Go-tos for features

[Illino]

Which papers do you like to go to for sports features? Not magazine stuff like SI, but your 30- to 40-inchers on locals/college/pros.

Thanks

 

[spikechiquet]

Huh? What papers?
At my paper, if we want a feature story about local or college stuff...we tell a reporter to write it.

 

[wicked]

Newspapers still run 30- to 40-inch features? I missed that memo. If you find anything longer than 25, I'll be shocked.

 

[BDC99]

Newspapers still run 30- to 40-inch features? I missed that memo. If you find anything longer than 25, I'll be shocked.

We do em occasionally, usually on a featurized column. It's pretty rare though.

 

[Gator]

We run 40-inch features all the time. Three in the past two weeks between seasons.

 

[Matt Stephens]

I wrote a 75-incher two months ago and a 55-incher last month. If you have a good story, take the time to do it right and write it well. There's nothing wrong with shorter features, but I still think long features are pretty common.

 

[JRoyal]

We run plenty of features of that length in just about every section pretty regularly. And some damn good ones (usually), if I don't say so myself.

 

[Human_Paraquat]

I've written three profiles of ~ 3,000 words or longer in the past year or so. On the other hand, thanks to staff reductions, we typically have plenty of space to fill, especially on Sundays. All three of those were sports-related but ran as A1 centerpieces.

 

[wicked]

Most sports sections I've seen lately are so space (and ad) deprived that I'm having a hard time imagining any newspaper having a huge newshole in sports.

 

[pseudo]

BuffNews does longform sports features on the regular, although they do sometimes run on A-1 (including the Darryl Talley piece which appeared in this year's BASW). Some recent ones:

Broke and broken - The Buffalo News
Pushing drugs in the NFL locker room - The Buffalo News
Leagues use legal loophole on gambling to profit from daily fantasy games - BN Blitz
Torell Troup: the one drafted a pick ahead of Rob Gronkowski - BN Blitz
For NFL teams, it's a game of beat the clock - BN Blitz
Bills’ Dareus keeps playing through life’s losses - BN Blitz

 

[TGO157]

I think there is more to gain from turning a 70-inch feature/enterprise/investigative story into a three- or four-part series, around 15-20 inches per story. That's just me, though. I'm probably in the minority, but I prefer the idea of chapters/episodes. Think of it like a TV show, if possible. I think you can sell a larger quantity of papers that way. Less of a one-and-done mentality for rack sales.

 

[JRoyal]

It depends on the story. In some cases, you need all the information for it to work. In some cases, serializing works. The problem with serializing is that each piece really has to stand on its own because you can't count on people to read them all when they're broken up, even online.

And serializing does little or nothing to help circulation. We've done it both ways, and there's not a difference.