I've been a reporter for 20 years, and I don't ever get things wrong. That's important in terms of my professional status.

To try to be authentic these days, to ask questions of the people in power - it's difficult. This administration has evolved new techniques to handle people like me. Their strategy, in a word, is simple: ignore them.

Younger colleagues tended to draw untested self-confidence from their bonuses and prestigious degrees.

The fact is that in a way, journalists become a kind of default in the system when you don't have substantive two-party back-and-forth inside of the government.

If you write something that gets a bad response, or someone commits candor or is off message, there are often consequences almost immediately when it appears in the paper or a magazine, that somebody gets called into the boss's office. And sometimes it can result in a loss of access for the reporter.

A little known area often defines the fortunes of leaders -- management skills.

You try to hold on to some notions you might have had before, that this will somehow work out, this is a spell that will lift or be broken.