Reporters, correspondents, and other regular members of the staff may be assigned to write special feature stories, or may prepare such stories on their own initiative for submission to the editor of the magazine section.  In many offices regular members of the staff are paid for special feature stories in addition to their salaries, especially when the subjects are not assigned to them and when the stories are prepared in the writer’s own leisure time.  Other papers expect their regular staff members to furnish the paper with whatever articles they may write, as a part of the work covered by their salary.  If a paper has one or more special feature writers on its staff, it may pay them a fixed salary or may employ them “on space”; that is, pay them at a fixed “space rate” for the number of columns that an article fills when printed.

Newspaper correspondents, who are usually paid at space rates for news stories, may add to their monthly “string,” or amount of space, by submitting special feature articles in addition to news.  They may also submit articles to other papers that do not compete with their own paper.  Ordinarily a newspaper expects a correspondent to give it the opportunity of printing any special feature stories that he may write.

Free-lance writers, who are not regularly employed by newspapers or magazines as staff members, submit articles for the editor’s consideration and are paid at space rates.  Sometimes a free lance will outline an article in a letter or in personal conference with an editor in order to get his approval before writing it, but, unless the editor knows the writer’s work, he is not likely to promise to accept the completed article.  To the writer there is an obvious advantage in knowing that the subject as he outlines it is or is not an acceptable one.  If an editor likes the work of a free lance, he may suggest subjects for articles, or may even ask him to prepare an article on a given subject.  Freelance writers, by selling their work at space rates, can often make more money than they would receive as regular members of a newspaper staff.

For the amateur the newspaper offers an excellent field.  First, in every city of any size there is at least one daily newspaper, and almost all these papers publish special feature stories.  Second, feature articles on local topics, the material for which is right at the amateur’s hand, are sought by most newspapers.  Third, newspaper editors are generally less critical of form and style than are magazine editors.  With some practice an inexperienced writer may acquire sufficient skill to prepare an acceptable special feature story for publication in a local paper, and even if he is paid little or nothing for it, he will gain experience from seeing his work in print.

The space rate paid for feature articles is usually proportionate to the size of the city in which the newspaper is published.  In small cities papers seldom pay more than $1 a column; in larger places the rate is about $3 a column; in still larger ones, $5; and in the largest, from $8 to $10.  In general the column rate for special feature stories is the same as that paid for news stories.