journalist
Americannoun
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a person who practices the occupation or profession of journalism.
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a person who keeps a journal, diary, or other record of daily events.
noun
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a person whose occupation is journalism
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a person who keeps a journal
Etymology
Origin of journalist
Explanation
A journalist is a person whose job involves writing nonfiction stories for newspapers, magazines, or online news sites. If you are reading or hearing a news story, you have a journalist to thank for providing that story. One type of journalist is a reporter, who researches topics and interviews people before writing a story or producing a piece for TV. Editors, photographers, and columnists can also be described as journalists, particularly if they work for a newspaper. Another kind of journalist is a person who regularly writes in a journal or diary. Journalist comes from the Old French jornel, "day" or "day's work," which became journal, "daily publication."
Vocabulary lists containing journalist
Journalism
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"Hip-Hop as Culture" and "I Am Somebody"
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This Week in Words: Current Events Vocabulary for April 1–April 7, 2023
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Between the blazing sky and the scorched ground, people do what Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuściński once observed in another furnace-hot landscape in Africa: devote their energies to "the search for shade and a breeze".
From BBC • Jun. 1, 2026
Such exams are typically given when doctors suspect cognitive decline, as journalist Jim Acosta underscored recently by taking the test himself, which involves drawing a cube or identifying common animals.
From Salon • Jun. 1, 2026
Those skills always made her a tough but compelling person to sit down with as a journalist.
From BBC • May 31, 2026
The bigtime journalist Tyler, it seems, is in Khartoum, awaiting an interview with a Sudanese prisoner of war, part of his research for a new book.
From The Wall Street Journal • May 28, 2026
Like Bentley, Whittaker Chambers—a prominent journalist for Time magazine—spent years as an underground Soviet agent in the 1930s, cultivating informers and passing secret documents to his contacts in the GRU, the USSR's military intelligence service.
From "Spies: The Secret Showdown Between America and Russia" by Marc Favreau
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
