Press writer shines on features

Reading Kristen Smith-Holland's features in today's Carthage Press reminded me of the days when I was fortunate enough to have some of the best feature writers around working for me at that newspaper, including Amy Lamb, Stacy Rector, Cait Purinton, Brian Webster, Rick Rogers, Mary Guccione and current Press Managing Editor Ron Graber.
One thing that I always liked to see reporters do at a smaller newspapers is to maximize their production by writing features that center around the news.
In Ms. Smith-Holland's feature on Joplin High School graduate Tessa Baugh Woods, she makes it a three-for-one proposition. In addition to having the kind of feature readers love to see in their newspapers, she connects it to two news stories since she talks about Mrs. Woods' husbands, Landon Woods of Jasper, a Marine stationed in Iraq, and she talks about her experience as an MSSU student in England at the time of the recent terrorists attacks. It makes for gripping reading.
The other feature is not connected to anything quite so serious, but nonetheless a big story in every community at this time of the year, the start of school. Ms. Smith-Holland profiles two new teachers in the Carthage R-9 system.
This approach to news writing makes the newspaper more relevant, something that newspapers have a difficult time accomplishing in this day and age. It also is extremely cost-effective.
Though every newspaper would love the luxury of having a reporter spend a day with someone for an in-depth feature, then call everyone that person knows, friend or enemy, that simply cannot be done by newspapers with small staffs. Not every editor or reporter has a knack for coming up with ideas for these kinds of features. That's why you see so many newspapers (and television stations) repeating the same worn out ideas over and over.
Why bother to pick up a newspaper the day after Thanksgiving just to read another story about how many people are out shopping on the first day of the Christmas season? Why do yet another story on April 15 on how many people have not filed their income tax reports? When newspapers do those kinds of stories over and over again, without doing anything different they drive away readers. I don't remember ever assigning that kind of story. If it made the paper, it was buried inside.
I have written before about the day the day in October 1990 that my managing editor at The Press, Neil Campbell, assigned me to cover the final Jasper County hearing in the Nancy Cruzan right-to-die case. There wasn't much difference between my account of the hearing and the ones that ran in The Globe, Associated Press, Kansas City Star, or New York Times. What made our coverage stand out was the feature I did on the nieces Nancy loved and how they were reacting to the testimony, including the courtroom sketches that Nancy's niece, Miranda Yocum, was drawing, and my interview with Nancy's father, Joe Cruzan, about his talented granddaughter.
Strong feature writing connected to events in the news can enable a small newspaper like The Press compete with the big boys in Joplin.