COMM 209: Sample "news-feature" story

We're unpacking boxes after moving to a new house, and I found this story today when we were cleaning out the basement of the old house. I wrote it 25 years ago for The Rock Island (Ill.) Argus, but I think the clip is a pretty good example of some of the techniques that news writers still use today ... the ones you read about in Tim Harrower's "Inside Reporting" and the ones I talk about in class. It's also an example of what I think is a pretty decent piece of deadline writing. So I scanned the clips and uploaded them to our blog.

I reported it and wrote it the day International Harvester Corp. announced it was closing its Farmall tractor plant in Rock Island, which had been a major employer there from 1926 till it closed in 1985. It was a major blow to the city's economy, and permanently altered its way of life. (If you're familiar with the old Sangamo Electric plant on Springfield's North End, there were a lot of similarities.) With a crowd of other reporters, I was at the plant gates that afternoon during the shift change. We interviewed workers as they came out into the parking lot. From there, we went to the United Auto Workers local office just down the street from the plant.

Things to look for as you read:

• The story has a feature-type lede, quoting a worker who was trying to put the plant closing in context. It doesn't have a decent nut graf, though. It came out the following afternoon, when the 6 o'clock news and the morning paper in the Quad-Cities had been all over it, and every sentient being in the metro area knew about the plant closing. But I still should have written a nut graf!
  
• Look at the way the quotes are handled. Quote-transition-quote-transition. A quote-kebab, in other words. Notice in the third, fourth and fifth grafs how I break up the quotes into separate paragraphs. The guy was speaking slowly, and he'd stop to think in between sentences. So I tried to show that.
  
• Some of the guys who were coming out of the plant weren't real happy to see the reporters at the gate. I especially liked one guy who said he was going to go after our jobs, so I quoted him. Others, I quoted anonymously, but only after saying they refused to give their names. But quotes are the name of the game, especially in a story like this.
  
• When we were interviewing the guy in the United Auto Workers local, I tried to work in a little description of the scene. He was interrupted by a phone call, so I quoted what he said on the phone. It added atmosphere. And it led me right into what Harrower calls a "kicker," a good strong quote at the end.

The story isn't great literature, but it's a decent example of what reporters do for a living. And it's a very good example of what your instructor is looking for in news writing. After all, he wrote it.

To enlarge the clips so you can read them, click on the picture.