Infotainment (a portmanteau of information and entertainment), also called soft news as a way to distinguish it from serious journalism or hard news, is a type of media, usually television or online, that provides a combination of information and entertainment. The term may be used disparagingly to devalue infotainment or soft news subjects in favor of more serious hard news subjects. Infotainment-based websites and social media apps are gaining traction due to their focused publishing of infotainment content, e.g. BuzzFeed.
Background
The terms "infotainment" and "infotainer" were first used in September 1980 at the Joint Conference of ASLIB, the Institute of Information Scientists, and the Library Association in Sheffield, UK. The Infotainers were a group of British information scientists who put on comedy shows at these professional conferences between 1980 and 1990. In 1983, "infotainment" began to see more popular usage, and the infotainment style gradually began to replace soft news with communications theorists.
An earlier, slightly variant term, "" was the theme of the 1974 convention of the Intercollegiate Broadcasting System, the association of college radio stations in the United States. The event held April 5–7, 1974, at the Statler Hilton Hotel (now the Hotel Pennsylvania), defined the term as the "nexus between Information and Entertainment".
Historically, the term infotainment was used to discredit woman journalists who were assigned soft news jobs. Soft news was expected to be consumed by only women, but eventually it became its own genre of news media.
Infotainment as news
Infotainment can generally be identified by its entertaining nature. Infotainment may also involve the use of flashy graphics, fast-paced editing, music, sensationalism, and sometimes satire to catch the viewer/readers' attention. Popular examples of infotainment shows include Larry King Live, Entertainment Tonight, Hannity and Colmes, The Alex Jones Show, The Daily Show, and The Oprah Winfrey Show.
A precise academic consensus on the definition of what constitutes infotainment/soft news as opposed to hard news has not yet been reached. Many authors have commented that the ideas “are often not clearly defined or not defined at all”. Multiple authors have published their ideas of what each type of media involves, but they vary widely.
Wilbur Schramm was one of the first to describe a dichotomy between types of news in relation to human consumption. He separated news into a delayed reward class (including news of public affairs, economic matters, social problems, science, education and health), which closely resembles hard news, and an immediate reward class (including news of crime/corruption, accidents and disasters, sports, social events, and human interest) which closely resembles infotainment/soft news.
Some authors use only the topicality and timeliness aspects of a story to determine whether news is hard news or soft news; the more topical and timely, the "harder" and more serious the news is. Other authors have more complex definitions, defining hard news as "breaking events involving top leaders, major issues, or significant disruptions in the routines of daily life," and soft news as "news that typically is more personality-centered, less time-bound, more practical, and more incident-based than other news."
There may also be serious reports which are not event-driven—coverage of important social, economic, legal, or technological trends— investigative reports which uncover ongoing corruption, pollution, or immorality—or discussion of unsettled political issues without any special reason. Anniversaries, holidays, the end of a year or season, or the end of the first 100 days of an administration, can make some stories time-sensitive, but these reports provide more of an opportunity for reflection and analysis as opposed to a typical news report on a particular event.
"News you can use" The spectrum of "seriousness" and "importance" is not well-defined, and different media organizations make different tradeoffs. "News you can use", a common marketing phrase highlighting a specific genre of journalism, spans the gray area.
Tips, advice and hobby-based news fall at the infotainment end of this genre. Warnings about imminent natural disasters or acute domestic security threats are considered more serious, and other media programming (even non-news channels) is usually interrupted to announce these events as breaking news. The importance of "news you can use" on a personal level is rather subjective.