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Journalism Quotes
"The central dilemma in journalism is that you don't know what you don't know."
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"The first rule of hurricane coverage is that every broadcast must begin with palm trees bending in the wind."
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"There is a long-standing tradition in the mainstream press of middle-of-the-road journalism that is objective and fair. I would hate to see that fall victim to a panic about the Fox effect."
35
"It is grievous to read the papers in most respects, I agree. More and more I skim the headlines only, for one can be sure what is carried beneath them quite automatically, if one has long been a reader of the press journalism."
35
"You're miserable, edgy and tired. You're in the perfect mood for journalism."
35
"Thirty years ago, in 1976, the notion of organized activity to combat discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity was an extremely controversial one."
34
"To pick up the paper and read about yourself getting slammed, that doesn't start your day off right."
34
"I didn't like the competitiveness of big-time journalism."
34
"I saw a photograph of a wedding conducted by Reverend Moon of the Unification Church. I wanted to understand this event, and the only way to understand it was to write about it."
33
"I'm an expert on the NewsHour and it isn't how I practice journalism. I am not involved in the story. I serve only as a reporter or someone asking questions. I am not the story."
33
"And the irony is that they wrote better without access to my quotes."
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"The really tough thing would have been to decide to take Woodward and Bernstein off the story. They were carrying the coal for us - in that their stories were right."
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"It took us about a day and a half to find out what had gone wrong."
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"It's all storytelling, you know. That's what journalism is all about."
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"Where journalists have gotten themselves in trouble over the last few decades is that their skepticism often extends only to American officials, the U.S. military and Republican politicians."
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"The first essence of journalism is to know what you want to know, the second, is to find out who will tell you."
32
"Honestly, I expected to get a cold reception because of my subject matter. But when editors took a look at the story I had to tell, and saw that this was not a parochial story at all, they really warmed to it."
32
"I was sent there by the Free Congress Committee, headed by Paul Weyrich. Fred Smith and I were sent down as observers, with reporters' credentials, so we could witness the events."
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"If you have an anecdote from one source, you file it away. If you hear it again, it may be true. Then the more times you hear it the less likely it is to be true."
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"I've been with the paper for almost 30 years."
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"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."
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"I began to realise that film sees the world differently than the human eye, and that sometimes those differences can make a photograph more powerful than what you actually observed."
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"Sure, some journalists use anonymous sources just because they're lazy and I think editors ought to insist on more precise identification even if they remain anonymous."
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"As electronic journalism came to be evaluated for its cost effectiveness, the network world began breaking up."
31
"A journalist's job is to collect information," Ovid said to Pete. "Nope," Pete said. "That's what we do. It's not what they do." Dellarobia was unready to be pushed out of the conversation just like that. "Then what do you think the news people drive their Jeeps all the way out here for?" "To shore up the prevailing view of their audience and sponsors." "Pete takes a dim view of his fellow humans," Ovid said. "He prefers insects. Dellarobia turned her chair halfway around to face Pete, scraping noisily against the cement floor. "You're saying people only tune in to news they know they're going to agree with?" "Bingo," said Pete."
31
"Newspapermen ask dumb questions. They look up at the sun and ask if it is shining."
30
"I know that doesn't sound very radical and webby of me to say that but I think the New York Times is important. I also think there's an occasional piece that will pop out."
30
"You shouldn't presume that all quotes that are in a magazine or a newspaper are accurate."
30
"Stanford had no journalism program so I just learned by doing, effectively."
30
"It's all quotes, anyway, and it all sounds the same to me."
30
"I came over here and worked for rock magazines, and I worked for Rolling Stone, which has a very high standard of journalism, a very good research department."
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"Editing is the same as quarrelling with writers - same thing exactly."
30
"The Washington Times wrote a story questioning the authenticity of some of the suggestions made about me in Silent Coup. But as a believer in the First Amendment, I believe they have more than a right to air their views."
29
"In America journalism is apt to be regarded as an extension of history: in Britain, as an extension of conversation."
29
"I don't think Fox News or Rush Limbaugh need Clinton it turns out. I think there's a hunger out there for - whether it's on the left or right - a more lively and provocative type of political journalism. I think Salon and Fox on the other side have both benefited from that."
28
"Professionally, I remember Cronkite as a kid growing up, and more so for me, the importance of Cronkite was not him sitting there at the anchor desk, but him out there doing things."
28
"Writers are the lunatic fringe of publishing."
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"What appears in newspapers is often new but seldom true."
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"Fantasy should be as close as possible to journalism."
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"If we're going to live as we are in a world of supply and demand, then journalists had better find a way to create a demand for good journalism."
27
"You find the most important thing that really grabs you, and put it right up top. Don't bury the lead. Put it at the top. Best thing to do. Never go wrong that way. It's an immutable law of journalism. It just always works."
27
"I finally had to go to the American Civil Liberties Union here in northern California to get my reply published to what I considered to be a hatchet job done by Stanley Crouch."
27
"What we have to do is put this in a coherent form for them at the end of the day, and on the big events, give them the kind of context that they deserve."
27
"Journalism was looked upon as a more noble thing than it is now. I don't know if it carries the same cachet that it did then."
26
"I've learned in my years as a journalist that when a politician says 'That's ridiculous' you're probably on the right track."
25
"The markets where we've got real good presence are the older, more mature markets like Australia, and Western Europe - where we've only got 6,000 stores, compared to the US with 13,000."
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"As somebody who's been writing about this subject for getting on twenty years now, it's astonishing how the climate has changed in the last five years."
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"Thanks to my solid academic training, today I can write hundreds of words on virtually any topic without possessing a shred of information, which is how I got a good job in journalism."
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