Readership Institute: The Value of Feature-style Writing: Feature-style Example

The following example is one way a story could be written in feature-style. It is not necessarily the ideal approach, but can serve as an example of one way of writing a story. Click here to see the same story written in an inverted pyramid style.

School Ceremony Downstate Under U.S. Court Order
By John Chase
Chicago Tribune
May 21, 2001

WASHINGTON, Ill. - It was not the words graduating senior Ryan Brown spoke at Washington Community High School commencement services on Sunday that resonated in this small town just outside of Peoria.

It was what he did before he spoke.

Walking to the podium inside the gymnasium as a scheduled speaker, Brown paused, stepped to the side of the stage, folded his hands and bowed his head in a silent prayer. The gymnasium crowd of more than 1,000 students and adults erupted in cheers, with some standing to applaud while others blew air horns in celebration.

For the first time in this school's 80-year history, no prayer was heard publicly during graduation services, following a federal judge's ruling last week prohibiting it after the class valedictorian, Natasha Appenheimer, and her family obtained a temporary restraining order against the public school district.

But Brown, and other graduates who supported an invocation and benediction, did what they could to bring God into the services. Some used tape to write out messages such as "Let's Pray" and "Amen" on their caps, while others displayed crosses around their necks that were distributed by fellow students before the ceremony.

Even during his speech, Brown faked a sneeze, to which many students shouted, "God bless you." They would abide by the law, Brown said, but they wanted everyone to know where their hearts were.

"I don't understand why we can't have God everywhere, including my graduation," Brown said after the ceremony.

The debate has divided not only the class of 213 graduating seniors, but also this town of 10,000 residents, some of whom held prayer services of their own on Sunday and put up billboards on the city's main street reading, "Seniors- Stand up and Pray!"

School officials believed the planned prayers were legal because they would have been student-initiated. The senior class, not the administration, had decided to include an invocation and benediction. Students had written the prayers themselves, and a graduating senior was scheduled to read them, said school Supt. Lee Edwards.

But Appenheimer, a practicing Roman Catholic, her family and the American Civil Liberties Union, thought otherwise. The graduate said she did not want anyone praying for her. She also felt that any state-sponsored prayer would offend her friends who are atheists.

In addition, a teacher reviews the material before it is read, the school prints up the programs and school facilities, such as the gym, microphones and the podium, are used for saying the prayers. It was that final point to which U.S. District Judge Joe B. McDade concurred most in ruling for Appenheimer and her family.

During the ceremony, when Appenheimer's name was read for her to receive her diploma, a few people in the crowd booed, but cheers from her friends and family drowned out most of it. Afterwards, Appenheimer said she felt she had done the right thing.

"We righted a wrong, and anytime you can make something better than before that's good," she said.