They were going to the house of a man who was shot dead. What was with all the exuberance? But maybe that was the only way you could move forward after mindlessly recording stories of...

They walked across 15th Street to the Madison Hotel’s Montpelier Room, an opulent French restaurant. Bradlee asked for a corner table, and began the conversation. ‘You’d better bring me up to date because…’ He turned...

I’ve always said [this] is the lowest form of journalism, and I see my job is to be entertaining. And I guess it’s my curse, because I did it in a different way, they kept...

I got addicted. News, particularly daily news, is more addictive than crack cocaine, more addictive than heroin, more addictive than cigarettes.

why?”. And his question was beautiful.The new world will be a place of answers and no questions, because the only questions left will be answered by computers, because only computers will know what to ask.Perhaps...

If I beat my grandmother to death to-morrow in the middle of Battersea Park, you may be perfectly certain that people will say everything about it except the simple and fairly obvious fact that it...

This ‘vampire’ stuff is to stay right in this room. Until we have the assailant in custody we say nothing about these girls being drained of blood. No more rumors. No reports in the papers,”...

It’s a functional test: Is what you are doing journalism?

Time dims memory. But not that kind. Somewhere in a corner of the brain, one little cell never forgets. It keeps the song that, heard again, recreates the room, the person, the moment. It preserves...

I don’t care if they are reading our mail. Bring it on, Tron! I dare you. Try to take away my freedom of expression. I’m a journalist. A free-speech warrior. I serve in the Army...

As touchy as cabaret performers and as stubborn as factory machinists….

At least a circus performance does not last long, and the regime availing itself of the services of clownish journalists has the longevity of a mouldering mushroom.

Bernstein looked like one of those counterculture journalists that Woodward despised. Bernstein thought that Woodward’s rapid rise at the Post had less to do with his ability than his Establishment credentials.They had never worked on...

I had become too accustomed to the pseudo-Left new style, whereby if your opponent thought he had identified your lowest possible motive, he was quite certain that he had isolated the only real one. This...

Magazines all too frequently lead to books and should be regarded by the prudent as the heavy petting of literature.

In journalism it is simpler to sound off than it is to find out. It is more elegant to pontificate than it is to sweat.

You know how mainstream news is interspersed with product ads? Well, why aren’t all the shows made entirely out of the stuff? I find commercials more believable, and I’d be more inclined to watch.

Upon descending our threaded words on the web by a steep and hazardous precipice of readers requires constant review.

I used to think the most important thing for a reporter was to be where the news is and be the first to know. Now I feel a reporter should be able to effect change....

An editor is someone who is paid to tell a writer what she thinks about how he wrote what he thinks about.

Albert Camus did not know he was summing up modern photojournalism when he wrote:”Will I kill myself or have a cup of coffee

I’d been surprised by the depth of emotion that was invested in that curiously archaic phrase ‘great power’. What would it mean, I’d asked myself, to the lives of working journalists, salaried technocrats and so...

The job of a journalist is to amplify the voices of the marginalized. To do that, you have to hear those voices in the first place.

Nathan seemed to have absorbed his sense of journalistic ethics from old movies about newspaper reporters. For Naomi, internet sampling ad scratching was a completely valid form of journalism, presenting no ethical clouds on its...

There are two ways to become popular; either by setting the cat amongst the pigeons or by getting the cat out of the midst of the pigeons. The latter is better!

Believe nothing until it has been officially denied.

Shall we go?’ he murmured, perhaps regretting his decision to show me his army of plastic cartoon figurines.

Thanks to Obamacare, millions of Americans can visit a doctor’s office and see what a print magazine actually looks like.

It should be apparent that the belief in objectivity in journalism, as in other professions, is not just a claim about what kind of knowledge is reliable. It is also a moral philosophy, a declaration...

The image of the journalist as wallflower at the orgy has been replaced by the journalist as the life of the party.

She still loved the profession and enjoyed the lives and piece to cameras, but she knew it was all a tad too farcical at times. There were far too many stories they reported and forgot....

Simons, as restrained as Bradlee could be hard-charging and obstreperous, liked to tell of watching Bradlee grind his cigarrettes out in a demitasse cup during a formal dinner party. Bradlee was one of the few...

Pender laughed. “Verify? In this day and age? Who cares about verifying anything? It’s all about the speed. Who gets there first defines the truth. You know that as well as any man living.

Journalism is not a precise science, it’s a crude art

The new world will be a place of answers and no questions, because the only questions left will be answered by computers, because only computers will know what to ask

Journalism largely consists in saying “Lord Jones is dead” to people who never knew Lord Jones was alive.

I chiefly concern myself with those who seldom get a hearing, & I don’t feel it is incumbent on me to balance their voices with the well-crafted apologetics of the powerful. The powerful are generally...

Lazareff believed that “a journalists first duty is to be read,” but Camus felt it was to tell the truth as much as possible, with as much style as possible. Camus saw “Lazareffism” as unacceptable...

I have seen enormous changes. I have not seen enough change. I, too, can hardly wait.

From: Beth Fremont To: Jennifer Scribner-Snyder Sent: Thurs, 09/30/1999 3:42 PM Subject: If you were Superman … … and you could choose any alter ego you wanted, why the hell would you choose to spend...

Basically, financial reporting is this sinking hole at the centre of journalism. You start by swimming around it until finally, reluctantly, you can’t fight the pull anymore and you get sucked down the drain into...

What matter is the information, not what you think about it.

Until the August 1 story about the Dahlberg check, the working relationship between Bernstein and Woodward was more competitive than anything else. Each had worried that the other might walk off with the remainder of...

Commenting acidly on a writer whom I perhaps too naively admired, my old classics teacher put on his best sneer to ask: ‘Wouldn’t you say, Hitchens, that his writing was somewhat journalistic?’ This lofty schoolmaster...

In the developed countries of the capitalist world, the mass media are beginning to become businesses, and huge businesses at that. The freedom of journalists is now becoming, in most cases, a very relative thing:...

The term propaganda rings melodramatic and exaggerated, but a press that—whether from fear, careerism, or conviction—uncritically recites false government claims and reports them as fact, or treats elected officials with a reverence reserved for royalty,...

It is not enough for journalists to see themselves as mere messengers without understanding the hidden agendas of the message and the myths that surround it.

Style and voice are different. Style is standard conventions of writing. Voice is the distinct way an individual puts words together. All good writers have a near-uniform understanding of style but a voice all their...

Media work needs ideals. Maybe thirty years from now, after I retire, I’ll see the media mature and make the transition from political party, interest group, and corporate to truly public. But over the next...

A paparazzi is merely an extremely nosy nobody with a camera—and bills to pay.