Journalist

A journalist is a person who engages in journalism; that is, a journalist creates articles or reports as a profession for broadcast or publication in mass media such as newspapers, television, radio, magazines, documentary film, and the Internet.

Origin and scope of the term

In the early 19th century, the term journalist once meant simply someone who wrote for journals, such as Charles Dickens in his early career, but has come to mean a writer for newsapapers and magazines as well. The term journalist is interchangeable with reporter.

Many journalists write for print periodicals, but some also write books or publish on the Internet. Broadcast journalists appear on radio or television.

Regardless of medium, the term journalist now carries a connotation or expectation of professionalism in reporting, with consideration for truth and ethics. This expectation is not always met, as journalists may publicly or privately take sides, but this is not taken lightly when revealed.

19th century journalists

William Cowper Brann (1855-1898) - colorful editor of the Iconcolast in Waco, Texas.
Nellie Bly (1865-1922) - undercover reporter
Samuel Taylor Coleridge - political essays, poetry, and reportage
Charles Dickens (1812-1870) - started as a shorthand writer logging debates in the courts and Houses of Parliament before becoming a Parliamentary journalist
Pierce Egan (1772-1849) - early sportswriter and reporter on popular culture
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1956) - newspaper editor and correspondent in India
Jacob Riis (1849-1914) - journalist and slum reformer

20th century print journalists

Samuel Hopkins Adams (1871–1958) - American investigative journalist
Hannah Arendt (1906-1975)
Rhett Baker (1950-2003) - Buffalo Housing committee recording of hearing of Daniel Patrick Moynihan 1999 / Buffalo, N.Y.
Ben Bradlee, editor of the Washington Post at the time of the Watergate scandal
Winston Churchill (1874-1965) war correspondent in the Boer War, captured by the Boers
Claud Cockburn (1904-1981) radical Irish journalist
C.P. Connolly (1863-1935) radical American investigative journalist associated for many years with Collier's Weekly.
Martha Gellhorn (1908-1998) war correspondent
Emily Hahn (1905-1997) - wrote extensively on China
Pauline Kael (1919-2001) - Film critic for The New Yorker
A.J. Liebling (1904-1963) American journalist closely associated with The New Yorker
Walter Lippmann (1889-1974)
Jonathan Meades
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) - essayist, critic, and editor of the Baltimore Sun.
George Orwell (1903-1950) - reported on poverty, misery, and the Spanish Civil War
Edward Said (1935-2003) - essayist, Palestinan activist
James (Scotty) Reston - political commentator for the New York Times
George Seldes (1890-1995) - American journalist, editor and publisher of In Fact.
I.F. Stone (1907-1989), investigative journalist, publisher of I.F. Stone's Weekly
Walter Winchell

20th century broadcast journalists

Edward R. Murrow, CBS News radio correspondent in London Blitz, maker of TV documentaries, noted interviewer
Walter Cronkite, former United Press correspondent, TV anchor for CBS News in the 50s, 60s
David Brinkley, television anchor and interview show host on the American networks ABC and NBC
Dan Rather, succeeded Cronkite as managing editor and primary anchor of the CBS Evening News
Sorious Samura, CNN TV documentary maker from Sierra Leone
Fritz Spiegl, popularizer of classical music for the BBC

Internet journalists

Matt Drudge - Actively involved in revelations of the scandals of the Clinton administration.
Cali Ruchala

Contemporary journalists

(please add to list in alphabetical order)

There are numerous examples of journalists turned novelists, both in the past and in the present, amongst them

Amanda Craig, who writes satirical novels about English society
Joan Didion
David Gates, who wrote about books and music for Newsweek
Carl Hiaasen, who writes about the corruption and glitter of Miami and Miami Beach, which he also covered as a reporter.
Susan Sontag

External links