Feedback on first feature would be appreciated

Matt Stephens · Jun 19, 2011

Hey guys, just wrapped up my first 35-inch feature with the new gig and I was hoping to get some feedback from y'all on different things to work on in the future. It also didn't help that I really don't have a background in stock car racing, but I'm sure we all cross those bridges every once in a while.

This ran as kind of a Father's Day feature today about a grandfather, son and grandson who all race together.

Northwest Arkansas Newspapers said:

Family Races, Bonds

THREE GENERATIONS SHARE LOVE OF TEARING UP THE TRACK

HUNTSVILLE — Just east of Huntsville lies a quaint, little 125-acre farm tucked off the highway. Down the gravel road, past two cattle guards, sits a little house. Inside it, a family that shares a bond stronger than oak.
It’s the home of James Michael and his son James Chandler Hargis. Just down the road lives Mike’s father James Earl Hargis. The trio makes up three generations of hard workers who seemingly spend every waking moment of the day together, whether it’s working one of the three family business — logging, baling hay and driving gravel trucks — or racing stock cars.
Whether it’s Mike and Chandler’s E-Mod (open front end) or James Earl’s sports stock (closed front end), the Hargis family, owners of Hargis Racing, like to spend as much time as possible tearing up the red clay track at West Siloam Speedway in West Siloam Springs, Okla.
And racing isn’t just a family bonding activity — Hargis Racing, led by Mike, competes to win.
Racing has always been in the blood of the Hargis boys, as James Earl, 60, would drag race with his 1967 Chevelle down the streets of Monett, Mo., when he was only 16 years old. But despite his background, it wasn’t the family patriarch who got the trio hooked on the sport.
That role was taken over by Mike, 39, who started out by using it as a distraction back in 2004.
“When I f irst started racing, it was right after the divorce, so it was something that would get me away from all the chaos,” Mike Hargis said. “It really helped me put my mind on something else and gave me and (Chandler) something to do together and work at.”
Shortly after his father began, Chandler, 18, got interested in the sport and picked it up with flying colors, going head-to-head with veteran racers when he was only 13.
Looked at by his father and grandpa as arguably the most talented of the bunch, it’s Chandler’s patience that has always helped him behind the wheel, never getting worked up when opposing racers start to play dirty.
But how does a kid who starts racing before he’s eligible for a driver’s license learn patience on a crowded track?
“I play a lot of video games,” Chandler Hargis said.
“I’ve always said that’s why he’s such a good race car driver,” his father added. “He’s always driven smooth, never gung-ho here or there, just smooth and moves to the front ... learning to take his time on the video games and on to the real world paid oft .”
For James Earl, while he was the first to start racing when he was a boy, he’s the last of the Hargis trio to join the stock car ranks, but according to his son, the family’s eldest is the most crazy about the sport.
Though he’s never claimed a victory, James Earl, who also said he’s never fi nished last, had one slip away from him two weeks ago at the Crawford County Speedway in Van Buren.
“I had it won until this boy just kept wamming my car in the rear, I just took it for so long until I fi nally locked the breaks up,” James Earl Hargis said. “I was running in second and the guy ahead of me had pipes down the side of his car, which is illegal. Everyone there said I had it won, I just got mad and locked up.
“I said to myself that I was going to stop that guy who was bumping me one way or another, and I did, but I lost the race because of it.”
The three men all wear the No. 23 on the side of their car because James Earl and Chandler wanted to be like Mike, who was born on July 23 and also donned the same digits on his football uniform back when he played for Huntsville.
The Hargis family used to have a weekend routine of spending one night a week at the West Siloam Speedway, the next at the North Central Arkansas Speedway in Flippin and heading to church on Sunday, but racing, like anything else, isn’t recession-proof and the rising fuel prices, whether gasoline or methanol, has put the frequency of trips on hold.
But now that racing isn’t an every weekend event, Mike said he and his son are starting to appreciate the sport the way they did when Hargis Racing first took to the track years ago.
“Me and (Chandler) have really slowed down a bit. We were fighting for championships and getting them every year, but it turns into a job instead of having fun,” he said. “Plus, it kind of made me feel like I was getting old.”
Even though James Earl is the oldest of the three, he’s the one with the most fire inside when it comes to being on the track, and it doesn’t look like that will die anytime soon. In fact, just a week after the victory slipped away from him in Crawford County, the 60-year-old logger was right back on the track to prove he belonged out there with the younger competitors.
“They said I’d never be back, but the next week I cut the front end off her and I pulled right beside that boy who wrecked me and I said ‘you better stay away from me tonight. If you touch me, we’ve had it.’ And he never touched me,” James Earl, who’s now been racing for four years, said.
Despite the high fuel prices and the exhaustion the sport of stock car racing can bring, it won’t keep this family, one that understands the value of hard work, from spending every day together, enjoying a blue collar life at a family logging business that’s over 50 years old.
In a day and age when society seems fixated on having the nicest things, this family isn’t content, but more than happy, to lead a life providing the raw materials necessary that have helped build Northwest Arkansas into on of the country’s fastest growing regions.
“My dad started the business (Hargis and Son Logging) and logged until he was 75 and still wanted to log,” James Earl said. “I’ve been doing it for over 40 years and it’s about time for me to get out and let (Mike and Chandler) take over.”
Neither raised any objections.
Click to expand...

maumann · Jun 28, 2011

Sure, I do cover auto racing for a living, so I'll offer some suggestions, Matt.

The piece itself is fine -- good quotes, nice transitions, interesting subject matter. I think you feel fairly comfortable in that voice and it reads like someone who has a good grasp of what he wants to convey. I might have led into the divorce quote with just a little background, maybe. "...Mike, 39, who started out in 2004 by using racing as a distraction from the issues he was having with his wife."

(Editor's note: It should probably have been "businesses" in the second graf.)

You've got the storytelling part down. Where I think you could have knocked it out of the park was with a stronger, more engaging lede. To me, the key to writing a feature -- way more than just a regular news story -- is hooking the reader right off the bat. And that doesn't necessarily mean the first graf as much as "make me want to keep reading."

Give me details. Give me descriptions. Make it so I can close my eyes and see exactly what you saw. You used "little" twice, but even so, little doesn't paint me a mind picture as much as "white clapboard house with a roof that needs fixing and a screened-in porch sitting at a cockeyed angle because of cracks in the foundation."

Describe to me the highway. Is it an Interstate, a two-lane winding country road? You described the gravel driveway and the cattle guards, which was good. Were there cows or other animals? Was there a barn? Had it been painted recently? What did the house look like? A picket fence? What did you hear? What did you smell?

Most importantly, was there an oak tree on the property, because I saw your phrase and thought, "Dang, you've got the family tree theme going" and that just would have been the perfect tie-in.

I'll just make up something to give you an example:

HUNTSVILLE -- About four miles east of town, just a few hundred yards from busy Highway 69, sits the Hargis farm. At first sight, it's not much to look that, just a beat-up old barn that could have used a new coat of paint more than a few summers ago, a white clapboard house with a roof that needs fixing and a screened-in porch that's fended off more than its fair share of mosquitoes. But turn left down the gravel road, across a couple of cattle guards and you'll spot a huge oak tree, a symbol of the bond between three generations of men who consider racing part of their family tree.

Here's a piece I did four years ago on a small town in Georgia and its ties to NASCAR.

http://www.nascar.com/2007/news/headlines/cup/07/19/carter.toccoa/story_single.html#page2

I see great potential. Don't be afraid to experiment with your ledes and concentrate on finding that one key element that ties everything together. In this case, the tree would have been a perfect focal point.

-- Mark

maumann · Jun 28, 2011

Of course, that should be "not much to look AT ..."

Mea culpa, Matt. Combination of too late and having just completed a 3,400-word story about NASCAR and social media.

Matt Stephens · Jul 14, 2011

Thanks, I greatly appreciate the feedback.

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