ABSTRACT
Lord Northcliffe, founder of the Daily Mail, believed: ‘It is hard news that catches readers. Features hold them.’ It’s a positive view although not one echoed by all journalists. The view that real journalism is ‘hard news’ and that its opposite is ‘soft features’ still prevails on some newspapers. This – even though Northcliffe’s point has probably been true for as long as there has been mass-market journalism, and in particular since the broadcast media, later joined by the internet – took over the job, in most homes, of bringing in the hard news. Northcliffe’s point is that hard news is much the same wherever you read it, but that features create a unique tone and character. If that is partly true of newspapers, it is much more true of magazines, many of which contain almost entirely features material.
