Hard versus Soft News

The Rise of “Soft News”

With the public inundated with news from a vast array of venues and media, from newspapers to television to the Internet, consumers often turn away from news entirely. Beginning in the 1950s but sharply escalating in the late 1970s, in order to offset the loss of readers and viewers, news organizations sought to increase the amount of entertaining, human interest stories they presented—and the manner in which those stories were presented. Dramatic content, faster presentation, shorter stories, and more happy endings became commonplace in the 1980s. Especially in cable news, in which demands of the 24-hour news cycle dominates the information landscape, more sensational-istic and “softer” news items are included, not only to attract and retain viewers, but simply to fill the hours of the day.

Sensationalism is often linked with soft news, although certainly not all soft news is sensationalis-tic, and there is ample opportunity for hard news to be sensationalized. Media outlets do not have to simply focus on shock value, name recognition, or human interest to be sensationalistic—hard news stories can be sensationalized by focusing on emotional or dramatic elements of a story at the expense of context, background, or other information that may be more relevant to the public at large.

However, while this trend increased significantly as media venues proliferated toward the end of the twentieth century, tabloid media and their sensationalistic leanings found roots as early as 1919. Published by Joseph Patterson and Robert McCormick, The New York Daily News focused primarily on scandals—the sexual peccadilloes of local well-knowns, violent crime stories, and the like. Its major rival, The New York Post, has taken the News's sensationalistic, soft news–prominent approach and amplified the shock value with garish headlines and questionable photo doctoring. Then again, the News' influence is not simply limited to other tabloids; many of the particular stylings of The New York Daily News, such as the prominence of photography in its layout and extensive gossip and entertainment sections, have been adopted by major daily newspapers across the country such as USA Today.

...