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From reading the three sample feature stories, I really got a feel for what feature writing is all about, and thoroughly enjoyed reading each of the three examples. I particularly liked the first one about New York woman Romona Moore, not because of the content or the harsh reality of what she suffered, but the fact that Sean Gardiners writing really caught my attention and truly hit an emotional nerve with me, making me want to continue reading and find out what happened to this girl.

I felt that his approach to telling the story was effectively done via the perspective of Romona’s mother Elle Carmicheal as this gave even more urgency in trying to find her. When reading this article, you weren’t just looking on as an outsider, you were right there in Elles shoes.

In writing this story, Gardiner would’ve had to develop a very close relationship with Carmicheal, especially considering how personal this event was to her. But on the other hand, another point that the story seeks to publish is the fact that no attention was paid to the case until it was too late. In writing this article, I suppose it provides the media coverage the family were looking for.

I also like the second article ‘Pearls before breakfast’- it was a cute stunt that was purely for fun and everyone involved got a good laugh out of it. This is an example of a colour feature story that is written for entertainment and to add some joy to the otherwise bleak and serious pages of the daily paper.

This article was well written and I especially liked the fact of how many times it was emphasised that Bell was a master musician in different ways. My favourite is when it is mentioned that even at the age of 4 years old, he was pulling strings across his drawers and opening/closing them to alter the tempo.

This article is different to the other two because it was based on a stunt that was purposely planned by the Washington post. In this case, it would’ve been easier to get an interview with Joshua Bell considering he was completely in on the joke from the start. Even the passers by who donated money or even just stopped to listen I believe would not of been very difficult to interview, considering the fact that they appreciated the music to begin with, they would’ve been more than happy to answer questions about it as well.

I think that this story would’ve taken approximately 3-4 days to complete, after all, the main event itself was only forty five minutes early one morning, and it was all recorded for evidence later, including every spectator that would be contacted for the interview.

Finally, the third feature story I believe was the more serious article out of the three and the one most like a hard news story of sorts. It still had the descriptive effect of what a feature story is, but included a lot more historical facts about the 1939 and 1983 bushfires.

Also, there was a lot more investigation done in terms of what weather forecasts trigger these horrific bushfires. Like the first article, this one would have been a very touchy issue to raise, especially when conducting interviews with survivors of the 2009 Black Saturday fires. This being this article is still as effective as the other two, one of the main reasons being because it is more localised, each person reading it will remember where they were at that point in history.

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