It was clear soon after his election that Obama, like FDR, wanted to start dealing with the economic crisis immediately after his inauguration.

People seem to enjoy things more when they know a lot of other people have been left out of the pleasure.

Journalism talk is part of the nonstop background noise of American life.

The American press has the blues. Too many authorities have assured it that its days are numbered, too many good newspapers are in ruins.

The biographer's problem is that he never knows enough. The autobiographer's problem is that he knows too much.

Of all the people expressing their mental vacuity, none has a better excuse for an empty head than the newspaperman: If he pauses to restock his brain, he invites onrushing deadlines to trample him flat. Broadcasting the contents of empty minds is what most of us do most of the time, and nobody more relentlessly than I.

Journalism was being whittled away by a Wall Street theory that profits can be maximized by minimizing the product.