An interesting thing about Albanian is that the names of occupations all seem to be gendered. (At least I haven’t yet learned of any exceptions.) A teacher or professor is “profesor” if male and “profesoreshë” if female. An accountant is “kontabilist” if male and “kontabiliste” if female. It got me thinking a bit about how we’ve moved away from gendered occupational names in English, specifically in American English.
(Spanish has gendered terms to some extent. For example, a mayor is “alcalde” if male and “alcadesa” if female. But the strangest Spanish terms are the ones that end with the “-ista” suffix. You would use “dentista” [dentist] or “periodista” [journalist] for both men and women, but you would use different articles with them. It’s “el dentista” for “the male dentist” and “la dentista” for “the female dentist.”)
In American English, we still use “waiter” and “waitress,” but “server” has become a commonly used term for this occupation. The word “actress” is still used, but it is common to refer to a woman as an “actor.” Same with “ballerina”; that doesn’t sound odd, but it would be fine to refer to a woman as a “ballet dancer.”
If you call someone a “comedienne” or an “aviatrix,” people will understand you, but you’ll sound ridiculously old-fashioned. It’s far more normal to use “comedian” and “aviator” for both men and women. I understand that “barman” and “barmaid” are still widely used in the UK, but we would normally say “bartender” in the United States.
We would be more likely to use “police officer” (or, informally, “cop”) instead of “policeman” or “policewoman.” We might still use “pressman,” but anyone advertising a job vacancy would write “press operator.” (This is in reference to someone who operates a printing press. Someone from India told me that “pressman” was widely used there to refer to a journalist.)
I would never use the words “newsman” or “newspaperman” to refer generically to a journalist, but I preferred those terms in reference to myself. My colleagues mostly shunned the terms because they have a connotation of a guy with a high school education who wears rumpled suits and fedoras and drinks his whiskey neat. I embraced those terms for precisely the same reason. The usual terms in modern American English for that occupation would be “journalist” or something more specific such as “reporter,” “editor,” “columnist,” “sportswriter,” “photographer,” etc.