reporter
Pluralreporters
- 1A journalist whose job is to look into news stories, edit them, and report them in newspapers or on radio and television.
The reporter spent months investigating corruption at city hall.
Broadcast reporters filed their stories minutes before the evening news.
Similarjournalist, correspondent
- 2A person or thing that gives an account of events or passes on information.
He proved a reliable reporter of everything that happened at the meeting.
The sensor functions as a reporter, logging each change in pressure.
Similarinformant, chronicler, narrator, source
Note
The broadest sense, and the one the word was built for: Middle English reportour, from Old French reporteur, matching report plus the agent ending -er. It covers anyone or anything that passes information on, with no newsroom implied. Software users who flag security bugs are reporters of them. Here the word usually needs an of-phrase naming what is reported; without one, readers will hear the journalist.
- 3A person who records and issues the official reports of court hearings or legislative sessions.
The reporter certified the transcript before it was entered into the record.
Legislative reporters compiled the official account of the day's debates.
Similarstenographer, recorder, transcriber
- 4A bound volume of printed legal opinions from a particular jurisdiction.
She cited the page in the regional reporter where the decision appeared.
The firm subscribed to several reporters covering federal and state courts.
Note
Here the reporter is a book, not a person. It is one volume in a series collecting a jurisdiction's published opinions, and its full name is case reporter. Lawyers cite a decision by volume number, the reporter's abbreviation, and page, which gives every ruling a permanent, findable address. In legal writing, the verb keeps it apart from the official who records proceedings: you cite a page in a reporter, but a reporter certifies a transcript.
- 5A gene attached by a researcher to the regulatory sequence of another gene of interest, used to indicate whether that gene has been taken up or expressed in cells.
The team fused a fluorescent reporter to the promoter to track gene expression.
Green fluorescent protein is a common reporter in molecular biology experiments.
Note
Lab shorthand that keeps the everyday idea: the gene's job is to tell researchers what a hidden gene is doing. It works because its product is easy to assay, so its measurable activity stands in for the activity of the target. Researchers speak of fusing or attaching a reporter to a promoter. They often say reporter gene to keep it apart from the journalist.
Practice
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Origin
From Middle English reportour, from Old French reporteur; equivalent to "report" plus the suffix "-er".