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The Most Famous

JOURNALISTS from United States

This page contains a list of the greatest American Journalists. The pantheon dataset contains 127 Journalists, 42 of which were born in United States. This makes United States the birth place of the most number of Journalists.

Top 10

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the top 10 most legendary American Journalists of all time. This list of famous American Journalists is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity. Visit the rankings page to view the entire list of American Journalists.

1. Anna Politkovskaya (1958 - 2006)

With an HPI of 65.52, Anna Politkovskaya is the most famous American Journalist. Her biography has been translated into 72 different languages on wikipedia.

Anna Stepanovna Politkovskaya (née Mazepa; 30 August 1958 – 7 October 2006) was an American-Russian journalist and human rights activist, who reported on political and social events in Russia, in particular, the Second Chechen War (1999–2005). It was her reporting from Chechnya that made Politkovskaya's national and international reputation. For seven years, she refused to give up reporting on the war despite numerous acts of intimidation and violence. Politkovskaya was arrested by Russian military forces in Chechnya and subjected to a mock execution. She was poisoned while flying from Moscow via Rostov-on-Don to help resolve the 2004 Beslan school hostage crisis, and had to turn back, requiring careful medical treatment in Moscow to restore her health. Her post-1999 articles about conditions in Chechnya were turned into books several times; Russian readers' main access to her investigations and publications was through Novaya Gazeta, a Russian newspaper that featured critical investigative coverage of Russian political and social affairs. From 2000 onwards, she received numerous international awards for her work. In 2004, she published Putin's Russia, a personal account of Russia for a Western readership. On 7 October 2006 (notably, on the 54th birthday of the then President of Russia Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin), she was murdered in the elevator of her block of apartments, an assassination that attracted international attention. In June 2014, five men were sentenced to prison for the murder, but it is still unclear who ordered or paid for the contract killing.

2. John Reed (1887 - 1920)

With an HPI of 63.70, John Reed is the 2nd most famous American Journalist. His biography has been translated into 39 different languages.

John Silas Reed (October 22, 1887 – October 17, 1920) was an American journalist, poet, and communist activist. Reed first gained prominence as a war correspondent during the Mexican Revolution for Metropolitan and World War I for The Masses. He is best known for his coverage of the October Revolution in Petrograd, Russia, which he wrote about in his 1919 book Ten Days That Shook the World. Reed supported the Soviet takeover of Russia, even briefly taking up arms to join the Red Guards in 1918. He hoped for a similar Communist revolution in the United States, and co-founded the short-lived Communist Labor Party of America in 1919. He died in Moscow of spotted typhus in 1920. At the time of his death he may have soured on the Soviet leadership, but he was given a hero's burial by the Soviet Union, and is one of only four Americans buried at the Kremlin Wall Necropolis.

3. Dorothea Lange (1895 - 1965)

With an HPI of 63.53, Dorothea Lange is the 3rd most famous American Journalist. Her biography has been translated into 50 different languages.

Dorothea Lange (born Dorothea Margaretta Nutzhorn; May 26, 1895 – October 11, 1965) was an American documentary photographer and photojournalist, best known for her Depression-era work for the Farm Security Administration (FSA). Lange's photographs influenced the development of documentary photography and humanized the consequences of the Great Depression.

4. W. Eugene Smith (1918 - 1978)

With an HPI of 62.95, W. Eugene Smith is the 4th most famous American Journalist. His biography has been translated into 22 different languages.

William Eugene Smith (December 30, 1918 – October 15, 1978) was an American photojournalist. He has been described as "perhaps the single most important American photographer in the development of the editorial photo essay." His major photo essays include World War II photographs, the visual stories of an American country doctor and a nurse midwife, the clinic of Albert Schweitzer in French Equatorial Africa, the city of Pittsburgh, and the pollution which damaged the health of the residents of Minamata in Japan. His 1948 series, Country Doctor, photographed for Life, is now recognized as "the first extended editorial photo story".

5. Lee Miller (1907 - 1977)

With an HPI of 62.01, Lee Miller is the 5th most famous American Journalist. Her biography has been translated into 34 different languages.

Elizabeth "Lee" Miller, Lady Penrose (April 23, 1907 – July 21, 1977), was an American photographer and photojournalist. Miller was a fashion model in New York City in the 1920s before going to Paris, becoming a fashion and fine art photographer there. During World War II, she was a war correspondent for Vogue, covering events such as the London Blitz, the liberation of Paris, and the concentration camps at Buchenwald and Dachau.

6. Steve McCurry (1950 - )

With an HPI of 58.98, Steve McCurry is the 6th most famous American Journalist. His biography has been translated into 27 different languages.

Steve McCurry (born February 24, 1950) is an American photographer, freelancer, and photojournalist. His photo Afghan Girl, of a girl with piercing green eyes, has appeared on the cover of National Geographic several times. McCurry has photographed many assignments for National Geographic and has been a member of Magnum Photos since 1986. McCurry is the recipient of numerous awards, including Magazine Photographer of the Year, awarded by the National Press Photographers Association; the Royal Photographic Society's Centenary Medal; and two first-place prizes in the World Press Photo contest (1985 and 1992).

7. Walker Evans (1903 - 1975)

With an HPI of 57.74, Walker Evans is the 7th most famous American Journalist. His biography has been translated into 28 different languages.

Walker Evans (November 3, 1903 – April 10, 1975) was an American photographer and photojournalist best known for his work for the Resettlement Administration and the Farm Security Administration (FSA) documenting the effects of the Great Depression. Much of Evans' New Deal work uses the large format, 8 × 10-inch (200×250 mm) view camera. He said that his goal as a photographer was to make pictures that are "literate, authoritative, transcendent".Many of his works are in the permanent collections of museums and have been the subject of retrospectives at such institutions as the Metropolitan Museum of Art or the George Eastman Museum.

8. Margaret Bourke-White (1904 - 1971)

With an HPI of 57.29, Margaret Bourke-White is the 8th most famous American Journalist. Her biography has been translated into 30 different languages.

Margaret Bourke-White (; June 14, 1904 – August 27, 1971) was an American photographer and documentary photographer. She was arguably best known as the first foreign photographer permitted to take pictures of Soviet industry under the Soviets' first five-year plan, as the first American female war photojournalist, and for taking the photograph (of the construction of Fort Peck Dam) that became the cover of the first issue of Life magazine.

9. Charles Dow (1851 - 1902)

With an HPI of 56.47, Charles Dow is the 9th most famous American Journalist. His biography has been translated into 24 different languages.

Charles Henry Dow (; November 6, 1851 – December 4, 1902) was an American journalist who co-founded Dow Jones & Company with Edward Jones and Charles Bergstresser. Dow also co-founded The Wall Street Journal, which has become one of the most respected financial publications in the world. He also invented the Dow Jones Industrial Average as part of his research into market movements. He developed a series of principles for understanding and analyzing market behavior which later became known as Dow theory, the groundwork for technical analysis.

10. Eddie Adams (1933 - 2004)

With an HPI of 55.56, Eddie Adams is the 10th most famous American Journalist. His biography has been translated into 26 different languages.

Edward Thomas Adams (June 12, 1933 – September 19, 2004) was an American photographer and photojournalist noted for portraits of celebrities and politicians and for coverage of 13 wars. He is best known for his photograph of the summary execution of Nguyễn Văn Lém, a Viet Cong prisoner of war, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography in 1969. Adams was a resident of Bogota, New Jersey.

People

Pantheon has 42 people classified as journalists born between 1851 and 2000. Of these 42, 18 (42.86%) of them are still alive today. The most famous living journalists include Steve McCurry, James Nachtwey, and Dan Rather. The most famous deceased journalists include Anna Politkovskaya, John Reed, and Dorothea Lange. As of April 2022, 5 new journalists have been added to Pantheon including Sydney Schanberg, Michael Wolff, and Chris Cuomo.