Category:American journalists

Anna Wintour has edited Vogue since 1988. Andrew Ross Sorkin founded DealBook at The New York Times in 2001, while still in his twenties. Cameron Crowe wrote for Rolling Stone as a teenager before turning to film. The figures gathered in this category span print, broadcast, and digital journalism in the United States, and their careers trace the shape of the American press from the late twentieth century through the platform era.

Background

American journalism as a profession took recognizable form in the nineteenth century around the daily newspaper, and consolidated during the twentieth around a handful of national institutions: the wire services, the network newscasts, the weekly newsmagazines, and the metropolitan dailies. Most of the people grouped here came of professional age after that consolidation began to fracture. Cable news arrived in 1980. The commercial web arrived in the mid-1990s. Smartphones and social platforms reshaped distribution again after 2007.

The careers represented in this category reflect those shifts. Some members built reputations at legacy mastheads such as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Atlantic. Others made their names at venture-backed digital outlets such as TechCrunch, Wired, Axios, and The Information. Several have moved fluidly between the two worlds, and a number have built independent audiences through newsletters, podcasts, or books that operate alongside their staff positions.

The American journalist as a category is not bound to a single credential. Most of the people listed here hold degrees from American universities, and many trained at programs such as those at Columbia, Northwestern, or Missouri. But the field remains open to entrants from adjacent disciplines, including law, finance, computer science, and literature, and several members entered journalism after careers elsewhere.

Notable members

The category leans heavily toward business, technology, and finance coverage, which reflects the growth of those beats over the past two decades. Andrew Ross Sorkin is the author of Too Big to Fail and a co-anchor on CNBC. David Faber is a longtime CNBC reporter known for breaking deal stories. Brad Stone leads global technology coverage at Bloomberg News and has written book-length treatments of Amazon and the broader platform economy. Emily Chang anchors Bloomberg Technology. Erin Griffith covers startups and venture capital for The New York Times, a beat she previously held at Fortune. Connie Loizos has covered private markets for TechCrunch and StrictlyVC. Alex Konrad writes about venture capital at Forbes, where Chase Peterson-Withorn reports on wealth.

A second cluster works the intersection of technology and policy, where the beat has expanded substantially since 2016. Cat Zakrzewski has covered tech policy for The Washington Post. Brendan Bordelon reports on Washington's relationship with the tech industry for Politico. Drew Harwell writes about artificial intelligence and online platforms at The Washington Post. Andy Greenberg covers cybersecurity at Wired and is the author of books on state-sponsored hacking. Chris Bing reports on cyber operations and disinformation. Alexandra Alper covers national security and trade at Reuters. Christopher Mims writes a weekly technology column for The Wall Street Journal. Barbara Ortutay covers technology for the Associated Press. Devin Coldewey and Alex Heath have written for TechCrunch and The Verge respectively, focusing on consumer products and the companies that make them.

A third grouping covers economics, finance, and the broader business of American life. Annie Lowrey writes about economic policy for The Atlantic. Derek Thompson writes columns and hosts a podcast on labor markets, culture, and demographics, also at The Atlantic. Emily Glazer reports on banking and corporate governance at The Wall Street Journal. David Streitfeld has written widely on housing and technology for The New York Times. Aarian Marshall covers transportation at Wired.

Editors and analytical writers form a fourth strand. Adrienne LaFrance is the executive editor of The Atlantic. Charlie Warzel writes a newsletter and column at the same magazine on internet culture and information environments. Andrew Stiles writes for the Washington Free Beacon. The category also includes figures whose work has crossed into other media. Cameron Crowe moved from music journalism into filmmaking. Carole Radziwill wrote a memoir after producing for ABC News. Aisha Laurent is among the more recent entrants.

Taken together, the members represent the dominant beats of contemporary American journalism: deal-making, platform power, financial markets, economic policy, national security, and the culture industries. Magazine journalism, broadcast anchoring, and book authorship recur as parallel tracks for many of these writers, and the boundary between reporter and analyst has narrowed considerably across the careers represented here.

The nature of the work

The day-to-day labor of an American journalist varies sharply by beat. A reporter on a markets desk may file multiple short items between the opening and closing bells. A magazine writer at The Atlantic may spend months on a single feature. A cable correspondent works to a different clock than a podcast host. What unifies the people in this category is a set of professional practices: sourcing, verification, attribution, and the production of work intended for a general or specialist public rather than for a client.

Paths into the field have changed. The traditional route ran through small-circulation newspapers and a slow climb toward a national title. That ladder still exists, but it has been joined by entry through trade publications, newsletters, and digital-native sites that hired aggressively during the 2010s. A number of the writers grouped here built early audiences at outlets such as BuzzFeed News or Recode before moving to legacy mastheads. Others have moved in the opposite direction, leaving staff jobs at established papers to publish independently on Substack or similar platforms.

Compensation, job security, and the structure of newsrooms have all shifted during the period covered by this category. Newsroom unionization expanded after 2015. Several major papers underwent ownership changes. The collapse of classified advertising depressed local journalism while national outlets with subscription models grew. The careers visible here are weighted toward those national outlets and toward the coastal media centers of New York, Washington, and San Francisco, which is where most of the institutions that employ these writers are headquartered.

See also

• Journalism in the United States
• List of American newspapers
• History of American journalism
• American magazine journalism
• Pulitzer Prize