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 (now part of Middlesex University). He then worked in Tower Records London 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 currently director of the magazine publishing company Development Hell.
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 and was one of the presenters of the BBC's coverage of Live Aid.
David Hepworth is featured in a podcast promoting the "Top of the Pops" boxset alongside Mark Goodier , Miles Leonard and Malcolm McClaren.
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