Profile Pieces: Journalism and the 'Human Interest' Bias (Routledge Research in Journalism) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 113893805X ISBN 13: 9781138938052

Publisher: Routledge, 2015

Synopsis

This book examines the history, theory and journalistic practice of profile writing. Profiles, and the practice of writing them, are of increasing interest to scholars of journalism because conflicts between the interviewer and the subject exemplify the changing nature of journalism itself. While the subject, often through the medium of their press representative, struggles to retain control of the interview space, the journalist seeks to subvert it. This interesting and multi-layered interaction, however, has rarely been subject to critical scrutiny, partly because profiles have traditionally been regarded as public relations exercises or as ‘soft’ journalism. However, chapters in this volume reveal not only that profiling has, historically, taken many different forms, but that the idea of the interview as a contested space has applications beyond the subject of celebrated individuals. The volume looks at the profile’s historical beginnings, at the contemporary manufacture of celebrity versus the ‘ordinary’, at profiling communities, countries and movements, at profiling the destitute, at sporting personalities and finally at profiling and trauma.

About this title

About the Author:

Sue Joseph is Senior Lecturer in the Journalism and Creative Writing programs at the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia

Richard Lance Keeble is Professor in the School of English and Journalism at the University of Lincoln, UK

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 113893805X
• ISBN 13: 9781138938052
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 254
• Editor: Joseph Sue, Keeble Richard Lance