Yr 11 OBSERVER: FEATURES

The Observer: features https://www.theguardian.com/observer

The arts editor of The Guardian, Sarah Donaldson, tells us the difference between features and news in a newspaper.

• Features differ from news in content, length and style. Features are longer, more reflective and analytical. They often analyse trends.
• Feature writers are 'more stylish' as they have more room to consider style, whereas news articles bunch all information into the first paragraph.
• Feature writers can reveal more personality, for instance, Carole Cadwalladr breaking the Cambridge Analytica scandal in an interview with whistleblower Christopher Wylie. 
• Features and news work side by side, with a feature writer able to investigate in more depth, such as Shahmir Sanni revealing the law-breaking in the Vote Leave campaign.
• Features are the ‘brains’ of the newspaper. They are wide-ranging and their subject matter can be politics, arts, culture, fashion, film, entertainment, beauty. The magazine is the ‘heart’ of the newspaper and its style is more visual, with more photographs.
• The Observer’s FOCUS section on Sunday mixes light and dark. It offers the chance to ‘reflect’ and mixes in lighter reading matter, such as on leisure and lifestyle with politics and crime. 
• Comparing news stories and features - try these on the solar eclipse in north America - here’s a news story and a feature on the same subject.

PREP Open the link to Carole Cadwalladr's Cambridge Analytica article that is linked above. In a post entitled OBSERVER: FUNDING explain what you found at the base of the article and what The Guardian /Observer invites you to do, and why. Link it to what you learned in your last prep. 

For your second paragraph, research other ways that the newspaper is funded by reading page 5 of the green guide - the section on funding - and describe them in your own words.

(10 marks).