ABSTRACT
I f Lord Northcliffe’s view of features journalism was positive he is not always echoedby 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 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 the 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.
