I read the article carefully; I read all the comments, and I still fail to grasp the difference between the two terms. Is it me, or did the author fail to answer the question satisfactorily?
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A reporter: reports ....what has happened and continues to happen and in these
findings (what's new or news) then this reporter ....reports what has been
found out..
A correspondent: corresponds....keeps in touch ...and gives a view of what
has been happening ....and if this happening then or now ...is at all newsworthy
well the correspondent ....writes from a point of view.
We need more reporters now who are like Tarbell....and less correspondence
whose opinions are seeming to be like sentimental rubbish or outright
propaganda ....similar to TABLOID news...
Reporters .....get cracking because Citizens United has made our government
a god awful MESS....report the facts....and back up the facts....you report.
findings (what's new or news) then this reporter ....reports what has been
found out..
A correspondent: corresponds....keeps in touch ...and gives a view of what
has been happening ....and if this happening then or now ...is at all newsworthy
well the correspondent ....writes from a point of view.
We need more reporters now who are like Tarbell....and less correspondence
whose opinions are seeming to be like sentimental rubbish or outright
propaganda ....similar to TABLOID news...
Reporters .....get cracking because Citizens United has made our government
a god awful MESS....report the facts....and back up the facts....you report.
2
My father, a reporter who worked his way to executive editor, called himself a newspaperman. He used to say a journalist is an unemployed newspaperman.
I know he would be impressed with what's happening in digital news today but deeply depressed by the decline in ad revenue.
I know he would be impressed with what's happening in digital news today but deeply depressed by the decline in ad revenue.
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Was it Mencken who said a journalist is a newspaperman who wears spats? Well, my dad said it, too.
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In a 1950s movie, I believe it was "love Is a Many-Splendored Thing," William Holden's character, a newspaper correspondent, is asked the difference between a reporter and a correspondent. He replies, "About $100 a week."
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I was a correspondent for a major West Coast newspaper in the 1980s. Correspondent was a fancy word for stringer, those who weren't full-time staffers but did the same professional work nonetheless.
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I am reminded of the line that a journalist is a reporter with two suits.
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Nicely done. I appreciated this and the linked dateline column. All the glib rejoinders claiming it can be reduced to a five word phrase play in to the cynicism of the age. We're all experiencing daily how the internet changes things; this is just another. [Just prior to reading both columns, I'd been studying Adam Entous' article in the Post a few months ago where he broke the story of "sometimes I think...Trump and Rohrabacher," specifically curious about what exactly was said as to how the recording came about. I'm ashamed to say I'd missed the Kiev dateline, which adds to the intrigue. But I suppose he might have been on a different assignment and a final fact was confirmed before the article could be completely polished and filed, coincidentally from Kiev...which would make it more of an internet 'place doesn't matter' thing. lol]
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In Washington, DC, reporters do not merely have a name. Really. They introduce themselves at social or work related gatherings as "Joe Smith, NY Times", or "Barry Jones, CBS." This practice implies that apart from where they work, their names don't actually matter. To an extent, this is true. The prestige of the person, unless they are exceedingly well known or have won a Pulitzer or such, is wholly the prestige of where they work. The corollary is that if you don't work someplace that is considered important, you aren't important, either, at least until you break some story that causes the whole town of journalists to wake up and pay attention.
CBS News had a system years ago in which people were designated as "correspondents" and if you could not rise to that designation it was assumed you were on the way out. I am not sure if they still do it, but being a correspondent meant that, within the ranks, you were somebody, you had arrived.
I have done foreign correspondence in Portugal, the Caribbean, Central America and reported briefly from a number of other countries including Russia, Morocco, France, etc. In the pre-internet days, the biggest problem for me was trying to figure out what people back here cared about at any given moment. International news is of only of occasional interest in the US. The rest of the time, people don't care much at all, so stories have to be framed in such a way that they fill people in, allow them to catch up on news they have ignored.
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In short, there is none.
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Perhaps it is time we have a third distinction: news reporter, news correspondent, and news fabricator.
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If you know of a story in the Times which has been fabricated in any fashion, you should specifically raise it. They tend to own up to those errors - which usually are attributed to some too-clever by half novice making things up: Jayson Blair etc. There are other cases where they've been justly criticized for a reporter becoming too close to sources (Judith Miller) and pulled into those sources' world view. And you *may* have a criticism over editorial choices meaning what to write about in the first place (why this vs. that?) and how many column inches & continuing followups and how prominently they are run, perhaps even how they are headlined (which often drives the writers nuts themselves). I have been *very* critical of editorial choices, even of what I believe to be misleading impressions created thereby. But "fabricator"? I don't think so, that counts as a major scandal in the world of established responsible media outlets.
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I think he was referring to other news sources, such as alt-right venues. At least, that's how I took it.
No, I don't think he was referring to The New York Times.
At some of the local newspapers I worked for in the past, reporter was designated as a full-time employee of the paper, and generally worked in the newsroom. Correspondent was interchangeable with "stringers," a part-time reporter who was assigned specific beats or given specific stories to write and generally wrote from home, though occasionally one would sneak into the newsroom to "borrow" a computer. Correspondents were paid by inch count or bylines. But their byline title would be Correspondent because stringer doesn't quite have the ring...
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Correspondents are reporters.
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A correspondent probably spells better. But a reporter has been trained to ask the same questions over and over and over and over and ...
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Only because elected officials are refusing the answer questions more and more and more...
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And to find at least one other confirming source, I believe, particularly if the primary source will not agree to be named, in which case a reporter has a duty to be skeptical and ask why this person is leaking this information now, so as to filter out newsworthy leaks (deep throat) from attempts to spin the news without accepting accountability for it. This cycle I've been carefully watching as some parts of my Twitter "rabbit hole" come up with things that are purportedly reliably sourced, but as with all of 2016/2017 sound unbelievable. Then I watch carefully to see when [if] it gets picked up by major outlets; there's some tension there, no doubt, but as an obsessive reader with a skeptical approach, I'm the stronger for it. Benjamin Franklin: believe nothing of what you hear and half of what you see.
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Yes, the same questions over and over: Who? What? Where? When? How? and Why?
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What about benefits? Do foreign correspondents receive the same "employee" benefits as reporters? Or are they classified as "independent contractors" like Uber drivers doing gig work (paid piecemeal or by the article and number of words)?
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A reporter reports. A correspondent corresponds.
Not really.
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So the key factor is the same as in real estate, in effect? Location, location location.
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Except that plays into the cynicism of our time. There is real value in the simple "I saw" aspect of reporting. I absorbed that in a James Fallows piece around the time that we were trying to sort out the "little green men" in Eastern Ukraine, and I noticed that the Guardian had some very British almost BBC sounding reportage that amounted to "I saw" and was thus very helpful to me through the thicket of opinions and guesses and identifiable propaganda so abundant at that time. It's a damn sight better when trying to sort out some situation like Ukraine, than a secondary "sources are reporting that..." which can bang around the echo chamber enough times that whatever it is begins to sound true from sheer repetition. It's not like real estate because being ON location is everything [which is what real estate means - choosing sites, but why contribute to the cynicism that nobody is trying to get their facts straight and welcomes genuine corrections should there be any]. Internet bubbles and confirmation bias may destroy the republic.
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