Journalism
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50 free Journalism trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Journalism has its own language, its own rules and a long list of people who bent both. Reporters still use jargon that dates from the days of metal type, editors argue over what makes an event worth covering, and the whole trade works inside a body of law built from court fights over what may be published. This quiz covers the ground a journalism class does: news-writing structure and newsroom terms, the values editors use to judge newsworthiness, reporting and sourcing practice, ethics, and the landmark court cases on publishing and student newspapers. It also reaches into history, from colonial printers and crusading magazine writers to wire services, broadcast anchors and online newsrooms. It suits high school and college journalism students reviewing for a test, teachers who want a ready-made class quiz, and anyone who follows the news closely enough to wonder how it gets made. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In newspaper jargon, the 'op' in op-ed, a page of outside commentary, is short for which word?
Opposite
Opposite is the word, because the page traditionally ran facing the editorial page. Many readers assume it stands for opinion, which is simply what the page happens to print.
Q 02Which fictional Metropolis newspaper employs reporters Clark Kent and Lois Lane in DC's Superman comics?
Daily Planet
The Daily Planet was called the Daily Star when Superman first appeared in 1938, with Clark Kent answering to editor George Taylor rather than Perry White.
Q 03In the old newsroom saying about what makes an event news, a man makes headlines by biting which animal?
Dog
A dog biting a man happens too often to report, the saying goes, so only the reverse counts as news. It has been credited to several editors, including British press baron Alfred Harmsworth.
Q 04Which newsroom word was used in Civil War prison camps for a boundary beyond which prisoners were shot?
Deadline
Deadline named that fatal boundary at camps such as Andersonville in 1864. Its time-limit sense turned up in American newspaper jargon by 1919, for the last minute copy could go to the printer.
Q 05Which future British prime minister was captured in 1899 while covering the Boer War as a newspaper correspondent?
Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill was reporting for a London newspaper when Boers ambushed and derailed his armoured train. He escaped a Pretoria prisoner-of-war camp that December by stowing away on freight trains and hiding in a mine.
Q 06Which color names the sensationalist newspaper style of the 1890s, after a comic-strip kid printed by two rival papers?
Yellow
Yellow journalism took its label from the Yellow Kid, a comic strip that one New York paper poached from another as the two fought for readers.
Q 07Which newspaper's reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein pursued the Watergate story that toppled President Nixon?
The Washington Post
The Washington Post won a Pulitzer Prize in 1973 for the coverage, after executive editor Ben Bradlee put the paper's reputation and resources behind the two reporters.
Q 08Which reporter feigned insanity to expose a New York asylum in 1887, then circled the world in 72 days?
Nellie Bly
Nellie Bly was the pen name of Elizabeth Cochran, whose asylum reports for the New York World prompted a grand jury investigation and a bigger budget for the city's institutions.
Q 09The word paparazzi comes from a news photographer character in which Federico Fellini film set in Rome?
La Dolce Vita
La Dolce Vita features a pushy news photographer named Paparazzo, played by Walter Santesso, whose surname became the word for the whole trade in many languages.
Q 10Which newspaper format takes its name from a brand of compressed pills sold by a London drug company?
Tabloid
Tabloid was Burroughs Wellcome's trademark for compressed pills in the late 1880s. The word spread to anything condensed, including small-format papers that boiled the news down to short stories.
Q 11Which news-writing structure puts the most important facts first, so that editors can trim a report from the bottom?
Inverted pyramid
The inverted pyramid lets an editor shorten an article by cutting from the bottom without losing the essentials. Many link its rise to the telegraph, which pushed reporters to condense.
Q 12Which deliberately misspelled word do American reporters use for a news article's first paragraph?
Lede
Lede probably began as an intentional misspelling of lead, so that instructions to printers would not be mistaken for text to be printed. Hed and dek arose the same way.
Q 13Which line on a newspaper article, usually printed between the headline and the text, credits the person who wrote it?
Byline
Q 21Which legal term covers a false, reputation-damaging statement published in writing, as opposed to spoken slander?
Libel
Libel traditionally covers defamation that is written, printed, posted online or published in mass media, so a false blog entry can bring a lawsuit just as a newspaper article can.
Q 22Which part of the US Bill of Rights, adopted in 1791, bars Congress from abridging the freedom of the press?
First Amendment
The First Amendment protects a cluster of freedoms in a single sentence: religion, speech, the press, peaceable assembly and the right to petition the government.
Q 23Under New York Times v. Sullivan, which standard must a public official prove to win a US defamation lawsuit?
Actual malice
Byline credits were rare before the late 1800s. In 1863 Union General Joseph Hooker made battlefield reporters sign their articles so he would know whom to blame for errors.
Q 14Which shorthand name do reporters give the checklist of basic questions that every news report should answer?
Five Ws
The Five Ws are who, what, when, where and why. Reporters were being taught as far back as 1913 that the top of an article should answer every one of them.
Q 15Which word, also used for a police officer's regular patrol route, names a reporter's assigned area of coverage?
Beat
Beat reporters return to the same sources again and again, whether at city hall, the courts or a sports team, building the trust and background knowledge to spot what is new.
Q 16Which slang term names an exclusive that one news outlet manages to publish before any of its rivals?
Scoop
Scoop rarely applies to events seen by crowds, such as a natural disaster or a press conference announcement, because no single outlet can claim to have had them first.
Q 17Which news value explains why a small-town paper covers a nearby house fire but ignores an identical blaze abroad?
Proximity
Proximity is measured culturally and socially as well as geographically, so an audience can feel close to an event that happens a long way from home.
Q 18Which news value explains why yesterday's election result leads the front page while last month's result is ignored?
Timeliness
Timeliness favors events that have only just happened, are still unfolding or are about to happen, which is why editors chase fresh developments instead of repeating old facts.
Q 19Which phrase describes the top half of a broadsheet's front page, the part shoppers see on a newsstand?
Above the fold
Above the fold lives on in web design, where it means the part of a page a visitor sees without scrolling.
Q 20Which paragraph, usually placed just after a feature article's opening, tells readers why the piece matters?
Nut graf
Nut graf is short for nutshell paragraph. It supplies the context that a brief, attention-grabbing opening leaves out, and usually sits second or third in the article.
Actual malice means the publisher knew a statement was false or recklessly ignored whether it was. The 1964 case grew out of a civil rights advertisement criticizing police in Montgomery, Alabama.
Q 24Which leaked secret history of the Vietnam War did the Supreme Court let US newspapers keep publishing in 1971?
Pentagon Papers
The Pentagon Papers were leaked by Daniel Ellsberg, an analyst who had worked on the study. The justices ruled 6–3 that the government had not justified an order halting publication.
Q 25Which Supreme Court ruling lets public high schools censor school-sponsored student newspapers for educational reasons?
Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier
Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier began when a Missouri principal pulled articles on divorce and teen pregnancy from a paper produced in a journalism class. The 1988 ruling went 5–3 against the students.
Q 26Which legal term names censorship that blocks a report before publication, as struck down in Near v. Minnesota?
Prior restraint
Prior restraint lost its footing in 1931, when the Supreme Court threw out a Minnesota statute that let judges shut down a scandal sheet, The Saturday Press, as a public nuisance.
Q 27Which type of US state law protects reporters from being forced to reveal confidential sources in court?
Shield law
Shield law protection matters because the Supreme Court ruled in Branzburg v. Hayes, in 1972, that the Constitution gives reporters no general right to refuse to testify before a grand jury.
Q 28Which phrase describes information a source gives a reporter on the understanding that it will not be published?
Off the record
Off the record means the information cannot be published at all. That sets it apart from background material, which a reporter may use so long as the source is not named.
Q 29Which term names a source's condition that reporters hold back a news release until a set date and time?
Embargo
Embargo breakers risk being cut off from future briefings by the source, which hands their more cooperative rivals a lasting advantage.
Q 30Which principle of the Society of Professional Journalists' code urges compassion for people affected by coverage?
Minimize Harm
Minimize Harm asks reporters to treat sources, subjects, colleagues and the public as human beings deserving of respect. The code's other three principles cover truth, independence and accountability.