What is Journalism?

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.