_)

A PARADISE FOR A PENNY (_Boston Transcript_) 326

WANTED: A HOME ASSISTANT (_Pictorial Review_) 331

SIX YEARS OF TEA ROOMS (_New York Sun_) 336

BY PARCEL POST (_Country Gentleman_) 341

SALES WITHOUT SALESMANSHIP (_Saturday Evening Post_) 349

THE ACCIDENT THAT GAVE US WOOD-PULP PAPER 356
(_Munsey's Magazine_)

CENTENNIAL OF THE FIRST STEAMSHIP TO CROSS THE ATLANTIC 360
(_Providence Journal_)

SEARCHING FOR THE LOST ATLANTIS 364
(_Syndicate Sunday Magazine Section_)

INDEX 369

HOW TO WRITE SPECIAL FEATURE ARTICLES

PART I

CHAPTER I

THE FIELD FOR SPECIAL ARTICLES

ORIGIN OF SPECIAL ARTICLES. The rise of popular magazines and of
magazine sections of daily newspapers during the last thirty years has
resulted in a type of writing known as the "special feature article."
Such articles, presenting interesting and timely subjects in popular
form, are designed to attract a class of readers that were not reached
by the older literary periodicals. Editors of newspapers and magazines a
generation ago began to realize that there was no lack of interest on
the part of the general public in scientific discoveries and inventions,
in significant political and social movements, in important persons and
events. Magazine articles on these themes, however, had usually been
written by specialists who, as a rule, did not attempt to appeal to the
"man in the street," but were satisfied to reach a limited circle of
well-educated readers.

To create a larger magazine-reading public, editors undertook to develop
a popular form and style that would furnish information as attractively
as possible. The perennial appeal of fiction gave them a suggestion for
the popularization of facts. The methods of the short story, of the
drama, and even of the melodrama, applied to the presentation of general
information, provided a means for catching the attention of the casual
reader.

Daily newspapers had already discovered the advantage of giving the
day's news in a form that could be read rapidly with the maximum degree
of interest by the average man and woman. Certain so-called sensational
papers had gone a step further in these attempts to give added
attractiveness to news and had emphasized its melodramatic aspects.