North Penn High School

JOURNALISM North Penn High School

Style Workshop – Feature Article

Using quotes  Let your quotes tell a lot of the person’s story. People like to jump to quotes, and the subject’s own words will always carry more emotion, insight, and specificity.  Quotes should usually stand alone in journalism.  Set up the quote with relevant information that transitions the reader into the quote.

Bridging the Lead and the Body  Your lead will capture and usually SHOW rather than TELL about one component of the person you are profiling.  Following your lead, you will probably expand further upon the angle you took for your lead.  Between the lead and the body of the article it is good to implement your first quote that shows your subject more personally.  As you get into the body of the article, it is usually effective here to back up and go through the person’s life (or particular aspect you are covering) from a more chronological and factual approach.

Ending the profile  Generally, you will bring the person’s current state of being back into focus at the end of the article. What is the person doing now? How has the person grown from his/her experience? What is next for the person?  Ending the article with insightful and summative quotes from the person is generally an effective means of concluding a profile piece. Let the subject’s words end the story.

Examples of quote implementation Mr. Don Ryan, the athletic director at North Penn, is known to all as simply “Doc,” and while just a simple, one syllable word, it is a nickname that epitomizes his many years at North Penn. “I started here as a trainer,” said Ryan. “One day, during a baseball game, a player got hurt, and the coach went on the field and looked around. I don’t remember where I was, but he yelled out ‘Doc, get Doc!’ They came and got me, and ever since then, its stuck.” But it wasn’t just his establishments within the professional environment that made him look towards administration. Outside of the classroom at Upper Moreland, Muller spent a majority of his time coaching wrestling. His experiences as a coach opened his eyes to a whole other side of education. “When you’re a coach, you’re constantly trying to deal with fifteen types of people. You have all these different constituents, so that helped pave the way for taking that step out and getting into administration,” explained Muller.