Although feature leads and hard leads have many similarities, there are a few aspects that set the two leads apart drastically.
In particular, feature leads often appeal to emotion and focus on soft, fluffy topics like a man with 12 kids who wins the lottery. These kinds of leads are geared towards unusual news rather than important news.
Unlike feature leads, hard leads are reserved for breaking “hard news” stories which are deemed as important to readers, for example: a story on natural disasters that occurred, or a political figure getting assassinated.
Because of the kind of article that follows, feature leads have flexibility in that they can be more creative whereas hard news leads stick to a basic layout of including all pertinent information concerning the 5 W’s: who, what, where, when and why.
Feature leads, on the other hand, do not always contain all the W’s. Instead, they have a nut graph, which is an essential element in writing a feature lead that basically tells what the story is about and why readers should even care to continue reading.
Nevertheless, before one starts writing an article, it is important to discern what type of lead is best suited for the article you intend to write. Every story can be written with either kind of news lead depending on the writing approach.
When writing feature leads, pay attention to little details like the single tear the father of 12 shed when he was announced as the lottery winner. Little aspects like that make the difference between hard news and feature style leads.
Featured leads are given more importance because of the features attached with the leads. Hard leads are shown down the featured leads.