Journalism is not easy. It's the first rough draft. I don't think you need to wait around until you have the definitive thing. You record what's there; don't delude yourself that this is the ultimate historical view.

I had been at the newspaper for a few months. It wasn’t regarded as the paper, it was their paper. There was a sense of community because they reported, we reported, I reported the little things, the whist drives, the weddings, the funerals, the little speeches. In one sense it was the most boring copy in the world to anyone picking it up, but, on the other hand, it was crucial to the people who lived in those communities.

When came the invasion of privacy.That kind of thing turns the newspaper from a friendly organ - not necessarily appeasing everybody - into the enemy. It's one reason why newspapers have suffered circulation falls.

I love craftsmanship of any kind, a job well done either by my chiropractor or carpenter, and I am addicted to print, the type, the ink. But my basic passion is journalism and I can't live without being online.

The democratization of news is fine and splendid, but it's not reporting. It's based on a fragment of information picked up from television or the web, and people are sounding off about something that's not necessarily true.

If Rupert Murdoch wants to charge for content online, he will succeed in so far, but no further than what he provides that is unique and can't be found anywhere. It doesn't seem to me that if he wants to charge it will be a blow to universal freedom and liberty of mankind.

Television and radio are what I call sequential media; they're not simultaneous media. With simultaneous media, you can scan your eye down an electronic or print page and pick among six or seven stories you might like and want to read. With television and radio, you have to wait until the guy's finished talking about the balloon boy, which I don't have the slightest interest in, to find out that all hell's broken loose in Baghdad. Because they've chosen that day to start with the balloon boy.