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Abstract
Many studies reveal that quality journalistic writing in the form of well-written feature stories is one of the few true journalistic tools that help newspapers in their struggle against declining readership. In Slovenia, however, there is little acknowledgement of this. Academic research illustrates that readers want well-written sophisticated feature stories, but they are offered poorly written elementary feature stories. One of the reasons for this discrepancy might be the tradition of the latter in Slovene press; besides few practising journalists are familiar with the theory of journalistic forms, and most of them are not aware of the advantages of quality, sophisticated feature stories. Feature stories are undervalued in Slovene press to such an extent that as a genre they are rarely examined in commercial readership surveys. Thus, the readers’ preference for them remains vague and ambiguous. Such surveys do not help the newspaper publishers determine what kind of articles their readers really want and in what form/genre they want them.
Notes
1. Interviews were conducted with the following people: Manca Borko, 5 June 2007, former journalist at Delo; Maja Čakarić, 6 June 2007, journalist at Delo; Javornik Lojze, 8 May 2003, newsdesk editor at Delo; Janez Kajzer, 24 July 2002, former journalist at Tovariš; Darijan Košir, 8 May 2003 and 8 October 2008, editor-in-chief of Delo; željko Kozinc, 22 July 2002, former journalist at Tovariš and Delo; Tanja Lesničar Pučko, 18 November 2005, journalist at the Culture Department at Dnevnik; Brankica Petković, 11 May 2007, Head of the Center for Media Policy, Peace Institute, Ljubljana; Jana Prešeren, 19 July 2007, Director Assistant, Aragon; Alenka Puhar, 23 July 2002, a former journalist at Tovariš and Delo; Svetlana Ristin, 25 May 2007, senior proofreader at the newspaper Delo; Roman Zatler, 13 March 2007, employee at Delo's Marketing Department.
2. In Slovene newsrooms more attention is usually given to the reporting part of the process, i.e. gathering the facts and the contents of the story, than to the writing part. In the period from 2004 until 2007 the Consortium veritatis/bratstvo resnice awards that are presented every year by the Slovene Association of Journalists were mainly given for the journalists’ deep analysis, argumentation, impact, courage or topic covered, i.e. the content, and only rarely for the quality of the writing, i.e. the form (DNS, Citation2007). Additionally, at the most important quality daily newspaper Delo, not much effort has been seen in the past regarding keeping journalists who were considered good writers if they decided to leave the newspaper (among journalists who left were acclaimed writers, for example Marko Crnkovič, Ervin Hladnik Milharčič, Uroš Škerl and Barbara Šurk).
3. The gap between educators and practitioners is witnessed also in other countries and formal journalism education is a popular topic which has been addressed by many academics (see, for example, Adam, Citation2001; Dates et al., Citation2006; Deuze, Citation2006; Dickson and Brandon, Citation2000; Macdonald, Citation2006).
4. There are different types of feature stories in Anglo-Saxon scholarly literature, among them news feature stories, human-interest stories, profiles, colour stories, travel stories, lifestyle stories. In this paper, I shall focus on news feature stories, human-interest stories and profiles, which are also called conventional or formulaic feature stories, especially when compared with literary journalism (Hartsock, 2007, p. 258).
5. In 1973, Tom Wolfe defined literary journalism as journalism that would read as a novel (see Wolfe, 1973). Literary journalism is nowadays commonly defined as a style of newspaper and magazine writing that combines the information-gathering methods of journalistic reporting with the narrative techniques of realistic fiction.
6. Milosavljević (2003) later changed this division; he added the genre portret (portrait) to the species and renamed it novinarska zgodba.
7. Some characteristics of feature stories were defined by Roy Peter Clark in his article “Reviving the Feature Story” (2004). “You can read a short one in five minutes and a long one in 15 minutes. It is not a news story but can be inspired by the news. It has, at its heart, human interest. It illuminates lives lived in our time. It takes advantage of an expanded set of language and narrative strategies. It can be written and reported within the normal timeframe of journalistic enterprise.”
8. Hartsock (2000, p. 131) writes: “Within [that] story model also lies the conventional feature story, the older tradition of narrative journalism, and sensational versions of true-life narratives. The difference is that a modern narrative literary journalism attempts to avoid formulaic emotion and the emphasis on differences between people, whether cultural, racial, or social”.
9. Delo is a quality daily newspaper, considered to be the most important newspaper publication in Slovenia. Its current circulation is around 60–70,000 copies. Its ambition is to be “the best read, the most competitive and credible newspaper with the highest possible quantity of published information, analyses and commentaries, but still being able to adapt to the changes in the way of life and thus to the reading habits by its readers” (Delo, Citation2005).
10. In the United States, there is a tradition of so-called “brown-bag” seminars. This is an informal education of professionals (in this case of journalists) which appears in the form of a discussion on a given subject. It usually occurs during lunch time, hence the name.
11. Ethnography is “concerned with the collection and analysis of empirical data drawn from ‘real world’ contexts rather than being produced under experimental conditions created by the researcher”. Its key aim “is for the researcher attempting to make sense of these events from the perspectives of participants”. Data “are gathered from a range of sources, but observation and/or relatively informal conversations are often key tools” (Lillis, 2008, p. 358).
12. A research study about the presence of feature stories in the newspaper Delo between 1959 and 1989 (see Šurc, 1989) additionally proved that most of the feature stories published were in fact reported stories.
13. The implication of the lack of theoretical knowledge of journalism, communication and social sciences in general can be seen on a daily basis in Slovene media. The texts often do not follow the rules and guidelines of journalism (see, for example, Kalin Golob and Poler Kovačič, Citation2005; Merljak Zdovc and Poler Kovačič, Citation2007; Poler Kovačič, Citation2003); besides, in many a lack of general understanding of the topic and its position within a broader context can be noticed. If we add the lack of knowledge regarding media ethics among many journalists as well as important editors of individual media, we can more easily understand why the level of quality of journalism practice in many media is relatively low. In 2003, for example, a news story about a youth event was published on page 3 of the newspaper Delo (S. B., Citation2003). The news story informing the readers about an event organized by students for students was published with an accompanying photograph showing a drunken nude female student. There was no reason whatsoever to publish this photography beside the article, as the news report was not about students running wild. Asked why they chose this photograph and whether they thought it was ethical to do so, the editor-in-chief Darijan Košir and the then news-desk editor Lojze Javornik said that they had decided to publish it because they had thought it was interesting. They said that they had seen nothing wrong with that (Košir, interview, 2003; Javornik, interview).
14. On the other hand, even if more journalists had studied journalism, this would not necessarily mean they would have been acquainted with the advantages of feature stories and their potential for the production of quality journalism. Feature stories remain largely unnoticed (by journalists and editors) also because they are not properly defined and classified (by scholars). Although the Department of Journalism celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2004, the theory of journalistic text form in Slovenia is not (yet) adequately developed and there is little scholarship on the principal forms of journalistic communication (commentary, story, news report, etc.) in Slovene journalism (see Košir, Citation2003, pp. 136–50). Until very recently students of journalism could not gain much information on sophisticated feature stories (Borko, interview). This changed with the Bologna Process in 2005, when the Department of Journalism launched specialized writing courses in areas such as Literary Journalism.
15. These journalists can get acquainted with sophisticated feature stories through educational projects such as Delo's School of Journalism (Čakarić, interview) or through mentorship of their colleagues. Perspective journalists of a younger generation, for example Uroš škerl and Boštjan Videmšek, became acquainted with feature stories with the aid of acclaimed colleagues, experienced feature story writers themselves (e.g. željko Kozinc, Mitja Meršol and Ervin Hladnik Milharčič), who occasionally even began to bring along talented young reporters and teach them how to write feature stories.
16. Knowledge which can be acquired while studying journalism, and in particular good writing skills, is undervalued in Slovene newspapers. Style and language that are considered the basic tools for journalists (see, for example, Clark, 2006) are often either considered irrelevant or as something that can be acquired through practice. The newspaper Delo, for example, relies heavily on proofreaders who are supposed to correct journalists’ linguistic mistakes and sometimes even stylistic ones. Both Lojze Javornik, the newsdesk editor responsible for five of the most important pages of the newspaper, and Svetlana Ristin, a senior proofreader who is daily amending journalistic texts, have worked with journalistic texts that were linguistically and stylistically poor. However, the lack of interest in the quality of one's writing is probably also a result of the fact that in Slovene newsrooms more attention is usually given to the reporting part of the process, i.e. gathering the facts and the contents of the story, than to the writing part. Thus, journalists are not forced to pay much attention to their writing. “The golden pen award which is given by the newspaper Delo to the best journalist of the year has been usually awarded without any special consideration of the winner's writing skills,” says Svetlana Ristin (interview).
17. Although the study Ways With Words conducted by ASNE in 1993 might appear somewhat dated due to the later arrival of Internet and blogs, it is still very useful as it is one of the few (if not the only one) that measures readers’ attitudes towards the same subject presented in four different forms. These forms, called modes by the authors of the study, were: straight traditional; narrative; point of view; and radical clarity mode.
18. Research conducted by Mojca Krajnc under the mentorship of Sonja Merljak Zdovc showed that readers in Slovenia, too, appreciate good writing in the form of stories. Krajnc asked her respondents which genre they prefer and offered them four possible answers: interview, news report, feature stories or other. Most of the respondents, 34 per cent, put feature stories in first place with interviews second (29 per cent) and news reports third (27 per cent). Her findings were based on a sample of 250 respondents (110 men and 140 women); most (90 per cent) of the respondents read newspapers either daily or several times a week and most of them (26 per cent) read Delo, while 12 perc ent read Dnevnik. A study conducted by Maša Jesenšek generated similar findings a year later. Jesenšek also asked her respondents which genre they prefer and offered them four possible answers. Most respondents (32 per cent) placed feature stories first, followed by interviews (26 per cent), news reports (20 per cent) and commentaries (17 percent). Her findings were based on a sample of 208 respondents (84 men and 124 women); most (74 per cent) respondents read newspapers either daily or several times a week and most (62 per cent) read Delo or Dnevnik (45 per cent). Krajnc's and Jesenšek's research thus showed that the most widely read genre was feature stories (see Jesenšek, 2007, p. 44; Krajnc, 2006, p. 35).
19. In the last few years, the publishing house Delo has conducted two major readership surveys. The first was conducted in 2004, and was conducted throughout the entire year. In it, all texts published in the newspaper Delo were surveyed for readership appreciation. Another one was conducted in 2006, but it was limited to two weeks only. However, when I tried to access either the data or the results of the surveys, I found that most of them had been lost. Thus I only had partial access to the data from the surveys. Those from 2004, which were distributed to editors of the newspaper only, I acquired in 2004; they were sent to me by the editors Javornik and Šepetavc, but only selectively and without any pattern. Those from 2006 were sent to me by Roman Zatler. However, he sent me only the results from the first week.
20. Sobotna priloga is a weekly supplement which is aimed at more sophisticated readers and thus predominantly carries longer and more in-depth texts. It has a circulation of 92,000. The results of the survey which focused on Sobotna priloga are thus more relevant for this study.
21. Portraits are stories about people rather than other topics. They appear to match most closely the profile in the Anglo-Saxon definition of journalistic genres.
22. Similar classification mistakes have also been made in other months (see, for example, Aragon, 2004a). Besides, genres were not always ascribed to the texts examined (Aragon, 2004b), providing additional proof that they were considered irrelevant for the newspaper publishing house that ordered the survey.
23. The content analysis also shows that three of the commentaries were in fact columns, of which one was written by a novelist and one by a theatre director; only the third was written by a journalist. I can speculate that they were so widely read because readers like articulation of personal opinion, especially if the writers are provocative—as was the case in writer Svetlana Makarovič's August 2004 column.
24. Unfortunately, I could not analyse the process behind the readership survey from 2004 because it was conducted by an independent company (Aragon). The texts surveyed were categorized in genres by Delo's marketing department and given to Aragon (Prešeren, interview), however the researchers who worked on the project are no longer working for Delo and could not be interviewed. Thus, only the background of the survey from 2006 could be established. When asked who categorized the texts, Roman Zatler from Delo's marketing department responded that they themselves did. When asked on what criteria they based their decision regarding the classification, he responded that they relied on their own experience (Zatler, interview).