i think we need Cracked-style articles back. desperately. or like, a guy doing a weird thing and writing a piece on it. sites like those are declining faster than the glaciers.
One can write for newspaper and not be a journalist. Columnist for example.
In fact, at our newspaper only about a quarter of the writers are ‘real’ journalists with journalism degrees, including myself.
From my personal experience (20 years in radio, 8 in newspapers), even most actual journalists don’t really call themselves journalists. I tend to refer to myself as a writer in general, since I also do commercial copy, I write reviews and handle all sorts of general writing and public contact.
Journalist is not a protected job title. Anyone can call themselves a journalist. Even that other poster. Because of that, I tend not to use it as a job title, since it’s been devalued a bit by everyone with a blog or vlogging channel calling themselves journalist.
I’m seriously wondering what the other poster’s point was…
Ah yes! The elusive columnist! None of those ever attended J school or are held to journalism standards. They can definitely print whatever the fuck they want without any sort of fact finding or double checking.
