When I saw a title of the article in "Scotland on sunday"

"Love or hate Holywood journalists, our real-life hacks are putting their lives on the line"

I though that the article is about

2. One who uses programming skills to gain illegal access to a computer network or file.
(The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000).

to my surprise the article talks about portrayal of journalists in movies and ends in

...spare a thought for hundreds of hacks now "embedded" amongst our armed forces for real .

but why journalists are called hacks? have you ever seen them named like this?

"hack" is a very old word. Reporters and low grade writers were called hacks before there were any computers. I can remember when the earliest computer people called themselves "hackers" as a bit of false modesty, and a clever solution to a problem in machine language was called a hack, long before any bastards started writing malicious code.

In some circles, the term "cracker" is prefered for those who maliciously attempt to take over others' machines.

I use hack more generally to mean any kind of amateur attempt to solve a problem, especially when the solution is awkward.

The pie crust is a bit of a hack job, I had to repair a big hole with a spare piece of pastry.

(I've never made a pie in my life, so the above sentence is quite plausible.)

Most examples I can think of seem to use "a bit of" before "hack" and sometimes "job" after it.

but why journalists are called hacks

Maybe, because they hack away at our patience at times, vika.
I have always associatd this term with the print media, although, certainly, a lot of the news channel reporters seem more deserving of this epithet.

It is probably related to hackneyed. A journalist who is prone to repetitive bursts of insipid writing, would probably qualify a hack.

Hackneyed . . . any relation to the hackney (horse drawn)cab, I wonder? I don't know if you can use the word in the present tense any other way.
Or could hack journalism be related to hacking away at something in a rough,unskilled way.

Not to cloud things up, here's the 'quick definitions' list from Onelook:

"Quick definitions (Hack)


noun: a saddle horse used for transportation rather than sport etc.
noun: a horse kept for hire
noun: an old or over-worked horse
noun: one who works hard at boring tasks
noun: a mediocre and disdained writer
noun: a car driven by a person whose job is to take passengers where they want to go in exchange for money
noun: a politician who belongs to a small clique that controls a political party for private rather than public ends
verb: informal: be able to manage or manage successfully (Example: "I can't hack it anymore")
verb: fix a computer program piecemeal until it works (Example: "I'm not very good at hacking but I'll give it my best")
verb: cough spasmodically (Example: "The patient with emphysema is hacking all day")
verb: kick on the shins; in rugby
verb: kick on the arms; in basketball
verb: cut away
verb: significantly cut up a manuscript
verb: cut with a tool"

Wow, I never realized there were that many def.'s of the word hack! Thanks, WW. I couldn't help wondering whether they all came from the same root. The only etymology I found in AHD is: Middle English hakken, from Old English -haccian. , so possibly it covers all of them. I was a little disappointed; I was expecting something more like what I found when I looked up the adjacent word hackamore: ETYMOLOGY: Alteration of Spanish jáquima, halter, from Old Spanish xaquima, from Arabic akma, bit of a bridle, from akama, to bridle. Hey--do you-all reckon the Arabs used akama when a person bridled?