Professional Feature Writing

443 Pages·2009·1.35 MB·English

by  Bruce Garrison

Professional Feature Writing
Professional Feature Writingprovides the basics of news media feature writing and establishes
a solid foundation for students and writers making feature writing their career. This fifth edition
offers a thorough and up-to-date look at newspaper, magazine, newsletter, and online
publications, with emphasis on daily newspapers and consumer magazines. It serves as a
comprehensive introduction to feature writing, emphasizing writing skills, article types, and
the collegiate and professional writing life. With a wide variety of perspectives and experiences
of both young and experienced writers, editors, publishers, and professors, the text is filled
with practical guidance for writing a wide variety of features.
Emphasizing writing values to strengthen a new writer’s journalistic practices, author Bruce
Garrison offers insights and expertise based on his own experience and the advice of
professionals. He also includes lists of tips, observations, guidelines, sources, and story ideas,
and gives a solid tour of the forms and approaches to feature writing.
New for this edition are:
• Updated examples of feature writing, integrated throughout the text
• Profiles of young newspaper and magazine feature writers, highlighting their
experiences and paths to success in the profession
• Coverage of computer-based research tools for writers, including discussion of
on-line computer-based research tools with specific focus on the World Wide Web
• Discussion of online newspapers, magazines, newsletters, and original online
publications and the role of feature writing for electronic publications
• Each chapter includes excerpts and complete articles from the nation’s leading
publications.
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.
Dr. Bruce Garrison is Professor of Journalism at the University of Miami, where he teaches
feature writing and travel writing. He supervises the National Parks Feature Writing Project
and conducts research about new technologies in journalism. He also oversees an annual summer
study-abroad feature writing course in the People’s Republic of China and the Shanghai Student
Journalism Project. He has authored numerous books for the journalism discipline, including
reporting, writing, and online journalism.
Communication Series
Jennings Bryant/Dolf Zillman, General Editors
Selected titles in Journalism (Maxwell McCombs, Advisory Editor) include:
Real Feature Writing, Second Edition
Aamidor
Communicating Uncertainty
Media Coverage of News and Controversial Science
Friedman/Dunwoody/Rogers
Qualitative Research in Journalism
Taking it to the Streets
Iorio
Twilight of Press Freedom
The Rise of People’s Journalism
Merrill/Gade/Blevens
Public Journalism and Public Life, Second Edition
Why Telling the News Is Not Enough
Merritt
Reviewing the Arts, Third Edition
Titchener
Professional
Feature Writing
Fifth Edition
Bruce Garrison
Please visit the companion website at
www.routledge.com/textbooks/9780415998970
First edition published 1989
Second edition published 1994
Third edition published 1999
Fourth edition published 2004
by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
This edition published 2010
by Routledge
270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016
Simultaneously published in the UK
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library,2009.
To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.
© 1989, 1994, 1999, 2004 Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
© 2010 Taylor & Francis
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying
and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Garrison, Bruce, 1950–.
Professional feature writing/by Bruce Garrison.—5th ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Feature writing. I. Title.
PN4784.F37G37 2009
808(cid:2).06607—dc22 2009006694
ISBN 0-203-87284-3 Mastere-bookISBN
ISBN10: 0–415–99898–0 (hbk)
ISBN10: 0–415–99897–2 (pbk)
ISBN10: 0–203–87284–3 (ebk)
ISBN13: 978–0–415–99898–7 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978–0–415–99897–0 (pbk)
ISBN13: 978–0–203–87284–0 (ebk)
Contents
About the Author vii 10
Acknowledgments ix Entertainment Features and Critical
Preface xi Writing 185
11
Part One
Aftermath, Follow-Up, and Depth
THE BASICS 1
Series Articles 216
1
12
Feature Writing Today 3
Travel Writing 229
2
13
Careers as Feature Writers and
Service Features 256
Editors 16
14
3
Personal Experience Articles 275
Finding Good Feature Article Ideas 38
15
4
Humor in Feature Writing 289
Researching Feature Article Ideas 60
16
5
New Technology and Science Features 309
The Writing, Story Telling, and
Editing Processes 81
Part Three
THE COLLEGIATE AND
Part Two
PROFESSIONAL WRITER 331
TYPES OF FEATURE ARTICLES 105
17
6
Writing Feature Articles on Campus 333
Descriptive and Color Writing 107
18
7
Freelance Writing and Marketing 348
The Human-Interest Article 124
19
8
Surviving in the Freelance Business 372
Profiles and Personality Sketches 144
9 Appendix A
Seasonal Features 168 World Wide Web Resources 391
vi Contents
Appendix B Appendix E
Pennsylvania Angler & Boater American Society of Journalists
Guidelines for Contributors 393 and Authors Code of Ethics and
Fair Practices 403
Appendix C
Freelance Letters of Agreement of
References 407
National Geographic Society 397
Index 418
Appendix D
Code of Ethics of the Society of
Professional Journalists 400
About the Author
Dr. Bruce Garrison is a professor in the Journalism Program of the School of Communication
at the University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL. He teaches graduate and undergraduate level
journalism and mass communication courses. Among them is a class focusing on feature writing
and another on travel writing. He is a long-time resident of Miami.
Garrison has written full-time for daily newspapers, occasionally serves as a freelance
travel writer, and has taken on freelance assignments for industry magazines. He has worked
as a reporter, feature writer, and/or copy editor for the Lexington Herald-Leader,Hattiesburg
(MS) American, Knoxville News-Sentinel, Dallas Morning News, Milwaukee Journal, The
Patriot Ledgerof Quincy, MA,The Miami News, and The Miami Herald. He has supervised
and edited about forty special feature writing sections and projects for the daily Key West Citizen
since 1990.
He has written features for newspaper industry magazines and newsletters, such as Editor
& Publisher, Coach’s Corner, Publisher’s Auxiliary, and various annual publications of the
Associated Press Managing Editors organization. He is a former Fulbright lecturer in the
People’s Republic of China and has also conducted writing workshops in England, India, and
Sri Lanka.
He supervises a World Wide Web feature writing project about the American national
parks, Our National Parks, at http://com.miami.edu/parks. The site, created in 2003, contains
more than 350 story-and-photo packages written by undergraduate students about national parks
across the United States. He also travels with students for study-abroad feature writing and
photography projects each year in Shanghai, Hong Kong, Beijing, other cities of the People’s
Republic of China, and Bangkok, Thailand (http://com.miami.edu/china).
Garrison is author or co-author of several other books about journalism and mass
communication, including a co-authored book with the late Michael B. Salwen and UM
colleague Paul Driscoll, Online News and the Public (2005). He has also written Computer-
Assisted Reporting (2nd ed., 1998), Successful Strategies for Computer-Assisted Reporting
(1996), Sports Reporting (1993, 2nd ed.), Professional News Reporting (1992), Advanced
Reporting: Skills for the Professional (1992), Professional News Writing (1990), and, co-
authored with Michael B. Salwen, Latin American Journalism(1991).

Acknowledgments
As with the first four editions, I received a lot of help to finish this project. Gratitude is owed
to many people who provided assistance, and I want to mention a few of them here. First, and
I often neglect mentioning it to them, I offer my sincerest thanks to my students, who have
always been willing to lend a hand. They inspire me to keep this book fresh and interesting.
I also thank Dean Sam Grogg, for his assistance in providing the support of the School of
Communication at the University of Miami.
Furthermore, my appreciation is offered to these individuals who contributed to this fifth
edition:
University of Miami graduate students Yu Liu, Ibis Nieves, and Kaitlyn Lavender made
significant contributions by assisting with research and other necessary time-consuming
activities.
Colleague Dr. Robert Hosmon, associate dean in the School of Communication at the
University of Miami, for his insightful comments and contributions to the discussion about
restaurant and food criticism.
The Miami Heraldtravel editor Jane Wooldridge for her extensive comments and advice
about travel feature writing.
Miami Modern Luxury magazine senior editor Melissa Cantor for her contributions about
freelance writing and working with freelance writers as a magazine editor.
Lesley Abravanel, Miami Herald celebrity and nightlife columnist, for her tips about
covering the rich and famous.
Washington PostIraq correspondent Ernesto Londono for his discussion of writing features
about war and conflict in the Middle East.
Recent M.A. graduate Kaitlyn Lavender for discussing her efforts to become a freelance
feature writer.
Miami Heraldbusiness editor Lisa Gibbs for discussing her work with freelance writers
and her own magazine and newspaper feature writing.
Food Network Magazine staff writer and recent graduate Danielle McNally for descrip-
tions of her developing new career in New York and her work founding a college campus
magazine.
Miami Heraldsportswriter Michelle Kaufman for her how-to tips and suggestions about
feature writing.
Miami newspaper and magazine freelance writer Annie Vazquez, of Miami, for her
insights about her writing, working as a teacher full-time and writing, and selling her writing
part-time.
New Hampshire freelance writer Vincent Daniello for his sound suggestions to writers
about marketing and selling stories to editors.
Mary Rajkumar, an editor in charge of international enterprise reporting and special projects
for The Associated Press, for her thoughts and comments from an editor’s perspective about
working with freelance writers and stringers.