A news feature gives you the opportunity to step back from current events and view them from a wider social or historical perspective. It is an opportunity to tell the good news, as well as the bad.
A good feature will be based on thorough research. The subject matter may seem a little more timeless than the everyday news and you may want to consider how it could be adapted to a variety of platforms (radio, TV and online).
The story should aim to provide a truly comprehensive view of its topic – complete with unique anecdotes, fresh perspectives backed up by evidence. You will also need to ensure that your writing is as error-free as possible, and use free tools such as Grammarly or Hemingway App to check spelling, sentence structure and grammatical consistency.
As with news stories, you should try to get your features finished in advance of the on-air deadline. This will allow you to double-check your work and give other people in the organisation time to hear it if they are involved.
It is important to remember that a news feature will take up much more space than a typical news story. For this reason it needs to be newsworthy in its own right. A frequent complaint that the media tell only bad news is easy to understand – most things which happen suddenly, and therefore constitute news, are unwelcome. But there are plenty of things which happen slowly, and do not qualify as news – such as the terracing of hillside farmland to prevent soil erosion.