Recently in Features Category

The Star Tribune ran a feature today about buying the best ingredients for the best baking results for the upcoming holidays.

Pat Sinclair pulls off being educational in tone without sounding like a page out of a textbook.  It is not the most entertaining feature, but I kept reading based on all the new information revealed about baking ingredients.

Each ingredient entry is short and to the point, making it a good quick read for anyone quickly scanning the lifestyle section of the Star Tribune.

The feature was effective in its message because I was quite hungry after reading all three pages, yet I was curiously unmotivated to go out and bake something myself.

Sinclair's feature is full of facts, yet short on entertainment value or motivation to push the reader into exploring the topic further.

After reading this, I now have valuable knowledge about butter, milk, and all sorts of baking ingredients that are foreign to me.

            Vanity Fair recently profiled the life of famed magazine writer to reveal the fall and rise of a morally motivated individual.

The magazine paid tribute to Dominick Dunne, one of its key contributors over the past decade, who spent 15 years of his life covering the biggest celebrity murder cases of the time.

Michael Hogan drew me into the story of Dunne's life, focusing on the pivotal events that defined his career. 

Hogan deftly accents key moments of the story with both the larger events of Dunne's life along with the more intimate nondescript moments.

Hogan is able to write about the most tragic of moments, mainly, the murder of Dunne's daughter, with a sense of genuine empathy.  I did not feel as if it was exploitative, since that would have been an easy way to draw interest.

Overall, it was a great feature that used its length to its advantage by providing an in-depth look into the life of a man that I did not know about.

1UP.com did a retrospective three weeks ago on Nintendo, the company responsible for popular video game franchises such as Super Mario and Pokemon, highlighting its biggest accomplishments and its most unique characteristics.

Chris Kohler gives a brief, but informative, look at different aspects of Nintendo's history, design philosophy, key individuals, and its most influential products.

Having much experience with Nintendo's products, I found the retrospective to be engaging yet nothing surprising.  This feature serves more as a quick guide for anyone who is unfamiliar with gaming's most enduring company.

The feature suffers from what I have come to expect from 1UP's features: lack of depth.  The websites feature's are never that long, and leave one more curious than satisfied.

Regardless of depth, the feature is still a good read either as a refresher on Nintendo or as a decent introduction to its inner workings.