This glossary of journalism is a list of definitions of terms and concepts used in journalism, its sub-disciplines, and related fields, including news reporting, publishing, broadcast journalism, and various types of journalistic media.
Journalism is the production and distribution of reports on the interaction of events, facts, ideas, and people that are the "news of the day" and that informs society to at least some degree of accuracy. The word, a noun, applies to the occupation, the methods of gathering information, and the organizing literary styles.
A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalism.
News style, journalistic style, or news-writing style is the prose style used for news reporting in media such as newspapers, radio and television.
The news media or news industry are forms of mass media that focus on delivering news to the general public. These include news agencies, newspapers, news magazines, news channels, news websites etc.
Copy editing is the process of revising written material (copy) to improve readability and fitness, as well as ensuring that a text is free of grammatical and factual errors. The Chicago Manual of Style states that manuscript editing encompasses "simple mechanical corrections through sentence-level interventions to substantial remedial work on literary style and clarity, disorganized passages, baggy prose, muddled tables and figures, and the like ". In the context of print publication, copy editing is done before typesetting and again before proofreading. Outside traditional book and journal publishing, the term copy editing is used more broadly, and is sometimes referred to as proofreading, or the term copy editing sometimes includes additional tasks.
Open-source journalism, a close cousin to citizen journalism or participatory journalism, is a term coined in the title of a 1999 article by Andrew Leonard of Salon.com. Although the term was not actually used in the body text of Leonard's article, the headline encapsulated a collaboration between users of the internet technology blog Slashdot and a writer for Jane's Intelligence Review. The writer, Johan J. Ingles-le Nobel, had solicited feedback on a story about cyberterrorism from Slashdot readers, and then re-wrote his story based on that feedback and compensated the Slashdot writers whose information and words he used.
News design is the process of arranging material on a newspaper page, according to editorial and graphical guidelines and goals. Main editorial goals include the ordering of news stories by order of importance, while graphical considerations include readability and balanced, unobtrusive incorporation of advertising.
A newsroom is the central place where journalists—reporters, editors, and producers, associate producers, news anchors, news designers, photojournalists, videojournalists, associate editor, residence editor, visual text editor, Desk Head, stringers along with other staffers—work to gather news to be published in a newspaper, an online newspaper or magazine, or broadcast on radio, television, or cable. Some journalism organizations refer to the newsroom as the city room.
Journalistic ethics and standards comprise principles of ethics and good practice applicable to journalists. This subset of media ethics is known as journalism's professional "code of ethics" and the "canons of journalism". The basic codes and canons commonly appear in statements by professional journalism associations and individual print, broadcast, and online news organizations.
A weekly newspaper is a general-news or current affairs publication that is issued once or twice a week in a wide variety broadsheet, magazine, and digital formats. Similarly, a biweekly newspaper is published once every two weeks. Weekly newspapers tend to have smaller circulations than daily newspapers, and often cover smaller territories, such as one or more smaller towns, a rural county, or a few neighborhoods in a large city. Frequently, weeklies cover local news and engage in community journalism.
Broadcast journalism is the field of news and journals which are broadcast by electronic methods instead of the older methods, such as printed newspapers and posters. It works on radio, television and the World Wide Web. Such media disperse pictures, visual text and sounds.
The byline on a newspaper or magazine article gives the name of the writer of the article. Bylines are commonly placed between the headline and the text of the article, although some magazines place bylines at the bottom of the page to leave more room for graphical elements around the headline.
Digital journalism, also known as netizen journalism or online journalism, is a contemporary form of journalism where editorial content is distributed via the Internet, as opposed to publishing via print or broadcast. What constitutes digital journalism is debated by scholars; however, the primary product of journalism, which is news and features on current affairs, is presented solely or in combination as text, audio, video, or some interactive forms like storytelling stories or newsgames, and disseminated through digital media technology.
In journalism, a stringer is a freelance journalist, photographer, or videographer who contributes reports, photos, or videos to a news organization on an ongoing basis but is paid individually for each piece of published or broadcast work.
Community journalism is locally-oriented, professional news coverage that typically focuses on city neighborhoods, individual suburbs or small towns, rather than metropolitan, state, national or world news.
News is information about current events. This may be provided through many different media: word of mouth, printing, postal systems, broadcasting, electronic communication, or through the testimony of observers and witnesses to events. News is sometimes called "hard news" to differentiate it from soft media.
A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background.
Backpack journalism, also a reporter called as backpack reporting, is an emerging form of journalism that requires a journalist to be a reporter, photographer, and videographer, as well as an editor and producer of stories. There is no set definition for this practice, but it is essentially "a method using ... journalism to create powerful, intimate stories that take people beyond the boundary of their own life experience and connect them with the currents, forces and situations reshaping our world on a daily basis." This method uses various media tools, such as lightweight laptops, satellite phones, inexpensive editing software and digital cameras to more fully engage both the audience's intellect and emotion. Backpack journalists file material to supply the Web, and occasionally television, from locations that would be otherwise inaccessible to large news teams. Although the term originated within the sphere of broadcast journalism, it has expanded to include all areas of the media world.
The term "journalism genres" refers to various journalism styles, fields or separate genres, in writing accounts of events.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to journalism: