Newspapers and periodicals often contain features often composed by journalists who specialize in this form.
Feature articles are usually longer forms of writing; more attention is paid to style than in straight news reports. They are often combined with photographs, drawings or other "art." They may also be highlighted by typographic effects or colors.
Writing features can be more demanding than writing straight news stories, because while a journalist must apply the same amount of effort to accurately gather and report the facts of the story, the journalist should also write it to be creative and interesting. The lead must grab the reader's attention and still accurately embody the ideas of the article.
In the last half of the 20th century, the line blurred between straight news reporting and feature writing. Journalists and publications today experiment with different approaches to writing. Tom Wolfe, Gay Talese, Hunter S. Thompson are some of these examples. Urban and alternative newsweeklies go even further in blurring the distinction, and many magazines include more features than straight news.
Some television news shows experimented with alternative formats, and many TV shows that claimed to be news shows were not considered as such by traditional critics, because their content and methods do not adhere to accepted journalistic standards. National Public Radio, on the other hand, is considered a good example of mixing straight news reporting, features, and combination of the two, usually meeting standards of high quality. Other U.S. public radio news organizations have achieved similar results.
