Origin of the word ‘journalism’

For most of the people who are not pursuing journalism as a career option or limit their understanding of journalism to do anything with distribution of news through any mode of communication, how the word ‘journalism’ originated may not be known to them. Every word in every language all over the world has its own story and origins. Languages were not something which existed from pre-historic times, rather evolved as Homo Sapiens evolved. Similarly, ‘journalism’ has its own story to tell.

As one can understand, journalism comes from the word ‘journal’. ‘Journal’ evolved from a late Latin word called ‘diurnalis’ meaning belonging to a day. In Middle Ages of Europe (5th-15th century AD), journals were books which listed the time of daily prayers to be sung during the course of the day, week or month. In 17th century, journal came to be mean a ‘personal diary’, where one wrote the proceedings, dealings with people or events happened everyday. By the next century the meaning of journal changed. It started to mean ‘daily newspaper’ when printing press was invented and became a medium to impart written communication. The current usage of journalism comes from this meaning. Late 20th century onward, electronic media came under the ambit of ‘journalism’ and it has been further enhanced with the advent of social networking medium in the 21st century.

And thus the story of the word ‘Journalism’ continues to evolve as time passes.

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