Columnist
Encyclopedia
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
who writes for publication in a series, creating an article that usually offers commentary and opinions. Columns
Column (newspaper)
A column is a recurring piece or article in a newspaper, magazine or other publication. Columns are written by columnists.What differentiates a column from other forms of journalism is that it meets each of the following criteria:...
appear in newspaper
Newspaper
A newspaper is a scheduled publication containing news of current events, informative articles, diverse features and advertising. It usually is printed on relatively inexpensive, low-grade paper such as newsprint. By 2007, there were 6580 daily newspapers in the world selling 395 million copies a...
s, magazine
Magazine
Magazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of articles. They are generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three...
s and other publications, including blog
Blog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
s.
Readers often open a publication with an expectation of reading another short essay by a specific writer who offers a personal point of view. In some instances, a column has been written by a composite or a team, appearing under a pseudonym, or (in effect) a brand name. Some columnists appear on a daily or weekly basis and later reprint the same material in book collections.
In defining a column, Dictionary.com provides a breakdown of a few popular subjects covered by columnists:
- A regular feature or series of articles in a newspaper, magazine, or the like, usually having a readily identifiable heading and the byline of the writer or editor, that reports or comments upon a particular field of interest, as politics, theater or etiquette, or which may contain letters from readers, answers to readers' queries, etc.
Radio and television
Newspaper columnists of the 1930s and 1940s, such as Franklin Pierce AdamsFranklin Pierce Adams
Franklin Pierce Adams was an American columnist, well known by his initials F.P.A., and wit, best known for his newspaper column, "The Conning Tower", and his appearances as a regular panelist on radio's Information Please...
(aka FPA), Nick Kenny
Nick Kenny (poet)
Nicholas Aloysius Kenny was a syndicated newspaper columnist, a song lyricist and a poet who wrote light verse in the Edgar Guest tradition.-Biography:...
, John Crosby
John Crosby (media critic)
John Crosby was a newspaper columnist, radio-television critic, novelist and TV host. During the 1950s, he was generally regarded as the leading critic of television....
, Jimmie Fidler, Louella Parsons
Louella Parsons
Louella Parsons was the first American news-writer movie columnist in the United States. She was a gossip columnist who, for many years, was an influential arbiter of Hollywood mores, often feared and hated by the individuals, mostly actors, whose careers she could negatively impact via her...
, Drew Pearson
Drew Pearson (journalist)
Andrew Russell Pearson , known professionally as Drew Pearson, was one of the best-known American columnists of his day, noted for his muckraking syndicated newspaper column "Washington Merry-Go-Round," in which he attacked various public persons, sometimes with little or no objective proof for his...
, Ed Sullivan
Ed Sullivan
Edward Vincent "Ed" Sullivan was an American entertainment writer and television host, best known as the presenter of the TV variety show The Ed Sullivan Show. The show was broadcast from 1948 to 1971 , which made it one of the longest-running variety shows in U.S...
and Walter Winchell
Walter Winchell
Walter Winchell was an American newspaper and radio gossip commentator.-Professional career:Born Walter Weinschel in New York City, he left school in the sixth grade and started performing in a vaudeville troupe known as Gus Edwards' "Newsboys Sextet."His career in journalism was begun by posting...
, achieved a celebrity status and used their syndicated
Print syndication
Print syndication distributes news articles, columns, comic strips and other features to newspapers, magazines and websites. They offer reprint rights and grant permissions to other parties for republishing content of which they own/represent copyrights....
columns as a springboard to move into radio and television. In some cases, such as Winchell and Parsons, their radio programs were quite similar in format to their newspaper columns. Rona Barrett
Rona Barrett
Rona Barrett is an American gossip columnist and businesswoman. She currently runs the Rona Barrett Foundation, a non-profit organization in Santa Ynez, California, dedicated to the aid and support of senior citizens in need.-Career and personal life:As a teenager, Barrett overcame a degenerative...
began as a Hollywood gossip columnist in 1957, duplicating her print tactics on television by the mid-1960s. One of the more famous syndicated columnists of the 1920s and 1930s, O. O. McIntyre
O. O. McIntyre
Oscar Odd McIntyre was a famed New York newspaper columnist of the 1920s and 1930s who cleverly combined a small town point of view with urban sophistication...
, declined offers to do a radio series because he felt it would interfere and diminish the quality of writing in his column, "New York Day by Day."
Books
FPA and McIntyre both collected their columns into a series of books, as did other columnists. McIntyre's book, The Big Town: New York Day by Day (1935) was a bestseller. FPA's The Melancholy Lute (1936) collected selections from three decades of his columns. H. Allen SmithH. Allen Smith
For the congressman see H. Allen SmithHarry Allen Wolfgang Smith was an American journalist and humorist whose books were popular in the 1940s and 1950s, selling millions of copies....
's first humor book, Low Man on a Totem Pole (1941) and his two following books were so popular during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
that they kept Smith on the New York Herald Tribunes Best Seller List for 100 weeks and prompted a collection of all three in 3 Smiths in the Wind (1946). When Smith's column, The Totem Pole, was syndicated by United Features, he told Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
:
- Just between you and me, it's tough. A typewriter can be a pretty formidable contraption when you sit down in front of it and say: "All right, now I'm going to be funny."
The writing of French humor columnist Alain Rémond
Alain Rémond
Alain Rémond is a famous French humor columnist, born in 1946 in Mortain .-Biography:Alain Rémond was born into a modest Breton family...
has been collected in books. The Miami Herald
The Miami Herald
The Miami Herald is a daily newspaper owned by The McClatchy Company headquartered on Biscayne Bay in the Omni district of Downtown Miami, Florida, United States...
promoted humor columnist Dave Barry
Dave Barry
David "Dave" Barry is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American author and columnist, who wrote a nationally syndicated humor column for The Miami Herald from 1983 to 2005. He has also written numerous books of humor and parody, as well as comedic novels.-Biography:Barry was born in Armonk, New York,...
with this description: "Dave Barry has been at The Miami Herald since 1983. A Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
winner for commentary, he writes about issues ranging from the international economy to exploding toilets." Barry has collected his columns into a series of successful books. He stopped writing his nationally syndicated weekly column in 2005, and The Miami Herald now offers on its website a lengthy selection of past columns by Barry.
In 1950, Editor & Publisher looked back at the newspaper columnists of the 1920s:
- "Feature service of various sorts is new," Hallam Walker Davis wrote in a book, The Column, which was published in 1926. "It has had the advantage of high-powered promotion. It is still riding on the crest of the first big wave its own splash sent out." But Mr. Davis did think that in a decade or two the newspapers might be promoting their columns along with their comic strips. The World had started the ball rolling with billboard advertising of Heywood BrounHeywood BrounHeywood Campbell Broun, Jr. was an American journalist. He worked as a sportswriter, newspaper columnist, and editor in New York City. He founded the American Newspaper Guild, now known as The Newspaper Guild. Born in Brooklyn, New York, he is best remembered for his writing on social issues and...
's "It Seems to Me." The McNaught SyndicateMcNaught SyndicateThe McNaught Syndicate was an American newspaper syndicate founded in 1922. It was established by Virgil Venice McNitt and Charles V. McAdam. Its best known contents were the columns by Will Rogers and O. O. McIntyre, the Dear Abby letters section and comic strips, including Joe Palooka and...
was sitting pretty with O. O. McIntyre, Will RogersWill RogersWilliam "Will" Penn Adair Rogers was an American cowboy, comedian, humorist, social commentator, vaudeville performer, film actor, and one of the world's best-known celebrities in the 1920s and 1930s....
and Irvin S. CobbIrvin S. CobbIrvin Shrewsbury Cobb was an American author, humorist, and columnist who lived in New York and authored more than 60 books and 300 short stories.-Biography:...
on its list. The New York Herald Tribune offered Don MarquisDon MarquisDonald Robert Perry Marquis was a humorist, journalist, and author. He was variously a novelist, poet, newspaper columnist, and playwright. He is remembered best for creating the characters "Archy" and "Mehitabel", supposed authors of humorous verse.-Life:...
and Franklin P. Adams rhymed satirically in "The Conning Tower" for the New York World Syndicate. "A Line o' Type Or Two," Bert Leston Taylor's verse column in the Chicago Tribune, was now being done by Richard Henry Little. Other offerings: humorous sketches by Damon RunyonDamon RunyonAlfred Damon Runyon was an American newspaperman and writer.He was best known for his short stories celebrating the world of Broadway in New York City that grew out of the Prohibition era. To New Yorkers of his generation, a "Damon Runyon character" evoked a distinctive social type from the...
; O. HenryO. HenryO. Henry was the pen name of the American writer William Sydney Porter . O. Henry's short stories are well known for their wit, wordplay, warm characterization and clever twist endings.-Early life:...
stories; editorials by Arthur BrisbaneArthur BrisbaneArthur Brisbane was one of the best known American newspaper editors of the 20th century.-Biography:...
; Ring LardnerRing LardnerRinggold Wilmer Lardner was an American sports columnist and short story writer best known for his satirical takes on the sports world, marriage, and the theatre.-Personal life:...
letter; "Rippling Rhymes," by Walt Mason; literary articles by H. L. MenckenH. L. MenckenHenry Louis "H. L." Mencken was an American journalist, essayist, magazine editor, satirist, acerbic critic of American life and culture, and a scholar of American English. Known as the "Sage of Baltimore", he is regarded as one of the most influential American writers and prose stylists of the...
.
Magazines
In at least one situation, a column expanded to become an entire successful magazine. When Cyrus Curtis founded the Tribune and Farmer in 1879, it was a four-page weekly with an annual subscription rate of 50 cents. He introduced a women's column by his wife, Louise Knapp Curtis, and it proved so popular that in 1883, he decided to publish it as a separate monthly supplement, Ladies Journal and Practical Housekeeper, edited by Louise Curtis. With 25,000 subscribers by the end of its first year, it was such a success that Curtis sold Tribune and Farmer to put his energy into the new publication, which became the Ladies' Home JournalLadies' Home Journal
Ladies' Home Journal is an American magazine which first appeared on February 16, 1883, and eventually became one of the leading women's magazines of the 20th century in the United States...
.
Types of columnists
- Advice columnAdvice columnAn advice column is a column in a magazine or newspaper written by an advice columnist . The image presented was originally of an older woman providing comforting advice and maternal wisdom, hence the name "aunt"...
ist - CriticCriticA critic is anyone who expresses a value judgement. Informally, criticism is a common aspect of all human expression and need not necessarily imply skilled or accurate expressions of judgement. Critical judgements, good or bad, may be positive , negative , or balanced...
- EditorialEditorialAn opinion piece is an article, published in a newspaper or magazine, that mainly reflects the author's opinion about the subject. Opinion pieces are featured in many periodicals.-Editorials:...
opinion columnist - GossipGossipGossip is idle talk or rumour, especially about the personal or private affairs of others, It is one of the oldest and most common means of sharing facts and views, but also has a reputation for the introduction of errors and variations into the information transmitted...
columnist - HumorHumourHumour or humor is the tendency of particular cognitive experiences to provoke laughter and provide amusement...
columnist - Food columnFood columnA food column is a type of newspaper column dealing with food. It may be focused on recipes, health trends, or improving efficiency. It is generally geared towards gourmets or "foodies". Since 1994, food writers have also written columns and blogs on the web...
ist