1.05 Who Are Journalists?

The definition of journalist in the dictionary is the following: a person who writes for newspapers or magazines or prepares news to be broadcast on radio or television. This can be countered by the definition of journalist on Wikipedia: A journalist is a person who collects, writes or distributes news or other current information. My definition of a journalist reflects the majority's view on this lesson's poll; A journalist is any person who tries to inform the public about things that are going on.

My reason for this thinking is based off of logical facts. The work of a journalist is to research, conduct interviews, write about it, and report their findings as facts.Credibility of a source or site is one thing but the label of journalist itself is another. A journalist could be many things in my book. There are professional types such as editors, columnists, photojournalists, etc., there are unprofessional types such as bloggers, magazine editors, protestors, etc. There are even the journalists who pretend to be professional when, really, all they're writing is dishonest and exploited to make money. But, every single one of these things are journalism because it is someone informing society. It may be facts mixed with opinion, it may be discredible, or it may be the side of an argument that the 1% agrees with, but it's shedding some light on a subject that maybe someone was not aware of.

It's 2014 and in this era, anyone can be anything they want to be. Journalism doesn't even require any paperwork or diplomas. All someone needs is three qualifications: (1) To do research. (2) To write their findings. (3) To publish it publicly. It really doesn't take much to be well-known journalist like David Broder (Pulitzer Prize-winning political reporter and columnist who joined the Washington Post in 1968) or some unknown journalist like Lauren Hoffman (editor at Cosmopolitan woman's magazine who writes about the Kardashians and new Grey's Anatomy episodes). Both of these people meet the qualifications; research, write, publish, so why should Lauren Hoffman not have the title of a journalist like David Broder did? Maybe what she writes about isn't important and only interests a certain group of people, but hey, not everyone enjoys political scandals and stock market information. The writings aren't unimportant to everyone, and both people inform readers about a topic of interest. This is considered journalism to me.

Sources:
"Journalist." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.p., n.d., Web. 1 Dec. 2014.