Journalism means writing for newspapers or magazines. It is the communication of information through writing in periodicals and newspapers. The people have an inborn desire to know what’s novel or new. This curiosity is satisfied by the journalists through their writings in the newspapers and journals regarding the current events and news.
According to Webster’s Third International
Dictionary Journalism means “the collection and editing if material of current
interest for presentation, publication or broadcast”. According to Chamber’s
Twentieth Century Dictionary, journalism means “the profession of conducting or
writing for public journals”. The word ‘journalism’ is derived from journal which
means a daily register or a diary – a book containing each day’s business or
transactions. The word ‘journal’ also connoted a newspaper published every day
or even less often a magazine. Thus journalism means the communication of
information regarding the events of a day through written words, sounds or
pictures. And a journalist is a person who writes for or conducts a newspaper
or a magazine.
Journalism is basically the communication of news
but it may also contain certain features for the entertainment of readers. A journal
may consist of a single news sheet meant for a factory or a small village, or
it may be an international magazine or newspaper for the whole world. Journalism
is a report of things as they appear at the moment of writing. It is not a
definitive study of a situation. In journalism, there is an element of
timeliness which is not present in the more leisurely types of writing, say,
for example writing a book.
A journalist mainly performs two functions,
firstly, reporting the news and secondly, offering interpretation and opinion
based on the news. A journalist may also write an account that is both
entertaining as well as newsworthy. But a person, who writes for simply
entertainment only, such as a TV script writer, is not a journalist. The oldest
journalism is connected with the periodical journalism. A periodical is printed
at a regular and fixed interval. A periodical can be called a newspaper if it
appears at least weekly in a recognised newspaper format and it has a general
public interest.
The term ‘journalist’ includes the reporters,
writers, and columnists who work for newspapers, news agencies, news magazines
and other magazines devoted largely to public affairs. The print media which
these journalists serve is known collectively as ‘the Press’; although many
newspaper men would like to reserve this term only for their medium. The news
reporting and commentaries delivered by television and radio are equally a form
of journalism. Similarly, public affairs documentaries, direct broadcast of
news events and film documentaries also come under journalism. The reporters,
writers, editors and photographers working in the television-radio-film areas
claim that the general descriptive term ‘the Press’ also applies to them as
well as the print media men when they are dealing with news and opinions. Of course,
they tend more often to identify themselves with the name of their medium than
with the collective word ‘journalist’. So do others in the list of
communicators given above like photographers, book editors, advertising men,
industrial editors and so on.
