WHAT NEWSPAPERS WANT.  Since timeliness is the keynote of the newspaper, current topics, either growing out of the news of the week or anticipating coming events, furnish the subjects for most special feature stories.  The news columns from day to day provide room for only concise announcements of such news as a scientific discovery, an invention, the death of an interesting person, a report on social or industrial conditions, proposed legislation, the razing of a landmark, or the dedication of a new building.  Such news often arouses the reader’s curiosity to know more of the persons, places, and circumstances mentioned.  In an effort to satisfy this curiosity, editors of magazine sections print special feature stories based on news.

By anticipating approaching events, an editor is able to supply articles that are timely for a particular issue of his paper.  Two classes of subjects that he usually looks forward to in this way are:  first, those concerned with local, state, and national anniversaries; and second, those growing out of seasonal occasions, such as holidays, vacations, the opening of schools and colleges, moving days, commencements, the opening of hunting and fishing seasons.

The general policy of a newspaper with regard to special feature stories is the same as its policy concerning news.  Both are determined by the character of its circulation.  A paper that is read largely by business and professional men provides news and special articles that satisfy such readers.  A paper that aims to reach the so-called masses naturally selects news and features that will appeal to them.  If a newspaper has a considerable circulation outside the city where it is published, the editors, in framing their policy, cannot afford to overlook their suburban and rural readers.  The character of its readers, in a word, determines the character of a paper’s special feature stories.

The newspaper is primarily local in character.  A city, a state, or at most a comparatively small section of the whole country, is its particular field.  Besides the news of its locality, it must, of course, give significant news of the world at large.  So, too, in addition to local feature articles, it should furnish special feature stories of a broader scope.  This distinctively local character of newspapers differentiates them from magazines of national circulation in the matter of acceptable subjects for special articles.

The frequency of publication of newspapers, as well as their ephemeral character, leads, in many instances, to the choice of comparatively trivial topics for some articles.  Merely to give readers entertaining matter with which to occupy their leisure at the end of a day’s work or on Sunday, some papers print special feature stories on topics of little or no importance, often written in a light vein.  Articles with no more serious purpose than that of helping readers to while away a few spare moments are obviously better adapted to newspapers, which are read rapidly and immediately cast aside, than to periodicals.