Write Stylish with Features
Features allow us to write in style. Writing news stories, or commonly called features, can make writers explore language styles, inject values, and tell stories like fairy tales.
“Although it looks like a story or a fairy tale, the feature is not an imagination, it’s just a storytelling style. It’s more flexible and less rigid than writing hard news stories,” said AP Wicaksono, a speaker from UII of the Department of Communications Web manager, in a content production workshop for the UII Islamic Boarding School website on August 22. 2021.
According to Wicaksono, writing hardnews is enough with 6W and 2H information. “One additional W is What next, and one additional H is How Much,” said Wicaksono explaining tips that are no longer just 5W1H. “As long as the most important information from the first informant appears in advance, then we can add complementary information from other sources,” he said.
Farikha, one of the participants, also observed that features can make writers transmit human values and concern for speakers to readers. Participants in this training were asked to read the work of a Kompas journalist entitled Om Batman, as a simple example.
After reading the example of feature writing delivered by the speaker, Asliha Latifa believes that there are values conveyed in the feature writing style. There is also the use of figures of speech and figurative language in feature writing, as is the opinion of Khalida, another participant.
But the point is, with training using the comparative method, the participants have been able to clearly feel the difference in style between hard news and features. This understanding makes it easy for participants to write hard news in the simulation session. Collected 11 news articles on the activities of the participants in the website content production training this time.
Farchan, the member of Media Santri, hopes that after this training, in turn, these writings can become the capital for the santri media retainer to manage the UII pesantren web in the future. “A total of 18 santri media managers will later manage the santri media lines, ranging from the web to social media,” he said.
