In all likelihood advocacy journalism is the oldest form of reportage. It appears frequently whenever journalists desire to advocate their beliefs or ideas about major political or social problems. In Advocacy Journalists: A Biographical Dictionary of Writers and Editors, Edd Applegate identifies the most notable figures in this field. Each entry contains biographical information about a writer or editor who either wrote advocacy journalism or edited one or more publications that featured such material.

Entries consist of discussions of the journalists' lives, professional careers, major works, and, in some cases, commentary on those works. Among those profiled here are such notables as Ambrose Bierce, William F. Buckley Jr., Eldridge Cleaver, Daniel Defoe, Germaine Greer, Pete Hamill, Karl Marx, H. L. Mencken, George Orwell, Thomas Paine, Wilfrid Sheed, Gloria Steinem, and Jonathan Swift.

Unlike other books that focus on the form of advocacy journalism itself or how and why it developed, this book focuses on the lives of journalists and editors and their contributions to advocacy journalism. For scholars, teachers, and students of journalism, along with general readers who wish to discover more about advocacy journalism, this volume is an important and accessible resource.