The Journalist as a Performing Persona: Categorizing and Conceptualizing the Journalistic I

This article investigates the journalistic persona employing a deductive approach to develop a comprehensive typology of journalistic roles within first-person journalism. Building on established theories, we propose four distinct roles—the reporting persona, the explorative persona, the portraying persona, and the essayist persona—as a conceptual framework. This framework is then systematically applied to a diverse array of journalistic productions across various media types, genres, and formats to validate its relevance and explanatory power. Through this deductive application, we demonstrate how each persona employs specific performative repertoires tailored to enhance journalistic delivery and align with the contextual demands of different stories. The typology serves as an analytical tool for students and scholars, promoting a deeper and more critical understanding of persona-driven journalism's mechanics and implications. Additionally, this analysis provides practitioners with strategies to effectively leverage these personas, thereby enhancing narrative depth and relational engagement in journalistic outputs.