First Take: In journalism generally, a standard form of feature-writing dedicated to a biographical portrait, commonly of a celebrity, a figure central to a recent development in the news, and/or someone representing a way of life.

Deeper: While clearly an offshoot of long-interview forms originally developed at the turn of the twentieth century, the establishment of the “profile” as such is normally credited to The New Yorker. In its original New Yorker formulation, the term actually was meant, as in the visual arts, to signal a figure taken in from a particular angle, as if “drawn” from a specific point of view; the term thus had both a “timeliness” quotient and, with that, a stylistic premium on brisk efficiency, at times even the feeling of comic synopsis. Over time, however, the term’s range widened and its comprehensiveness deepened, extending (for example) to place and habitat as much as to person. Note: This term is discussed at somewhat fuller length in Chapter 4.

 Recommended Reading:  Ben Yagoda, Around Town:  The New Yorker and the World It Made (New York: Scribner’s, 2000); Jamin Creed Rowan, “The New York School of Urban Ecology,” American Literature 82 (2010): 583-610.