Journalist

From Free net encyclopedia

Template:Unsourced A journalist is a person who practices journalism, the gathering and dissemination of information about current events, trends, issues and people. Template:Journalism

Reporters are one type of journalist. They create reports as a profession for broadcast or publication in mass media such as newspapers, television, radio, magazines, documentary film, and the Internet. Reporters find the sources for their work, their reports can be either spoken or written, and they are generally expected to report in the most objective and unbiased way to serve the public good.

Depending on the context, the term journalist also includes various types of editors and visual journalists, such as photographers, graphic artists, and page designers.

1 Origin and scope of the term
2 18th-century journalists
3 19th-century journalists
4 20th-century print journalists
5 20th-century broadcast journalists
6 Internet-only journalists
7 Journalists writing fiction
8 Modern journalists
9 See also
10 External links

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Origin and scope of the term

In the early 19th century, journalist simply meant 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). The only major distinction is that designers, writers and art directors who work exclusively on advertising material - that is, material in which the content is shaped by the person buying the ad, rather than the publication - are not considered journalists.

Regardless of medium, the term journalist carries a connotation or expectation of professionalism in reporting, with consideration for truth and ethics although in some areas, such as the downmarket, scandal-led tabloids, the standards are deliberately negated.

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18th-century journalists

Joseph Addison - wrote many of the finest pieces in Steele's publications (1713-1714), The Monitor (1714), The Manufacturer (1719-21), The Commentator (1720) and The Director (1720-1721)
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 February 19, 1704, and lasted until June 11, 1713. He was also involved in several other periodicals, including The Master Mercury (1704), Mercator: or, Commerce Retrieved
Richard Steele - founded and edited London-based periodicals including The Guardian and The Spectator in the early 1700s.

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19th-century journalists

Nellie Bly (1865-1922) - undercover reporter
William Cowper Brann (1855-1898) - colorful editor of the Iconoclast in Waco, Texas
Samuel Taylor Coleridge - political essayist, poet, and reporter
Charles Dickens (1812-1870) - started as a shorthand writer logging debates in the courts and Houses of Parliament before becoming a Parliamentary journalist
Henry Dunckley (1823- 1896), editor of Manchester Examiner and Times
Pierce Egan (1772-1849) - early sportswriter and reporter on popular culture
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) - newspaper editor and correspondent in India
Jacob Riis (1849-1914) - journalist and slum reformer
Anne Newport Royall - crusading reporter, author, newspaper publisher, first journalist to publish an interview with a sitting US President
George Augustus Henry Sala (1828-1895) - editor and columnist

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20th-century print journalists

Adams (1871-1958) - American investigative journalist
Jack Anderson - considered one of the fathers of investigative reporting
Pierre Berton (1920-2004) -- colourful Klondike-born vocal Canadian nationalist figure and longtime journalist, author-historian, and broadcaster
Collin Brooks (1893 - 1959) journalist, broadcaster, writer, member of the Brains Trust and early Any Questions teams, right-hand-man for many years of Harold Sidney Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Rothermere
Herb Caen - a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle from the late 1930s until his passing in 1997
Winston Churchill (1874-1965) war correspondent in the Second 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)
Allan Fotheringham - witty and influential Canadian journalist and commentator for the Vancouver Sun, Maclean's Magazine and the Globe and Mail.
Martha Gellhorn (1908-1998) war correspondent
Carl Gordon (1931-2002) - West of Scotland based Journalist and columnist for The Glasgow Herald
Emily Hahn (1905-1997) - wrote extensively on China
Ernest Hemingway (1899)-(1961) - novelist and war journalist
John L. Hess (1917-2005) - journalist, food critic for the New York Times
Bruce Hutchison (1901-1992) - long-time editor of the Vancouver Sun and writer/reporter for the Winnipeg Free Press and the Victoria Times, and editor of several books; considered the dean of British Columbian journalists
Pauline Kael (1919-2001) - film critic for The New Yorker
Frederick C Klein (1938- ) - author and sports columnist for The Wall Street Journal
Andrew Kopkind (1935-1994) - radical American journalist wrote extensively social movements in the 1960s
Will Lang Jr. (1914-1968) staff reporter and bureau head for Time and Life magazines
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
Margaret Lally "Ma" Murray (1908-1982)- editor and co-publisher of the outspoken and colourful backcountry newspaper, the Bridge River-Lillooet News and, later, the Alaska Highway News
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
Daniel Pearl - acclaimed war correspondent
William Rees-Mogg - editor of The Times newspaper from 1967 to 1981
James ("Scotty") Reston (1909-1995), political commentator for the New York Times
Edward Said (1935-2003) - essayist, Palestinian activist
Paul Saint Pierre - (1923-present) - reporter, columnist, commentator in the Vancouver Sun and nationally across Canada, also a long-time Member of Parliament
Adela Rogers St. Johns - (1894-1988) - American journalist, novelist, and screenwriter
George Seldes (1890-1995), American journalist, editor and publisher of In Fact
George Bernard Shaw - better known as a playwright, but influential as a music writer and wrote other forms of journalism
Randy Shilts - reporter for The Advocate and San Francisco Chronicle
Edgar Snow, pro-socialist journalist and writer, chronicled the Chinese revolution
I.F. Stone (1907-1989), investigative journalist, publisher of I.F. Stone's Weekly
Anna Louise Strong, pro-socialist journalist and writer
Levi Vega Martinez, (1927-2002) costarican environmental journalist
Bob Woodward - Washington Post reporter, helped uncover the Watergate scandal of President Richard Nixon, in a historical journalistic partnership with Carl Bernstein; earned two Pulitzer Prizes
Jack Wasserman - social/celebrity and politicial columnist for the Vancouver Sun beginning in 1949; Western Canada's equivalent to Walter Winchell
Gary Webb - best known for his 1996 "Dark Alliance" investigative report series, in which he posited a connection between Nicaraguan Contras, the US military, and crack cocaine distribution in American cities
Walter Winchell (1897-1972), American political columnist, radio broadcaster

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20th-century broadcast journalists

Patrice Barrat, a journalist and documentary producer, best know for investigating on globalization and major regional and international conflicts
Lowell Bergman, a television producer for the CBS news magazine 60 Minutes; best known for investigating the tobacco industry
David Brinkley, television anchor and interview show host on the American networks ABC and NBC
Tom Brokaw, television journalist and former anchor and managing editor of The NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw
Deborah Byrd, creator and lead producer of the daily Earth & Sky science radio series.
Vernon Corea, a pioneering radio journalist and announcer with Radio Ceylon/SLBC and the BBC
Walter Cronkite, former United Press correspondent, TV anchor for CBS News in the 50s, 60s
Bob Edwards, anchor of Morning Edition on National Public Radio from 1979-2004
Abraham Gubler, a television producer, magazine editor, journalist and broadcaster; best known for coverage of Iraq War
Peter Jennings, television anchor for ABC
Jim Lehrer, anchor of The Newshour with Jim Lehrer
Dan Rather, succeeded Cronkite as managing editor and primary anchor of the CBS Evening News
Edward R. Murrow, CBS News radio correspondent in London Blitz, maker of TV documentaries, noted interviewer
Sorious Samura, CNN TV documentary maker from Sierra Leone
Fritz Spiegl, popularizer of classical music for the BBC
Brian Williams, succeeded Brokaw as managing editor and anchor of The NBC Nightly News
Bill O'Reilly, anchor of The O'Reilly Factor on FoxNews

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Internet-only journalists

In recent years the numbers of journalists publishing only on the Internet, as opposed to print or broadcast journalists whose work also appears online, has grown enormously. Some of the best-known include:

Matt Drudge - The first famous Internet-only journalist for his work around scandals of the Clinton administration, in the United States.
Richard Menta - Editor at MP3 Newswire and MP3.com

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Journalists writing fiction

There are many examples of journalists who made their mark writing fiction or other non-journalism, including:

Collin Brooks (1893 - 1959) journalist, broadcaster, writer, produced over 50 assorted books ranging from economics and legal issues to novels and detective fiction
Anthony Burgess, who wrote vast quantities of reviews and was famously fired as literary critic of the Yorkshire Post
Amanda Craig, who writes satirical novels about English society
Joan Didion
Frederick Forsyth
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.
Ernest Hemingway
Arturo Pérez Reverte and Manuel Leguineche were war correspondents before becoming successful Spanish novelists.
Susan Sontag
Calvin Trillin, who has written several humorous novels
Tom Wolfe

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Modern journalists

The explosion of modern media, including the creation of Internet-based news sources and the possibility that citizen journalism will greatly expand the field, has made it all but impossible to identify which journalists are notable, in the sense that they could be identified in the past. The global justice protests in Seattle (1999) gave rise to the independent media movement, exemplified by the Indymedia Media Center network, a collective of independent media organizations and hundreds of journalists offering grassroots, non-corporate coverage. Indymedia is a democratic media outlet for the creation of radical, accurate, and passionate tellings of truth.

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