The Best Thing Experience has Taught Me," "How I Ove

en to the world through the columns of the daily press, these columns are scanned carefully by writers in search of suggestions. Any part of the paper, from the "want ads" to t

followed by a special feature story about him in

papers, so that white print paper might be produced from it, led a young writer to send for information to the discov

rities by means of a forged certified check, was made the basis of a special feature story

sheriff handled a strike suggested a personality sk

in a Middle Western state, led to two articles on why the little red schoolhouse fails

er boarders in their old farmhouse, was developed a practical article telling how to secure a

phases of home economics, are also printed in these bulletins. State industrial commissions publish reports that furnish valuable material on industrial accidents, working-men's insurance, sanitary conditions in factories, and the health of workers. Child welfare is treated in reports of federal, state, and city child-welfare boards. Th

suggest various possibilities

tion from Mine Gases, under the direction of the U.S. Bureau of Mines, supplied a writer in the Boston

a state university, on the best arrangement of a kitchen to save

cle on "the most successful farmer in the United States" and what he did with t

ts, were the basis of an article in the Outlook on "What is a Survey?" Reports of a simila

pular Science Monthly based on a chart prepared by the Russell Sage

had been prepared by the division of vital statistics of the Bureau of the Census, to show th

nted in the Ohio State Journal, was based entirely on a repo

valuable material that needs only to be popularized to be made attractive to the average reader. The printed proceedings of scientific and technical societies, including

s convention in Philadelphia, furnished a writer with material for an article on "Farmin

e entitled "The Control of Hunger in Health and Disease," furnished the subject for an article in the Illustrate

rial for an article entitled "What Chance Has

subject of a special feature in the New York Times,

the Sunday magazine of the New York Times, by means of material obtained from a report of

her material for articles that will be particularly appropriate at a given time. Holidays, seasonal events, and anniversaries may thus be anticipated, and special articles may be sen

es caused by carelessness. Months in advance, a writer might begin collecting news stories of dangerous fires resulting from carelessness; and

down after one Christmas all the information that she could get from her friends; and from these notes she wrote the article early in the followi

ly fall, when young men and women are preparing to go to college, but if in such an article a student writer intends to

feature story in the Kansas City Star, published the day before the anniversary. The day following the fifty-sixth anniversary of the discovery of petroleum in Pennsylvania, the New York Times printed in its Sunday magazine section a special article on the man who first found oil there.

what anniversaries are approaching; or they may glean such information from n

they are recorded at once. A small notebook that can be carried in the pocket or in a woman's hand-bag is most convenient. Besides topics for articles, the titles of books, reports, bulletins, and other publications mentioned in conversation or in newspapers, should be jotted down as possible sources of material. Facts and f

to hold newspaper clippings, printed reports, magazine articles, and photographs. In each envelope is kept the material pertaining to one subject in which the writer is interested, the character of the subject-matter being indicated on one side of the envelope, so that, as the envelopes stand on end, their contents c