Journalist

A journalist is a person engaged in the profession of 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; the reports can be either spoken or written; 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.

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 Iconoclast 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

George Augustus Henry Sala (1828-1895) - editor and columnist

20th-century print journalists

Samuel Hopkins Adams (1871–1958) - American investigative journalist
Hannah Arendt (1906-1975)
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 (1909-1995) - 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 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
Walter Winchell (1897-1972), American political columnist, radio broadcaster
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
Peter Jennings, television anchor for ABC
Jim Lehrer, anchor of The Newshour with Jim Lehrer
Tom Brokaw, television journalist and former anchor and managing editor of "The NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw."
Dan Rather, succeeded Cronkite as managing editor and primary anchor of the CBS Evening News
Vernon Corea, a pioneering radio journalist and announcer with Radio Ceylon/SLBC and the BBC
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."
Internet journalists
Ana Marie Cox - works under the name Wonkette, famous for humorous coverage and breaking several stories during the 2004 Presidential Election.
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
Nicholas Confessore
Ernest Corea
Mark Danner
Barbara Ehrenreich
James Fallows
Robert Fisk
John-Paul Flintoff
Malcolm Gladwell
Alma Guillermoprieto
David Halberstam
Pete Hamill
Johann Hari
Doug Henwood
Seymour Hersh
Christopher Hitchens
Ryszard Kapuscinski
Fergal Keane
Jane Kramer
Anthony Lane
George Monbiot
Bill Moyers
Allan Nairn
Susan Orlean
Greg Palast
Christian Parenti
Robert Parry
Sorious Samura
John Seabrook
John Simpson
Sam Smith
Jon Snow
Matt Taibbi
Bob Woodward
Andrzej Zaucha
Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele

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

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 P�rez Reverte and Manuel Leguineche were war correspondents before becoming successful 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

Attributing 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 ordinary 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. Since they can operate with considerable autonomy out in the field as long they meet story deadlines, it eases complications arising from maintaining a secret identity. Major superheroes like Clark Kent / Superman and Peter Parker / Spider-Man are journalists in their civil lives.

Journalists are supposed to explain complex things simply. A clear case is Kermit the Frog in his news-reporter role on Sesame Street, 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 Kwan make sense of the politics of Indonesia in the early 1960s for the Western viewers of The Year of Living Dangerously, 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 P�rez Reverte, use their professional background as journalists to create their fiction characters.

See List of fictional journalists