A correspondent is someone who communicates regularly with another person, usually through letters or messages. If you have a pen pal in another country who writes to you every month, that person is your correspondent.

In journalism, a correspondent is a reporter who sends news stories from a particular place or about a particular subject. A war correspondent reports from conflict zones, while a foreign correspondent lives in another country and sends back stories about what's happening there. When you watch the evening news and the anchor says, “Now we go to our correspondent in Tokyo,” they're connecting to a reporter stationed in Japan who will describe events there.

People often expect a correspondent to be reliable and accurate: whether you're writing letters to a friend or reporting news from across the world, others count on correspondents to communicate clearly and truthfully.