ABSTRACT
With the numerous predictions that newspapers are dying, and that the rapid demise of all forms of journalism will follow, it would be logical to think that the feature format is also about to be ditched into this well of despair. There can be no one single definition of a feature story, as this particular journalistic form comes in so many different guises. Young journalists can be attracted to feature writing because they see it as a release from the sometimes restrictive, or at least formulaic, mode of hard news writing. Newness is no longer paramount in feature work. For the feature writer, the emphasis is on storytelling, and the onus is on the journalist to produce a narrative for which a reader will hang in there. The different types of features are: background or situation features; investigative features; and follow-up features. Feature writing does allow for more subjectivity than other forms of journalism.
