One approach emphasizes the facts of the event, while the feature displaces the facts to accommodate the human interest of the story. Most news broadcasts or publications combine the two to reach a wider audience. Today s media use many factors to determine what events they will report, including timeliness proximity consequence the perceived interest of the audience competition editorial goals and the influence of advertisers. All these factors put pressure on the media to give their audiences both news and features. In a version of featurizing, pressure from advertisers or lobbyists often result in writing that appears at first blush to be news when it is, in fact, promotion for a product, idea, or policy.
Some editors dispute the emphasis on soft writing and refer to it as jell-o journalism.
Feature writing can stand alone, or it can be a sidebar to the main story, the mainbar . A sidebar runs next to the main story or elsewhere in the same edition, providing an audience with additional information on the same topic. Interviews and observations, as well as creative writing, are used to paint a vivid picture of the person. The CBC s recent profile of Pierre Elliot Trudeau is a classic example of the genre and makes use of archival film footage, interviews, testimonials, and fair degree of editorializing by the voice-over commentary. Trend stories are popular because people are excited to read or hear about the latest fads.