This article is within the scope of WikiProject Journalism, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of journalism on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.JournalismWikipedia:WikiProject JournalismTemplate:WikiProject JournalismJournalism articles
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Occupations, a project which is currently considered to be inactive.OccupationsWikipedia:WikiProject OccupationsTemplate:WikiProject OccupationsOccupations articles
The list of "contemporary journalists" is, IMHO, getting out of hand. There are tens of thousands of people around the world working as journalists who are, in some sense, notable, in that thousands of people read their work regularly. If we try to stick every single one of these journalists here, it will be a list beyond measure.
We're starting to get some questionable entries - e.g., Eric Ellis, who has written in some international publications, but so have lots of people - but drawing a line will be very hard. Personally, I'd kill the whole list, as well as the "internet journalists" list, which is increasingly arbirtray. Leave it at historical figures. Any thoughts? - DavidWBrooks19:42, 19 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Well, no response! OK, then, tomorrow I'm going to kill off the subsections titled "contemporary journalists" and "Internet journalists" and replace them with some sort of explanation. OK? - DavidWBrooks15:00, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
How about moving the lists to something like List of journalists? The page is mostly just a list rather than purely a description of what a journalist is. --PullUpYourSocks
This article is too short and rudimentary to support subarticles yet; see WP:SUMMARY. David's concern that it would "be a list beyond measure" has its merits; we have categories for a reason, and any such list (in this article or as a separate one) should be strictly limited to journalists notable enough to have their own articles here. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)›17:59, 6 April 2009 (UTC)Sylvester Simpson Famous Journalist[reply]
...because I don't like publicly-synthesized culture and the policies that go with it, but I'm starting to add Canadian journalists partly in order to make Wikipedia have a wider base in the Great White North (which has a much higher per-capita internet usage and high-bandwidth users than the US and is among the most interconnected countries in the world, and no I'm not bragging just stating the sad facts). The other reason is that they have high profiles in provincial and civic history here and often nationally and are also literary and histiographical figures - some of them outright historical figures - that tie into all the various Canadian wikipages.Skookum105:56, 20 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Excellent, but try to hold back the hyperbole, even if well-written and amusing ("glitteringly seedy"). That stuff can go in the person's main article, but this is a list that is always on the brink of getting out of control. We need to keep things very short. - DavidWBrooks13:24, 20 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
since this is in the article ... Depending on the context, the term journalist also includes various types of editors and visual journalists, such as photographers, graphic artists, and page designers. ... I'd say "no" - DavidWBrooks16:43, 22 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I also vote no. Photojournalism is doing just fine and is very lengthy on it's own. Perhaps a redirect to Journalism and polish up rather than merge with reporter would be better suited. - Mike Tigas08:20, 25 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I also vote no.
(I'll remove merge notice from both pages shortly. I'm not aware of how long merge notices should be allowed to stay; this one's from 22 march; a week's enough, i guess)
-Pournami07:06, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Although hyperbolic, there is a real point here: how to make the distinction between "journalists" and "presenters" or "hosts"? There is no question that O'Reilly is a well-known presenter and host, but is he a journalist? (Paula Zahn is a presenter and not a journalist, because she does not get involved in producing segments; Anderson Cooper does, and so he is both a presenter and a journalist.) JTBurman18:52, 6 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It is my thought that Bill O'Rielly is not a journalist, and neither are most people on FoxNews. Fox News "presents" more Commentary than news, so I feel O'Rielly should be removed from the list.
I Think that there is a problem with the definition of the word journalist. "A journalist is a person who practices journalism, the gathering and dissemination of information about current events, trends, issues and people."
In light of the recent controversies regarding journalists and bloggers being imprisoned. According to the above definition, if I see something and tell soemeone about it I am a journalist. If I tell my wife I saw a green car on the road today, that makes me a journalist. If I do a book report in grade school, journalist.
I would appreciate others income on this topic. I would suggest that a journalist is at least someone who does it professionally as a sole source of income(?), although I am not comfortable with paparazzi being considered journalists.
So Josh Wolfe, who has been in jail for months because he won't turn over a videotape he made as a blogger, isn't a journalist? [1] Your definition might have been fine a decade ago, but the Net has really changed things so much that it would be hard to pin one down. - DavidWBrooks15:57, 8 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Josh Wolf defined himself.
The day after the protest, the San Francisco Chronicle reports, Wolf referred to himself on his Web site as an "artist, an activist, an anarchist and an archivist."
IMO he was there as a propagandist, not a journalist. Besides, would an objective journalist who sees the commission of a crime say nothing, in order to protect his "sources"? Sources are people you go to for information, not people you see doing something.
Just because it is "hard to pin one (a definition) down" doesn't mean we should be overly broad.
Josh Wolf aside, the initial question has not been addressed. "A journalist is someone who practices journalism" comes dangerously close to defining a word with the same word, and is redundant. You could also say a jogger is someone who jogs, or a driver is someone who drives. More specifically, a journalist is someone who gathers information for the purpose of some form of MEDIA. That clarification should solve the "by writing a book report I am now a journalist" problem. I agree with the premise of this edit: the defination is too vague. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.36.61.6 (talk) 01:37, 4 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, that's pretty lame. "Newspaperman" is a real term (and an increasingly obsolete one), but only for newspaper journalists. There are many other terms (some media specific, some not) that should also be accounted for (reporter, news announcer, sportswriter, etc.) — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)›17:52, 6 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
In the context of this article, "newspaperman" should be included as a historical reference if at all. It's an anachronism and is media- and gender-specific. I will remove it from the definition in the lede section, as there haven't been any comments in support of including it in this discussion, which dates from May 2008. Craig Hicks (talk) 13:55, 23 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Reporter should be merged into Journalist perhaps as a section. The miserable, largely unsourced stub at Reporter cannot stand on its own, and even Journalist has problems in that direction. They would be stronger as a single article. The Reporter article claims that reporters are somehow distinct from other forms of journalist, but this claim is not sourced in any way, and there is not enough material to support a separate article. Merge for now, and if the "Reporters" section here become so large that a split is warranted, then split them, when the material is properly developed and sourced. This merge was first proposed three years ago, and the objection was that reporters are distinct enough to deserve their own article. To date, nothing has actually been done to make this happen. It is still a very poor stub, and does not sourcedly justify the split. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)›17:49, 6 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Do you have to be a member of a union to be a "journalist"? ... Andrew Marr says Bloggers aren't journalists. -- According to Daily Telegraph report Marr, speaking at Cheltenham Literature Festival, said that “citizen journalism strikes me as nothing to do with journalism at all”. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.155.18.91 (talk) 05:44, 13 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]