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