Talk:Journalist

Feedback

I've been working on the stub for Broadcast Journalism. I'd appreciate any feedback anyone has as well as any suggestions for further expansion on the article.

Journalist (the artist) should be added..

Anyone heard of him? Album: Sribes of life. He's an underground rapper from Philadelphia that's been around for years. 1997?

List of journalists

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? - DavidWBrooks 19:42, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

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? - DavidWBrooks 15:00, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

OK, then. - DavidWBrooks 13:40, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

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

I hate to be CanCon about this...

...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.Skookum1 05:56, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

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. - DavidWBrooks 13:24, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

No need to justify it. Canadian contributions should be recognized. --Jgreat 18:32, 8 December 2005 (UTC)jgreat

merge with reporter?

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" - DavidWBrooks 16:43, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

• 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 Tigas 08:20, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

• 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) -Pournami 07:06, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Bill O'Rielly?????????

I question the inclusion of Bill O'Rielly in a list of journalists. Was he ever anything except a blowhard? Gladmax 01:56, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

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.) JTBurman 18:52, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

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.

Point02Dollars 21:56, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

This is a political rant - even if it's one I agree with. (It might be slightly more effective if the ranters spelled his name right.) Walter Winchell, Pauline Kael, Walter Lippmann, Herb Caen, Walter Cronkite and a number of others should be deleted under this definition - except that most wikipedia editors are too young to know who they are. - DavidWBrooks 22:39, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Definition of Journalist & Journalism

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.

Oconp88 15:05, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

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. - DavidWBrooks 15:57, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

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."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/07/AR2007030702454_pf.html

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.

Oconp88 16:06, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Here [2] is an interesting discussion about whether he is or isn't a journalist. - DavidWBrooks 18:50, 9 March 2007 (UTC)