Читать книгу Feature Writing and Reporting - Jennifer Brannock Cox - Страница 24

Up through the first decade of the 2000s, it was common for newsrooms to be divided into silos, or small groups that concentrated their efforts on specific beats or different types of reporting. Newsrooms were typically divided into hard-news reporters (covering breaking news beats like crime, government and courts), sports reporters, opinion writers (including editorial writers and columnists) and feature writers. Features once suggested a concentration on soft news items considered less essential for audiences to read. It included beats such as travel, lifestyle, entertainment, food and a variety of others, depending on the size of the publication.

Today, those divisions have changed, largely due to the availability of online metrics—statistics that tell us what stories people are reading online, how long they are viewing them and whether they are sharing them. These metrics tell us people want more from their stories. It’s not enough for crime reporters to write breaking news updates on robberies—they also need to provide news features examining why robberies in a particular neighborhood have increased in recent years and what people can do to protect themselves from potential attackers. The same is true for reporters who once produced only soft news. Readers can find out about the latest Hollywood divorce from anywhere, so feature writers need to dive deeper, perhaps looking into why young people are waiting longer to get married than previous generations, if they marry at all. In the Digital Age, demands for feature reporting and writing permeate every beat in the newsroom, and every reporter must be equipped with skills for telling those kinds of stories.