6.4: Art of Clarity - Feature News Leads and Feature Story Puzzle

This Art of Clarity entry covers what goes into writing an anecdotal lead and nut graf, a descriptive lead, and a brief feature story.

Since the previous chapter described these concepts at some length, this section focuses on the ways the reporting process and writing process mesh to make feature stories work. Leads are deconstructed to indicate how writers think in terms of identifying and using elements of a lead similar to the way a chef might gather ingredients and prepare an appetizer.

Students in an introductory media writing course may not be expected to report and write a feature story. Thus, the assignment for this chapter involves a similar process of breaking down a feature story into its elements, which students then need to recognize and assemble.

Gathering anecdotes and details

Anecdotes compelling enough to grab the attention of a mass audience come from careful and thoughtful interviewing. Reporters skilled at conducting interviews as conversations rather than interrogations will often pick up on moments where an interviewee has an anecdote to share. 

Some questions you might ask when a subject brings up an interesting story-within-a-story include:

• Can you tell me how that happened?
• Would you set the scene for me and explain what led up to this?
• What images and sounds stand out to you from that moment?
• What went through your mind as this was unfolding?

Anecdotal leads are primarily paraphrased with brief quotes included if necessary to convey emotion or to share details as only an eyewitness could. Ideally, the anecdote is brief and has a clear beginning, middle and end. 

Whether you find a perfectly structured anecdote or not, the essential task is to relay a brief, true, attention-grabbing story that opens a window to a larger narrative. It should set the tone for the rest of the story and, if possible, give the readers a sense of the main character's personality.

As with all news, in feature stories claims of fact must be verified with at least two independent sources before the story can be published. This is to say that if an anecdote seems too good to be true, writers should be skeptical and pay extra attention to verification and fact checking.

Writing an anecdotal lead

Let's take apart a published anecdotal lead and reassemble it. The story has been broken down into three parts including information for the anecdotal lead, information that provides context that we can label "save for later," and some brief quotes.

The keys are to identify where to begin and end the anecdote so that readers are compelled to continue, to write the anecdote in such a way that it leads logically to the rest of the story and to use quotes sparingly to pepper the anecdote with emotion.

The key facts for the anecdote have been pre-sorted for students' convenience. Normally, the writer would have to decide which details to leave in the lead and which to put in the "save for later" pile.

Facts for the anecdote:

At the end of the day at a local French immersion charter school in New Orleans, the state superintendent of schools entered the building just as students were leaving. He entered alone. His name is John White. The name of the school is Lycée Français de la Nouvelle-Orléans charter school, which most of your readers will recognize as a French immersion school. It has 340 students. White needed to convince teachers to stay at the school for the 2013-14 school year. The purpose of the meeting was to hear from faculty about their daily experiences. About 30 staff members met with White. This took place on the Wednesday afternoon before the story was published.

Quotes for the anecdote:

White said, "My sense is we have stumbled." He also said, "We need your help." When walking into the school, he greeted the students with "bonjour."

"Save for later" facts:

The school recently received word that only four out of 18 French teachers were willing to stay another year. A former teacher is suing the school's president (not to be confused with the state superintendent of schools) and another board member. Those administrators were asked not to come to this meeting. At least two school administrators have been fired in the past several months. The state directly oversees this charter school.

Example anecdotal lead

Here is the lead as it appears in The Lens: 

As children filed out of Lycée Français de la Nouvelle-Orléans charter school Wednesday afternoon to cars and waiting parents, Louisiana’s top education official strolled in alone.

State superintendent John White offered friendly “bonjours” to any who greeted him. But his mission at the embattled French curriculum school was clear. He wanted to hear directly from faculty about their day-to-day experiences inside the 340-student school — and, most importantly, to exhort them to stay for 2013-14.

“My sense is we have stumbled,” White said, standing before a classroom of about 30 staff members seated in kid-sized chairs. “We need your help.”

What makes this a good anecdote?

This is a brief story about a man entering a school to talk to 30 teachers and staff to try to convince them not to leave. It begins with his entrance and ends with, "We need your help." Thus, it has a clear beginning, middle and end.

Note the way the writer, Marta Jewson, puts the main character in motion. White does not simply walk into the school. He strolls in alone past students on their way out. This suggests that although this issue is ultimately about how these students will be taught, they are not the focus of this story. The lone administrator is the main character here. 

The "bonjours" set the scene reminding readers that not only does the school have a French name, it is a French immersion charter school.

The anecdote folds in some important facts and frames this meeting as part of a "mission." Then it ends with an image of teachers in "kid-sized chairs" who are being asked, probably not for the first time, to help, as in help keep the school open.

This anecdote builds suspense. It mixes key details with essential contextual facts. It does not tell the whole story of whether or not teachers were receptive to the pitch and what that portends for the future of the school. The lead only hints at larger issues with charter schools in New Orleans and with the state of education in Louisiana in general. To find out more about these issues and how they played out in this school, you have to read the story.

Students in an introductory media writing course should be able to recognize an anecdotal lead and what makes it tick. This text does not include an exercise for writing anecdotal leads, but one could be added by an instructor, depending on the course.

Next, we look at the nut graf that immediately followed this lead.

The French charter school nut graf

Remember that a nut graf is not a summary lead but a paragraph that follows a feature news lead, usually immediately, that contains further essential information.

Example nut graf

Two weeks ago, the head of the Council for the Development of French in Louisiana sent a letter to the school’s interim chief warning her that only four of the school’s 18 French teachers were willing to stay at Lycée amid recent leadership turmoil. Unless the school retains more instructors, CODOFIL’s head said, the organization could not promise future help placing French nationals at the school.

In this story, the main function of the nut graf is to establish the stakes of the meeting. Now, readers who are invested are prepared to read another 30 paragraphs or so to get further context and to understand how the meeting went. Ultimately, it ended with a set of plans and promises to change and to involve teachers and staff in the process.

A standard straight-news meeting story might have said just that, but telling the story this way invites readers to care about a complex issue and to see the drama unfolding in an administrative visit.

Descriptive leads

A good descriptive lead can be just as compelling as an anecdote. Not every feature story has a convenient, compelling, quick narrative reveal itself to reporters, but there are always details that can help a reader become immersed.

Consider the following descriptive lead from another story in The Lens. Note how it focuses heavily on descriptive language rather than delivering a mini-narrative.

Descriptive lead example

As they watched the sky, filled with fire and smoke, older residents of Garyville, Louisiana thought back to a half-century ago. It was a different time, before the sugar-cane fields lining the Mississippi River were replaced by the massive Marathon Refinery, lined with gleaming, puffing smokestacks.

Though Marathon was built in 1976, it is considered the last significant oil refinery built in the United States.

That’s partly because of community opposition to new refineries, a position that people in Garyville understood well last month.

This story details concerns about pollution in the area and cancer rates that may be related. It indicates how area residents are wary of further industrialization if it is going to bring more pollution into an area inhabited predominately by people from minoritized groups.

The story continues with a nut graf, several paragraphs about the fire detailed in the lead and two subsections that delve more deeply into resisting the spread of industry and difficulties getting accurate data about pollutants.

Feature story puzzle assignment

This assignment is different from most others in this text in that it requires students to piece together a story rather than to write something of their own creation. A completed, published story has been chopped up and pasted out of order below. The assignment requires students to recognize the descriptive lead and nut graf, to recognize which pieces of the story belong under which subheadings and to consider a logical order for story sections and for paragraphs within each section. Students do not need to edit or alter any text for this assignment. Instead, they should open two documents and cut and paste from the jumbled page to a story that flows logically.

The goal is not necessarily to structure the story precisely the way the original writer did. Instead, the challenge is to read through the available information thoroughly and to come up with a structured feature story that follows the skeleton provided. *Note to instructors that this assignment is meant to be completed in one class period with no browser access other than using the LMS to submit work, as the source article is available online.

Assignment: Take the out-of-order, professionally written, paragraphs listed below and use this outline to piece together a feature story puzzle.

Students should not be graded on how close they get to the original source material but rather whether their organization of the story flows well, has a clear descriptive lead and nut graf, and if it story elements fit the subheading under which they were placed.

 

Put this headline, subheadline and byline at the top of your story.

Living Memories

This week, as the Living School moves toward its final graduation, the Class of 2024 mourns the closure of their unique high school — and explains why it mattered.

by Marta Jewson

 

Then continue with this outline:

Descriptive lead

Nut graf

Continuing body section

Subheading: How long does it take to create a new school?

Subheading: Visual learning and individualized attention

 

Story paragraphs and elements, not listed in any particular order:

The school became known as a place that was a little offbeat and accepting of differences. “It feels more welcoming than other schools, because at other schools, you feel more like a number than a student,” said student Khloe Jones.

At Living’s student fair in December, just after the school board had voted to close the school, students were abuzz about their first-semester projects in audio, science, and art, all part of the school’s Winter Exhibition.

For the Living School, facing its first contract renewal, the anomaly could not have hit at a worse time.

Not everything within a school progresses at the same pace. Even five years into its tenure, some aspects of the Living School – including the soccer and basketball teams’ inaugural seasons – had just begun.

Up until last year, the school’s standardized test scores had held steady at a C. Then last spring, they dropped to failing, resulting in an F letter grade from the state. 

In the exhibition, one student explained the stark effects of climate change through her display — a globe divided in half, with a green oasis on one side and brown dried-out plant life on the other.

The result was a one-of-a-kind environment where Saturn Paul could more easily absorb knowledge, because she could be herself and relax her mind, she said. 

The high school’s staff and students took pride in the school’s unconventional learning space, with its high ceilings, bright walls, and thriving garden next door. 

“They’re saying our LEAP scores are bad,” Senior Byren Coleman said. “But check this out, come swing through and see all the good work we’ve been doing. We’re really productive.”

By the metrics at hand, Living had failed. “Certainly we have work to do. We did not have a good year last year in terms of our standardized test scores,” CEO Stefin Pasternak told the board in December. “That’s an anomaly.” 

This spring’s conversations about Living School have also centered about how long, realistically, it takes to launch a charter school from scratch. 

“This is my people. This is all I know,” said Brianna Smith, as she stood in the place that had become her haven, a converted laser-tag venue in New Orleans East that was renovated five years ago into the Living School New Orleans. 

In December, the Orleans Parish School Board voted to close the Living School at the end of this school year.

Though this week should have been celebratory, Smith, a member of the Living School’s Class of 2024, had mixed emotions.

Other parts of the school felt more advanced, as if they were on their way to becoming crystallized Living School traditions. In teacher Jimmy Luttrell’s advanced-carpentry class, students bragged about building musical instruments from scratch. Language arts students created a book about New Orleans artifacts for teacher Katie Wills Evans. A science class took a school bus to the Common Ground disaster-justice headquarters in the Lower 9th Ward to install intricate water-retention and distribution systems that were designed in Living School engineering class and built during carpentry classes.

“It’s so much easier for me to learn, because I am a visual learner and we do visual-learning things, like projects and stuff,” said student Saturn Paul, who said that she thrived at Living because of focused attention from staff. “That’s where I really need it from,” she said. “I receive a lot of positive energy and motivating energy.”

Then, this week, it was over.

Despite impressive graduation results last year, the school’s other indicators weren’t strong enough to earn a new contract and stay open.

In a city where all public schools are now charters – with closures and start-ups as bedrock parts of the charter model – the shuttering of Living School prompted conversations about how a start-up school’s success should be measured, monitored, and supported by NOLA Public Schools.

Performance is only closely scrutinized in contract-renewal years. If Living School’s contract wasn’t in play, the school would likely still be open. 

 

 

Inspiration from award-winning features

If you want to read the best of the best, consider the winners of the Pulitzer Prize in Feature Writing, most of which are linked for free from Pulitzer.org.