David Hepworth

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For the British racing driver, please see David Hepworth (racing driver).

David Hepworth (born 27 July 1950 in Dewsbury, Yorkshire) is a journalist and music writer responsible for the launch of many British magazines.

He attended the Queen Elizabeth Grammar School, Wakefield and Trent Park College of Education, Barnet. He then worked in record shops and for the London office of Beserkley Records, before becoming a freelance journalist.

After working at the music magazines NME and Sounds, he joined the newly-launched Smash Hits magazine in 1979, and two years later became its editor. In 1983 he started Just Seventeen, a perennially popular magazine for teenage girls, and in 1984 the magazine Looks. Since then he has launched several further magazines in the entertainment field including Q (1985), More (1987), Empire (1988), Mojo (1993), Heat (1999), and The Word (2003).

He is the only person to have won both the Periodical Publishers Association's writer of the year and editor of the year award.

In the early 1980s he had a short period as presenter of the BBC music show Old Grey Whistle Test.