This impressed me when I was the editor of the Sunday Times [of London] - we had the "Bloody Sunday" killings of 13 unarmed civilians by British paratroopers. We interviewed 500 people for our report, and not one of them could give us a total picture of what was happening. It was like the Rashomon effect multiplied a million times. For a website or even a newspaper to be a collector of information flow is not the highest form of journalism.
Harold Evans[The web] is going to end up being a tremendous advantage, providing we can work out the financial structure. I think weโll see newspapers survive, being printed at home... Or youโll have a local print shop, so that rather than waiting for the newspapers to arrive by truck, which is 30 percent at least of a newspaperโs cost, youโll go in and push a button, and it will take your dollar bills without anyone having to be there. And it will print the newspaper for you while you wait. It will take seven minutes. Thereโs a terrific future for print in my view and it gives me great heart.
Harold EvansWhen I first came to the United States in 1956 I fell in love with things - mainly the vitality and the freedoms.
Harold EvansWe always talk about how everyone is unifocal. You can't possibly be interested in jazz and Beethoven. Of course you can. You can't both be reading a newspaper and be online. Of course you can. We shouldn't be obsessed with a gun to your head, 'You either read a newspaper or die!'
Harold EvansWhen I was studying at Chicago and at Stanford University, where many many cases of two people observing the same event have a different take on what happened.
Harold EvansI wrote about Bosnia at the time. Somebody looked out their window and saw gangsters coming down the street and doing ethnic cleansing. I said that was the thing that would happen in the future, someone phoning in what they were seeing on the scene. Whether it's the Huffington Post, the Daily Beast, Drudge Report or the BBC, all those reports, you have to assume there's a real person [who] has credibility.
Harold Evans