The Most Famous

JOURNALISTS from United States

This page contains a list of the greatest American Journalists. The pantheon dataset contains 196 Journalists, 56 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. Lee Miller (1907 - 1977)

With an HPI of 75.01, Lee Miller is the most famous American Journalist. Her biography has been translated into 39 different languages on wikipedia.

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. Her reputation as an artist in her own right is due mostly to her son's discovery and promotion of her work as a fashion and war photographer.

2. Anna Politkovskaya (1958 - 2006)

With an HPI of 71.31, Anna Politkovskaya is the 2nd most famous American Journalist. Her biography has been translated into 79 different languages.

Anna Stepanovna Politkovskaya (née Mazepa; 30 August 1958 – 7 October 2006) was a Russian investigative journalist 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 her 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 (the 54th birthday of Russian president Vladimir Putin), she was murdered in the elevator of her block of apartments, an assassination that attracted international attention. In 2014, five men were sentenced to prison for the murder, but it is still unclear who ordered or paid for the contract killing.

3. Dorothea Lange (1895 - 1965)

With an HPI of 70.09, Dorothea Lange is the 3rd most famous American Journalist. Her biography has been translated into 51 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. John Reed (1887 - 1920)

With an HPI of 68.60, John Reed is the 4th most famous American Journalist. His biography has been translated into 40 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 three Americans buried at the Kremlin Wall Necropolis.

5. W. Eugene Smith (1918 - 1978)

With an HPI of 65.50, W. Eugene Smith is the 5th most famous American Journalist. His biography has been translated into 24 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".

6. Steve McCurry (b. 1950)

With an HPI of 65.40, Steve McCurry is the 6th most famous American Journalist. His biography has been translated into 30 different languages.

Steve McCurry (born April 23, 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. Charles Dow (1851 - 1902)

With an HPI of 64.11, Charles Dow is the 7th most famous American Journalist. His biography has been translated into 28 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.

8. Margaret Bourke-White (1904 - 1971)

With an HPI of 63.34, Margaret Bourke-White is the 8th most famous American Journalist. Her biography has been translated into 31 different languages.

Margaret Bourke-White (; June 14, 1904 – August 27, 1971) was an American documentary photographer and photojournalist. She was known as an architectural and commercial photographer for the first half of her career, representing corporate clients and highlighting the success of industrial capitalism with black and white images of steel factories and skyscrapers. In 1930, she became the first foreign photographer permitted to take pictures of the Soviet Union. In 1933, NBC commissioned her to create a monumental photo mural about radio for its rotunda at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, then considered the largest photo mural in the world. The success of her corporate commissions led her to work at Fortune magazine in the 1930s. She took the photograph of the construction of Fort Peck Dam that became the cover of the first issue of Life magazine. The second half of her career represents her transition from corporate photography to photojournalism, beginning with her work during the Great Depression documenting the people of the Dust Bowl. Her collaboration with novelist Erskine Caldwell in You Have Seen Their Faces (1937) resulted in seventy-five photos depicting the lives of poor, rural sharecroppers, and was both a commercial success and one of several major documentary works at the time to bring attention to the needs of the Southern United States. She was the first American female war photojournalist, photographed the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, and was with Patton's Third Army in the spring of 1945 when she famously documented the liberation of the Buchenwald concentration camp. In 1949, she was one of the first Americans to bring attention to the injustices of the South African apartheid regime with her unique photographs, and covered the Korean War for Life magazine in the early 1950s.

9. Edgar Snow (1905 - 1972)

With an HPI of 62.24, Edgar Snow is the 9th most famous American Journalist. His biography has been translated into 24 different languages.

Edgar Parks Snow (July 19, 1905 – February 15, 1972) was an American journalist known for his books and articles on communism in China and the Chinese Communist Revolution. He was the first Western journalist to give an account of the history of the Chinese Communist Party following the Long March, and he was also the first Western journalist to interview many of its leaders, including Mao Zedong. He is best known for his book Red Star Over China (1937), an account of the Chinese Communist movement from its foundation until the late 1930s.

10. Harriet Quimby (1875 - 1912)

With an HPI of 62.23, Harriet Quimby is the 10th most famous American Journalist. Her biography has been translated into 34 different languages.

Harriet Quimby (May 11, 1875 – July 1, 1912) was an American pioneering aviator, journalist, and film screenwriter. In 1911, she became the first woman in the United States to receive a pilot's license and in 1912 the first woman to fly solo across the English Channel. Although Quimby died at the age of 37 in a flying accident, she strongly influenced the role of women in aviation.

People

Pantheon has 56 people classified as American journalists born between 1851 and 2000. Of these 56, 27 (48.21%) of them are still alive today. The most famous living American journalists include Steve McCurry, Diana Nyad, and James Nachtwey. The most famous deceased American journalists include Lee Miller, Anna Politkovskaya, and Dorothea Lange. As of April 2024, 56 new American journalists have been added to Pantheon including Lee Miller, Anna Politkovskaya, and Dorothea Lange.