What is a feature?

A feature story is an article in a newspaper, a magazine, or a news website that is not meant to report breaking news, but to take an in-depth look at a subject. Features are often significantly longer than news articles, are more likely to be written from a personal perspective, and unlike news stories do not always deal with the events of the immediate past.

What is feature writing?

Features are generally written in a different manner than a news stories, sometimes taking several paragraphs to arrive at the main story while trying to engage the reader and keep them reading by employing narrative hooks. Feature stories often delve deeper into their subjects, expanding on the details rather than trying to concentrate on a few important key points. The writing style of the articles can be more colorful and employ a more complex narrative structure, sometimes resembling the style of a nonfiction book more than a news report.

Different kinds of features-

Photo feature

A photo feature is one where more emphasis and importance is given to the photos or pictures. For example a feature on an art exhibition held will definitely require for the photographs of the art work to be shown. The main aim of a photo feature is to basically create a visual impact on the minds of the readers. This makes the reader more involved in what the writer is trying to convey.

News feature

A news feature is basically to inform the reader about actual facts. This feature is not meant to entertain the reader but to inform and educate him. For example a feature on the after effects of the Tsunami will not be meant to entertain the reader but to keep him informed about the problems caused due to the destruction by the Tsunami.

Elements of features

1.    Timeliness: In feature writing, time is of the essence for a good impact. Like news, it helps when features are delivered fresh. No one wants to read features that are mis-timed, nor do we want news that is stale. Readers of newspapers and internet and television viewers respond to mint-fresh features.

2.    Nearness or Proximity: It is a known fact the world over that features and news about close proximity topics are preferred to those from remote locations. It is a natural inclination. Events in close proximity rouse more curiosity and interest in the reader.

3.    Fame or Prominence: Activities and habits of the rich and the famous have always fascinate people. More people will avidly read a feature if it is related (directly or indirectly) to a reigning celebrity in films, television soaps, industry, sports, politics or science.

4.    Conflict and Break-up: Human beings still find delight in other’s quarrels, verbal exchanges and conflicts. Features on angry break-ups and conflict of any sort are widely read.

5.    Love and Romance: Love is also a perennial favourite when it comes to writing features. One can rarely fail with a love story.

6.    Nostalgia: Special occasions, Jubilees, Centenaries, anniversaries, etc. are nostalgic occasions. It reminds the busy world of its own institutions, their key figures, their long-forgotten achievements and the values they stood for.

7.    Human Interest: Ordinary people always wonder how other ordinary folk and celebrities cope with life’s little problems; their personal idiosyncrasies, their rise over hurdles and object poverty. Also, their bravery under pressure, all make for a good read. “Human” includes women, children, pets, and even trees.

8.    Impact on People: How people are affected by new technology and gadgets, new budget measures, or new security issues like cyber-crime, terrorism and global warming and other environment issues, can be covered in features

9.    Oddity or Novelty: People love to read features on the city’s tallest man, or oldest church, child prodigies in chess, a man who picnics in space and why Indians have now more cell-phones than landline relics. Readers love newer, quicker ways of doing old things and the latest and cutest female and fashions.

10. Calamity or Disaster: The disaster in space in the Columbia shuttle, the silent plight of sea-birds in an oil-spill evokes instant sympathy.

11. Celebrity Lifestyle: It is the common man’s obsession these days to gather more of the ways of the world’s rich and famous live, their problems, food tastes, clothes, idiosyncrasies, clubs, private lives and unusual interests. Profiles in Sunday newspapers/magazines, page 3 write-ups and television chat shows depict their opulence, while centrespread pieces define their views on life.

12. New movements: in the past 50 years, 3 international movements have caught out people’s attention – the Consumer Rights stir; the Feminist agitation and Environmental causes. Educated readers keenly want to know about their progress.

These are the elements which make for a good read and interest a reader. It is imperative to engage your reader and cater to the needs of the reader for the feature to be widely read. Understanding the target consumer of the feature is of foremost importance and these elements help in engaging the reader.

University Of Mumbai

PROGRAMME OF THE BACHELOR OF MASS MEDIA (B.M.M.) SEM 6 (OLD) EXAMINATION

Candidates of the above examination are requested to be in attendance at the place of examination, fifteen minutes before the time appointed for the setting of the first paper and ten minutes before the time fixed for setting of each subsequent paper.

They are forbidden to take any book or paper inside the Examination Hall.

Seat numbers and places of examination will be announced on the college notice boards four days prior to the date of commencement of the examination.

Smoking is striclty prohibited in the examination hall.

The written Examination will be conducted in the following order:

Retrevo, the consumer electronics marketplace, released  a new Gadgetology study indicating 34% of students buying laptops are planning on purchasing small, lightweight netbooks . Another 49% are buying full-sized PC laptops. The majority of student laptop shoppers will not consider buying a Mac.

2009 marks the dawn of the netbook.

Most media students nowadays prefer to longer battery life, smaller size, and alighter laptop. 58% of them plan on spending less than $750.00. Only 18% have a budget over $1,000.00. Netbooks are affordable; some costing only $170.00. In contrast, Apple laptops start at $949.00. Having a new Apple laptop, thus, isn’t a necessity.

Let me simplify the terms at this juncture.

The idea of a netbook isn’t exactly new. Microsoft first touted the concept of a small laptop-style device with a long battery life as far back as the late 1990s. Back then it was pushing its Windows CE Professional operating system.

This was a lightweight OS that belonged to the same family of products that later become the Pocket PC and then Windows Mobile.

Netbooks are devices designed purposely for the Internet, to communicate, learn, and view information. They have in common a compact form factor of seven to ten inches, are light-weight, feature comparatively longer battery life than notebooks, and are less dependent on a battery charger during the day. They are easily portable and can be easily moved from one place to another place. They may contain more than one wireless method to connect to the Internet
Notebooks are more multiple-purpose computers in a form factor of about ten inches and up. Notebooks can create content and handle heavy multi-tasking loads with many applications running at once. They can view, create, and edit high-definition video content and run intensive programs like computer aided engineering and mathematical modeling.

Notebooks, like Netbooks, are portable, but some are becoming increasingly less so (the 17-inchers) some more so (the ultra-thins), and users of notebooks tend to pack them away in bags with all sorts of accessories before moving anywhere beyond the office or home. Although a few notebooks are able to connect to the Internet via cellular networks as well as Wi-Fi, being “locked” to a carrier is not widely considered an advantage. Thus notebook users often invest in wireless modems that are external.

Interestingly, we may see netbooks that are sold by the cellular carriers themselves as a bundle of Internet service and the device. Consumers would be likely to consider an inexpensive netbook expendable and simply stop using the wireless connection when the cellular contract was up.

So netbooks are purpose-built for a limited role, while traditional notebooks are multi-purpose general tool. (Click the image from Intel to enlarge the graphicon that explains the uses of each.)

If the media students want to run basic applications and surf the web on the go, the netbook is a good solution. However, if  they want to open five windows, run virus protection and do some indexing  or high definition video editing then a notebook is better.

This means that when they’re used to view a normal web page, the whole width of the page isn’t viewable at any one time. As a result, you often have to scroll the page back and forth to read a full line of text and this can make them frustrating to use.

Thankfully, these low-resolution screens are being phased out in favour of newer displays with a higher resolution of 1024 x 600 pixels. The extra horizontal resolution means that most web pages fit comfortably, negating the need for excessive scrolling.

Nevertheless, you may still experience some other performance-related issues when surfing the web on a netbook, as the web is becoming more and more of a multimedia playground. A few years ago it was relatively rare to stumble across a web page with lots of animation and video content, but both are everywhere on the internet today.

Most of this multimedia content is built using Flash. Flash can be demanding in terms of processing power and we’ve certainly found that pages which are heavily reliant on Flash can slow down netbooks considerably, especially if you’re running another application alongside your browser, such as a virus scanner.

On some web pages, standard Flash content can place over a 30 per cent load on a netbook’s processor. Add in an additional load from a virus scanner and you’re looking at really sluggish performance.

Flash is increasingly used for video content too, and the BBC uses it for its iPlayer service. Depending on the video stream, BBC iPlayer can gobble up to 60 per cent of a netbook’s processor performance, leaving little headroom for handling other Windows XP tasks.

And while the Windows version of the Eee PC 1000 can play shows from iPlayer in full screen mode without any problem, we found the same model running under Linux struggled with full-screen playback, producing very jerky video that was all but unwatchable.

Still, a netbook is not the same as an ultraportable notebook.

t’s not just the size factor — after all, there are now some 12-inch netbooks just as there are 12-inch ultraportables — but a difference in specs. Hard drive speed and performance, processor speed and performance, even graphics performance are different in the two categories. That’s because ultraportables are meant to be full-fledged laptops, just small and light for users who need the petite form factor.

if you’re looking for a simple computer that does basic tasks well and fits into a small bag, you want a netbook. You’re not even thinking about a MacBook Air or a LenovoX300. If you want a small, powerful computer that will run all the same application as your desktop at the same or greater speed that you can travel with easily yet still do serious computing on, you’re looking for an ultraportable. One look at the processor and screen size of a netbook would be enough to convince the informed consumer that it’s not the right choice in that instance.

Netbook vs. Notebook is a question many media students  will be faced with in the coming year. There are instances where people would choose to get a netbook instead of something with more power and better specs due to price, the way they intend to use the laptop, and whether they have an existing laptop or desktop at home. But to say that netbooks will triumph over ultraportables or any other laptop when a consumer wants high-end or even mid-range power and capability is overstating the issue in a big way.

FIRST APPEARANCE

My Name Is Ayushi Rohira

BMM From? Jai Hind College

Specialization Advertising

Year Completed BMM 2009

Other Educational Qualifications (PG/UG/Etc) Preparing to enrol for MBA

Status Single

CAREERBOX

Professional Experience 2

You Currently Work At BIG Cinemas – Marketing – Executive

Your daily routine My job entitles me to watch movies. Lots and lots of movies. So typically I watch 2-4 movies in a week.. And I’m certainly not complaining!
On a more serious note, work revolves around making BIG Cinemas an enriching experience for all our customers, with the help of the digital and print media on a day-to-day basis.

Organization(s) You Worked At Before

Trainee at Encompass Events,

Trainee at Contiloe Films,

Trainee at Sugar Mediaz.

Key Projects/Campaigns You’ve Been Part Of

Launch campaigns of various BIG Cinemas in 2009-10.

Movie-based promotions

Media planning and buying for 100 odd cinemas, pan India.
Digital and online promotions for BIG Cinemas

Most challenging project/campaign you’ve been part of? What made it challenging?

A 360 degree campaign for the launch of Sangam BIG Cinemas, which included using all sorts of marketing tools to reach out to the audience…

How did you start your career? What was your first step after completing BMM?

When I graduated, recession had already set in. Forget placements, lay-offs were the more “in” thing.
For many months an unending struggle followed, after which I can say I struck gold. Thankfully, with my list of internships and an impressive academic record I landed the job of a Trainee at BIG Cinemas.

Were you clear about which field you wanted to get into right from the beginning? What helped you take your leaps?

When I initially joined BMM, I knew I had to become a journalist. Half way through, I decided to go back to Arts and be a Psychologist. Then, the mad ad world beckoned..so I decided Copywriting would be THE THING. However, fate had something else in store…and here I am…enjoying Marketing, with every new experience and learning to take home.

Any particular incident that helped you discover your career option?

It wouldn’t be wrong to say it was the recession!! It was more of a calamity, more than an incident. But again, it’s nice to keep trying new stuff that interests you…I’ve tried everything from events to RJing, to Film and TV Production and now to market India’s largest cinema chain.

BACK TO COLLEGE

Does being a BMMite give you an edge over others? Yes/No – Please elaborate

BMM students come with a basic knowledge of the media industry. That apart, it’s really subjective. It can only get you an interview. How you decide to use your talents, depends solely on you…

Do the subjects in BMM help you know the reality of the job? Is there any place for theory in the industry you’re in?

Theory and practical knowledge go hand-in-hand. I suggest not just learning through books. Get into summer internships, even if its just to know your likes and dislikes. Besides, it looks good on your resume!

BMM or BMM from a particular college? Does it make a difference?

There are so many colleges offering BMM these days. As far as the course and staff is concerned, most of the profs tour all the colleges. But surely, a reputed college makes the opposite person sit up and notice.

Did you complete any internship(s) – where, when, how was the experience?

As I mentioned earlier, I interned with three totally different companies: events, voicing and TV & film production. It gave me a chance to learn how the industry works, and what I really like doing.

Internships during BMM – are they relevant in the long run?

In the long run, a work experience of a few years would score over a month long internship. But you’d probably know what each media house is about, if you’ve tried working at different kinds of agencies. It’ll help you decide what you want in the future.

Work Ex or Higher Studies? What’s your pick? Why?

Most corporate houses suffer from the Glass Ceiling Syndrome. You may have X years of work ex, but it’s the MBA tag that will get you to become the CEO. On the other hand, ad agencies or event companies value experience to a great extent as well…

BMMBOXER’S TAKE

BMM is the most fulfilling experience, where you can explore your wackiest side.

Your biggest achievement till date Ranking 1st overall in BMM ’09 – All Mumbai.

You regret Not having a couple of years more..to enjoy BMM. I truly miss the before-presentation catfights!

Your favorite subject in BMM Lots of ’em: PR, Intro to Advertising, Literature…

Your hangout adda during BMM Jai Hind College & Mocha.

Define your job in one sentence An extension of BMM which adds to your bank balance, instead of taking from it!

Your favorite professor at college Again, many of ’em: Prof. Varalakshmi, Prof.Omkar Patki, Prof.Vidyanand Joshi..

Your biggest goof up at work Ooops!I don’t want to lose my job. Not YET.

YOUR TAKE

The journey so far…and where I see myself going I know I’m happy with what I’m doing. I’d like to study a li’l more (just to be tagged along with the MBAs of the world) and surely start up something of my own, soon.

My Success Mantra Love what you do. And what you don’t love, at least try a 100 times before you give up.

5 Tips for BMMites

1.       Enjoy it while it lasts, the crazy deadlines, fights, sleepy presentations …

2.       Respect the profs, ask questions and stay in their good books. Always.

3.        If you’re confused with what you’re going to end up doing after BMM, don’t be.

Your job doesn’t necessarily depend on the subject you’ve graduated in.

4.        Bunk lectures. But in moderation.

5.       DO NOT listen to everything that everyone advises. Even me. Follow what works best for you…

You can reach me *

www.facebook.com/ayushi.rohira
http://in.linkedin.com/pub/ayushi-rohira/15/b38/a95
twitter.com/ayushirohira

Organization Name: BrinkPoint Creative Solutions or BPCS

Organization Description: BrinkPoint Creative Solutions or BPCS is a digital content and internet marketing start-up that helps companies establish and maintain an excellent web and market presence with the help of various digital and physical tools. We are a very young firm and the average age of people working with us is 19 to 25 years.   Currently BPCS is working with various international clients based in the US of A, UK and Australia and expansions are in progress within India.

Role Title: Trainee content writer

Role Description:  Work from Campus/Home. We are currently looking out for trainee content writer who can write original plagiarism free content.

Role Responsibilities:  The primary job will be to write Search Engine Optimized (SEO) Content and blog posts for our clients.

Qualification Requirement: The ideal candidate can be a graduate/undergrad in Mass Media (Advertising/Journalism) or Arts (Literature).

Skill Set Requirement: Good command on the English Language and is willing learner.

Compensation/Stipend: 3500/- per month

How To Apply: Interested candidates can email their resumes at connect@bmmbox.com

Subject line of the Email should be the ‘Trainee Content Writer – BPCS’

A proverbial media student fits this stereotype in any layman’s head- colourful clothes with a 70’s hint to it, big over-sized sun glasses and the trademark ‘jholla’. Whether the first two are there or not the last one is a must. What is a media student without that big ‘jholla’ strung across his or her shoulder? For all the stereotypes that we live with, this is by far the most constant. It’s almost like a requirement now- media student must have large hippie ‘jholla’!

But being a true blue media student and a proud owner of one too many ‘jhollas’ myself I come here not to justify it but to tell the outside world how important that bag really is. It’s not just a bag that stands for an image, it’s so much more. Why you ask? Well I am just about to tell you about the components of a media student’s bag…so that soon you will not just think of it as ‘a bag’ but as…well you’ll still think of it as a bag but you’ll at least know more about it!

To start with our bags are just like your bags albeit with a whole lot more in them because as media students we carry our world in them ‘coz you never know when the ‘big idea’ strikes. Yes that’s what we all live for…that one big idea that will change our lives and the lives of those around us. A flash of creativity sparked with just the right amount of realism and quirkiness to work in the big bad world out there that we all want to conquer! But this article isn’t about that big idea so I’ll leave this discussion for another time. As for now let’s just concentrate on the trademark bag.

Okay so components of the bag- papers! Yes we are a serious bunch. We always have papers and books ready to pen down the wonderful knowledgeable thoughts that are dispensed in our classrooms! Also because most classes end up being places for doodling. Here may I add that doodling in our world IS NOT A WASTE OF TIME! That’s creativity at its best. Who knows what masterpieces could get created as a consequence of those doodles. I mean art was never really appreciated during its time so we are assuming that like all those artists we too are just ahead of our time!

Now since we have mentioned the importance of doodling in a media students life, the next component is related to it in a way. Colours! We believe that black and white is wonderful for an autumn collection but in our lives, colours are an important aspect. You never know when you might just need them so we’re always prepared!

A camera- here we are assuming that most people might not have the patience to lug around their giant SLR’s primarily because of their size and also because… well they’re expensive you know! So relying on a good phone with a good camera, we are big time clickers! Our bags always have our phones which double up as entertainment during class and cameras when the sky is just the perfect shade of blue and capturing it with a camera is the next best thing to actually flying!

By this time you must be wondering that we live extremely different lives from you but let’s just try and correct you on that. Another constant in the media student’s bag would be some form of food. Especially when you live crazy lives and crazy hours which mean skipping most regular meals, most our sustenance comes from our bags- a bar of chocolate, some chips and sometimes when things are really bad…even some gum will do. May I add here that the reason for these crazy hours is not ‘coz we study that much or are busy creating masterpieces, it’s just because we’re out having too much fun. As for the latter, we’re busy doing that in class (remember afore mentioned doodles?).

So by the end of this article, if you’re still reading that is, is that our bags are no different from your bags. They might be a little bigger, a little more colourful but they’re all the same. We have all those unwanted but ever so important things that any average twenty something year old would have. The only difference is that well our bags have attained a cult status and so you’re reading about them!

The era of Bollywood in 1970’s is the theme of the Festival 70bMM which is organized by the mass media students of Rizvi College. The event will take place on the 18th of February at the College premises.

Event Flow at 70bMM 2011

For more details, Contact:

Jibran Khan –  9969367749

Shahnawaz Khan – 9773530295

Naved Memon – 9821290163

Ilyas Rajkotwala – 9867054849

When taking up feature writing one is faced with several options. There exist a multitude of themes on which a feature can be written. A few of these are discussed below.

Human Interest

• The ‘human interest’ feature is easily the most popular article among newspaper and magazine articles. Because, unlike a professional, unemotional, clinical and statistical news report, the human interest features focus on the human and humane aspects of our lives.
• The depiction tugs at our heart strings because of the sympathetic rendering of the more emotional aspects of any event – be it a fire, floods, stampede, riots, earthquake, or an environmental disaster like the Gulf of Mexico oil-spill.
• Usual accurate and statistical newspaper and television reports (with their 5Ws and 1H strait-jacket) tend to pack in too many facts and figures, for their human and emotional aspects to survive. Human interest stories, “side-bars”, colour stories and features help to ‘humanise’ the happening in simpler terms and put readers at the trouble spot.
• Writers of human interest stories are those who like people, who relish the inconsistencies and frailties of men and women in their reactions to the problems around them. In writing human interest stories, the tendency is to go overboard, exaggerate, make tall claims and over-write. It is important to exercise restraint; avoid over-writing, and be accurate so that your credibility is never damaged.

Lifestyle

• Features these days include Lifestyle articles, which have a huge and growing readership. In some ways, it is a symptom of the frantic, stressful lives we lead, unrelieved by comforting tidings.
• These ‘soft’ and ‘feel-good’ features are often displayed, embellished by a cartoon or illustrations. Quite often, the lighter depiction forms the basis of a ‘humorous editorial’ in a day or two.
• If anything, this colour and display proclaims that not everything has to be about the seamier side of life, such as terror, death, destruction, murder and mayhem.

The various topics possible covered by lifestyle features are:

Seasonal and Festival

• India’s cultural calendar is a cavalcade of joyous community festivals of different religious groups and linguistic groups.
• These festivals fall on specific days in the respective religious calendars and link their celebrations with a magic, seasonal flavour.
• This variety of seasonal festivals spawns a variegated array of features throughout the calendar year. The list of topics on offer to the feature writer is:

Travelogue, Tourism and Adventure feature

Travelogues and tourism

• Among the new entrants to the genre of feature writing are the ‘travelogues’, which deal with the mix of travel, tourism and the hospitality industry.
• Today we find a steadily growing number of domestic and international tourists keen to see our ancient heritage. Thus, feature writers need to provide information through sensitive writing, promotions and highlighting of the tourism venues.
• Feature writers are needed in large numbers to create a good ‘image’ a tourist destination. This is done by photo-features, collages, travelogues and re-portages.

Travel Literature

• Travel literature typically records the people, events, sights and feelings of an author who is touring a foreign place for the pleasure of travel. An individual work is sometimes called a travelogue or itinerary.
• To be called literature the work must have a coherent narrative, or insights and value, beyond a mere logging of dates and events, such as diary or ship’s log.
• Literature that recounts adventure and conquest is often grouped under travel literature, but it also has its own genre called outdoor  literature. These genres will often overlap with no definite boundaries. This article focuses on literature that is more akin to tourism.

Types of travelogues

• Travel literature may be cross-cultural or transnational in focus, or it may involve travel to different regions within the same country. Accounts of spaceflight may also be considered as travel literature.
• Fictional travelogues make up a large proportion of travel literature. Although it may be desirable in some contexts to distinguish fictional from non-fictional works, such distinctions have proved notoriously difficult to make in practice, as in the famous instance of the travel writings of Marco Polo or John Mandeville.
• Many “fictional” works of travel literature are based on factual journeys – Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, presumably Homer’s Odyssey– while other works, though based on imaginary and even highly fantastic journeys – Dante’s Divine Comedy ,Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels or Voltaire’s Candide Samuel Johnson’s Rasselas– nevertheless contain factual elements.

Travel journal

• A travel journal, also called road journal or travelogue, is a record made by a voyager. Generally in diary form, a travel journal contains descriptions of the traveler’s experiences, is normally written during the course of the journey, and may or may not be intended for publishing

The ‘APPLAUSE’ formula

• A good feature should suggestively have APPLAUSE formula. Prof. C. Schoenfeld had discovered the acronym for a good feature.

•           A                               Appeal

•           P                                Plain facts

•           P                                Personalities

•           L                                Logic

•           A                                Action

•           U                                Universal/ Unique

•           S                                 Significance

•           E                                 Energy/ Enthusiasm

APPLAUSE provides another approach to elusive search for the ideal feature.