Human-interest story
[3] Human-interest features are frequently evergreen content, easily recorded well in advance and/or rerun during holidays or slow news days.
[2] Human-interest stories are regarded by some scholars as a form of journalistic manipulation or propaganda, often published with the intention of boosting viewership ratings or attracting higher amounts of sales and revenue.
[1] The content of a human-interest story is not just limited to the reporting of one individual person, as they may feature a group of people, a specific culture, a pet or animal, a part of nature or an object.
Originally devised by women, the journalists writing them were initially known as sob sisters because the stories were often written to elicit sympathy for their subjects.
[5] Within Western media, the human-interest story gained notoriety when these profile pieces were published in the American magazine The New Yorker, which began circulation in 1925.
[6] Scholars of journalism have put forward that the origin of the human-interest story dates back further than this, as they cite the 1791 biography The Life of Samuel Johnson as a profile piece in which the author James Boswell utilised research, interviews and his own experiences to formulate his work, all of which are instruments of standard practice for modern journalists.
[8] Scholars Winfield and Hume explore how heroes have evolved from cultural figures such as Abraham Lincoln,[9] to regular people through the reporting of the human-interest story.
Televised human-interest stories often encompass interviews, and the reporting of information relevant to their topic, in order for the consumer to understand the situation and relate to its content.
[11] The story focuses on the struggles of Dasani and goes into significant detail about the challenges she encounters during her daily life including her sleeping by a rotten wall or having to use a mop bucket as a toilet.
[12] The article uses the human-interest format to draw sadness and sympathy from the reader and try to make them understand how difficult life can be for some people.
[19] However, The Sydney Morning Herald also puts forward the notion that the lighter moments of news can make a viewer's overall experience significantly more enjoyable and entertaining.
Once this occurs, the person, group or agenda of the news story may be heavily supported, which may incite company or government action, depending on whom the topic is targeting.
The presentation of al-Araibi's situation brought out much sympathy and anger from the public, and a petition put forward by Amnesty International labelled "#SaveHakeem", asking for his release, garnered over 60,000 signatures.
