Whether on radio or television, a news feature needs to be interesting and engaging for the audience. Often it will involve some form of human drama and a good storyline will draw your listeners and viewers in.
If you have the opportunity to produce a piece of news which is also suitable as a feature, you should do so if it fits the criteria laid out in the News Manual. However, it is important to recognize that a feature is quite different from a news story. The two types of story are geared towards different audiences and serve slightly different purposes.
The subject matter of a news feature is often much more personal and can cover any aspect of the human condition. It can explore how something has impacted on people, how it might impact them in the future and what they can do about it. It can even focus on events which are not terribly newsworthy but which have an emotional impact on your audience. This might include an accident, a death or the explosion of a star far away in our solar system.
Feature pieces should be carefully structured and edited. You should double-check every word for grammatical errors and use free tools such as Grammarly or Hemingwayapp to assess the structure and flow of the piece. It is also a good idea to read your script out loud so that you can hear how the text flows.
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