Appendix C: Journalism: A Guide to Recent Literature - Section 7. Journalists

A. Reference and General

Included here are biographical dictionaries and other reference works pertaining to journalists of all types, as well as the few general works assessing journalists as a whole.

A-1: Reference

Most of these provide collected bibliography of selected figures, ranging from very brief paragraphs to multipage essays.

Abrams, Alan B., comp. Journalism Biographies Master Index: A Guide to 90,000 References to Historical and Contemporary Journalists in 200 Biographical Directories and Other Sources. Detroit, MI: Gale Research, 1979. Arranged by journalist's name (and including publishers, editors, reporters, columnists), this includes some famous people who were only journalists for a time, and covers broadcasters as well as print media news personnel. This is a guide to other guides—the format lists journalist name plus birth and (if applicable) death dates, then a series of abbreviations where more biographical information may be found. But its age is showing—lots of people who are now well known do not appear here.

Applegate, Edd. The Ad Men and Women: A Biographical Dictionary of Advertising. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1994. More than 50 advertising professionals past and present are profiled, including copywriters, art directors and other creative personnel, and other key figures.

Applegate, Edd. Literary Journalism: A Biographical Dictionary of Writers and Editors. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1996. Covers—in short essays of a page or two—more than 150 American and British writers and editors, focusing on those then active, but reaching back to the seventeenth- and eighteeth-century authors in Britain who gave birth to the genre. In a short introductory essay, Applegate asserts that these literary journalists use techniques of the novelist that sharply differ in form, style, and language from the objective reportage of a newspaper reporter. See also Kaul, below.

Applegate, Edd. Journalistic Advocates and Muckrakers: Three Centuries of Crusading Writers. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1997. Includes more than 100 of them, arranged alphabetically, from famous ones like Tarbell and others up to more recent examples in the 1960s and 1970s. Entries range from several pages to a couple of paragraphs. [Page 2246]Applegate, Edd. Muckrakers: A Biographical Dictionary of Writers and Editors. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow, 2008. Some 50 of them are covered, in essays ranging from two to eight pages, including listings of some of their output.

Ashley, Perry J., ed. American Newspaper Journalists. Detroit, MI: Gale Research, “Dictionary of Literary Biography” (DLB). Four volumes collectively offer lengthy illustrated essays on hundreds of journalists. The preface to each volume provides historical context for the period covered.

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