Columns and Columnists

Development

In the early 1800s, newspaper owners and employees began functioning as editorial writers and reporters, thereby improving the content of newspapers, which in the 1700s came largely from letter-writers and exchanges of copy with other newspapers and other publications. Whereas American writers from the pre-1800 days of Benjamin Franklin wrote more or less column-like newspaper and pamphlet copy prior to 1800, writers specifically referred to as columnists emerged later, in the mid-nineteenth century.

A column is an informal essay, or commentary, usually averaging somewhere between 700 and 800 words, is usually signed by its writer, usually addresses a single topic, appears on a regular schedule in the same position in the newspaper or periodical's pages, and is used more for its interest value than for its news value. At base, being interesting to readers is the columnist's raison d'etre. The columnist's insight, wit, engaging personality, and pizzazz stand out from the more cautiously crafted editorials with which some columns share space in a newspaper's commentary (often an op-ed page) section. The words of a good columnist also have extra sparkle and resonance compared to the work of news reporters; although reporting is a newspaper's most vital product, it has a way of becoming dry, especially in the present-day climate of corporate service journalism that marks both newspapers and magazines.

Media historians remain somewhat unclear as to exactly when the columnist emerged as a journalistic specialist. Some of the earliest practitioners of this craft were literary figures such as Benjamin Perley Poore, who began his column “Waifs from Washington” in 1854; Ambrose Bierce, in San Francisco in 1868; and Joel Chandler Harris in Georgia in the 1870s. Other pioneering columnists were women, hired as columnists in part to attract more women readers. Sara Parton launched a column in New York in 1855, writing in the guise of “Fanny Fern.” Author and journalist Jane Cunningham Croly wrote as “Jennie June” in New York at the same time; Emily Briggs was Philadelphia's “Olivia” beginning in 1866; Mary Clemmer Ames wrote in the nation's capital after the Civil War; and Sallie Joy opined as “Penelope Penfeather,” a Boston columnist in 1875.

...