Profiles use information to describe a place, a group, or a person, often someone who has been in the news or who represents a number of people affected by an issue. Following the widespread damage caused by Hurricane Sandy in 2012, for example, New Jersey governor Chris Christie was the subject of several profiles; at the same time, a number of New Jersey residents with no claim to fame were the subjects of profiles that conveyed the experiences of people who had lost family, friends, homes, and businesses to the disaster.

Because they appear so often in popular periodicals, most profiles are relatively brief. They also tend to focus on a particular moment in time, rather than on a lifetime. Profiles typically draw on interviews and observations, and sometimes on published sources such as biographies or news reports, to give readers a thorough understanding of the subject. Photographs of the subject of a profile are another common feature of this genre — although such images are not always strictly factual.