Journalist

A journalist is a person who practices journalism - that is, who creates 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, journalist meant simply someone who wrote for journals, such as Charles Dickens in his early career. In the past century it has come to mean a writer for newspapers and magazines as well.

Many people consider journalist interchangeable with reporter, a person who gathers information and creates a written report, or story. However, this overlooks many other types of journalists, including columnists, leader writers, photographers, editorial designers, and sub editors (British) or copy editors (American).

Regardless of medium, the term journalist carries a connotation or expectation of professionalism in reporting, with consideration for truth and ethics. It should be added that some journals, such as the downmarket, scandal-led tabloids, do not make great claims to truth or ethical reporting.

18th-century journalists

• Daniel Defoe - as editor of the Review, he can claim to have invented many of the most popular formats, including the eye-witness report, the travel piece and the strongly opinionated column. Defoe's Review began publication on 19 February 1704 and lasted until 11 June 1713. He was also involved in several other periodicals, including The Master Mercury (1704), Mercator: or, Commerce Retrieved (1713-14), The Monitor (1714), The Manufacturer (1719-21), The Commentator (1720) and The Director (1720-1).
• Richard Steele - founded and edited London-based periodicals including The Guardian and The Spectator in the early 1700s.
• Joseph Addison - wrote many of the finest pieces in Steele's publications

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.
• Paul Foot (1938-2004)
• 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
• Robert Palmer (1945-1997) - first full-time, chief pop music critic for The New York Times, Rolling Stone contributing editor
• 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.
• George Bernard Shaw - better known as a playwright, but was influential as a music writer and wrote other forms of journalism
• 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
• Jim Lehrer, anchor of The Newshour with Jim Lehrer
• 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 - Active in revelations of the scandals of the Clinton administration, in the United States.
• Cali Ruchala

Contemporary journalists

• Kate Adie
• Christiane Amanpour
• Lowell Bergman
• Raymond Bonner
• Carl Bernstein
• Julie Burchill
• John F. Burns
• Alexander Cockburn
• Andrew Cockburn
• Patrick Cockburn
• Mark Danner
• Barbara Ehrenreich
• James Fallows
• Robert Fisk
• John-Paul Flintoff
• Malcolm Gladwell
• Alma Guillermoprieto
• David Halberstam
• Pete Hamill
• Johann Hari
• Seymour Hersh
• Christopher Hitchens
• Ryszard Kapuscinski
• Fergal Keane
• Anthony Lane
• George Monbiot
• Bill Moyers
• Susan Orlean
• Greg Palast
• Sorious Samura
• John Seabrook
• John Simpson
• Jon Snow
• Bob Woodward
• Andrzej Zaucha

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
• Graham Greene who worked originally as sub-editor on The Times
• Carl Hiaasen, who writes about the corruption and glitter of Miami and Miami Beach, which he also covered as a reporter.
• Arturo Pérez Reverte and Manuel Leguineche were war correspondents before becoming succesful Spanish novelists.
• Susan Sontag
• Calvin Trillin, who has written several humorous novels
• Tom Wolfe

Production journalists

Despite the fact that many people conflate journalist and reporter, a journalist is anyone who works any editorial aspect of a publications. This includes production journalists such as sub-editors, copy editors, graphic designers, art directors, and photographers. Graphic designers and art directors who work exclusively on advertising material, however, are not considered journalists.

Fictional journalists

Atributing the profession of journalist to a fictional character allows many possibilities:

• The action and adventure genres use reporters because they may travel extensively and are supposed not to avoid risks as ordinay people do, but to face them like Tintin).
  • In the superhero subgenre, journalists may be among the first to have news of disasters and crimes. Major superheroes like Clark Kent / Superman and Peter Parker / Spider-Man are journalists in their civil lifes.
• Journalists are supposed to explain complex things simply. A clear case is Kermit the frog, but a journalist character is also useful in a fiction work about a country or a culture strange to an adult public. For instance, Guy Hamilton and Billy Kwanin make sense of situation of Indonesia for the Western viewers of The Year of Living Dangerously film, and Ernest Hemingway's alter ego introduces Spain to Anglo readers of Fiesta (The Sun Also Rises).

Besides, many fiction writers like previously cited Hemingway, or Arturo Pérez Reverte, use their professional background as journalists to create their fiction characters.

See List of fictional journalists

See also

• copy editor
• editor
• foreign correspondent
• journalism scandals
• Lists of authors
• Reporters sans frontières (Reporters Without Borders)
• scientific journalist
• sportswriter
• war correspondent

External links

• Canadian Association of Journalists (http://www.caj.ca/)
• International Federation of Journalists (http://www.ifj.org/)
• National Union of Journalists (British) (http://www.nuj.org.uk/)
• Society of Professional Journalists (http://www.spj.org/)
• International Freedom of Expression eXchange (http://www.ifex.org) - monitors attacks on journalists

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