Writer Versus Journalist

Writer versus journalist – what’s the difference I’m often asked, especially when I say I’m not a journalist but a writer.

A journalist is a recorder and their work is, or should be, strictly informational.  They work almost exclusively within news mediums including TV. Perhaps I’m wrong but it seems to me that the journalist has less choices in tone, and in point of view.  Good recording is always dispassionate and strictly factual. Good journalists are probably closely related to historians.

The journalist’s audience is the mass media’s audience.

A writer, by comparison, can induce or expose perceptions. They may well report facts as part of their activity, but writing is not limited to facts. The writer may introduce whimsy, devices, or description which is beyond strict fact.  A writer may also practise journalism, but then again he or she might never produce written material for news media. A writer might produce advertisements, plays, novels, biographies, treatises, almost anything which requires a competent arrangement of words.  A writer often produces material designed to entertain, something a journalist never does.

The writer’s audience is not restricted.

Writing is an act, a physical act.  Journalism is a specific type of writing. A journalist employs writing to report facts while a writer sometimes writes for the pure physical pleasure of setting pen to page and moving across the page watching words, unchosen, spill from his pen.

A writer writes, that is the simplest definition.