A Guide to writing Online Features
The following guide will provide links to all the necessary information you will need to write an online feature on BUzz, as well as provide links to articles to use as inspiration & suggest tools to create multimedia elements for your story.
News Story vs Online Feature
The stylistic differences between a standard news story and an online feature:
LENGTH: An online feature usually has a much higher word count than a standard news story.
LAYOUT: Due to its length, Journalists will often think of way to break-up and section text.
EMBEDS: Online features will often contain multiple embedding elements that add extra depth to the story.
INTERACTIVE: In recent times, new organisations have been working on making their online features more interactive.
Online Feature Examples
New York Times: Snowfall
New York Times: The Russia Left Behind
Pitchfork: Cover Story – Passion Pit
Pitchfork: Cover Story – Bat for Lashes
ESPN: The Long Strange Trip of Dock Ellis
Seattle Times: Indian Coffee
Chicago Tribune: His Saving Grace
Washington Post: The Prophets of Oakridge
Washington Post: Cycling’s Road Forward
Washington Post: Washington: A World Apart
Guardian: Firestorm
The Verge: Cyborg America
Short of the Week: Has Hollywood Lost its Way
BBC: Salvaging the Costa Concordia
The Weather Channel: Red Alert
Our Time: Creatives
Additional Reading
Feature journalism is often associated with glossy magazines and newspaper weekend sections where readers are invited to spend time, relax and take pleasure in their reading. The dominant discourses of feature journalism therefore seem to contrast with the discourse of online communication as it so far has been portrayed in research on the practice of online journalism and the evolving role of the online journalist. – The shaping of an online feature journalist
The newspaper might no longer be the preferred medium for feature as new sub-genres of feature journalism continue to emerge online. – What is feature Journalism?
The New York Times debuted a new multimedia feature Thursday so beautiful it has a lot of people wondering — especially those inside the New York Times — if the mainstream media is about to forgo words and pictures for a whole lot more. – What the New York Times’s ‘Snow Fall’ Means to Online Journalism’s Future
In print, decades of design language have helped publications draw extra attention of readers. But news web design has mostly been straitjacketed in rigid templates. A few news sites are trying to break out. – The future of the feature: Breaking out of templates to build customised reading experiences.