Quotes About Journalism

Gonzo journalism is a style of reporting based on William Faulkner's idea that the best fiction is far more true than any kind of journalism.

I'm even stunned at some of the majors you can get in college these days. Like you can major in the mating habits of the Australian rabbit bat, major in leisure studies... Okay, get a journalism major. Okay, education major, journalism major. Right. Philosophy major, right. Archeology major. I don't know, whatever it is. Major in ballroom dance, of course. It doesn't replace work. How about a major in film studies? How about a major in black studies? How about a major in women studies? How about a major in home ec? Oops, sorry! No such thing.

Journalism is a flawed profession, but it has a self-correcting mechanism. The rule of journalism is: talk to everybody.

I can't think in terms of journalism without thinking in terms of political ends. Unless there's been a reaction, there's been no journalism. It's cause and effect.

Serious journalists often imagine society is adrift because people don't know certain things. Yet often, they know but just don't care. So the task of serious journalism isn't just to lay out truths. It is to make vital truths compelling to a big audience.

The current state of music journalism is not bad, but it's not great at all. Some of the hip-hop stuff people get into is exciting, because there's a passion and there's something to explain to a more mainstream audience, so you get these passionate writers who want to express their love for rap and hip-hop, which is cool. But there are too many magazines, and the access has been diminished, so the quality of profiles has gone way down. Internet stuff can be really good, though. I like the dialogue between fans on the Internet. I think that's the best rock writing that's going on right now.

If you work in either journalism or politics... you will be flogged for being right and flogged for being wrong, and it hurts both ways-but it doesn't hurt as much when you're right.

I think newspapers shouldn't try to compete directly with the Web, and should do what they can do better, which may be long-form journalism and using photos and art, and making connections with large-form graphics and really enhancing the tactile experience of paper.

Every industry, there are rogues and bad actors. There could be rogues and bad actors in journalism. Rogues and bad actors in medicine. Rogues and bad actors in the legal community.

As I got into my teens, I started reading better books, beginning with the Beats and then the hippie writers, people like Wallace Stegner up in Northern California, and all the political New Journalism stuff, the Boys on the Bus dudes and Ken Kesey.

Confrontation is not a dirty word. Sometimes it's the best kind of journalism as long you don't confront people just for the sake of a confrontation.

Anyone who knows anything about journalism knows that reporters are rarely in a position to investigate anything. They lack the authority to subpoena witnesses, to cross-examine, to scrutinize official records. They are lucky to get their phone calls returned.

We have got to nurture the spirit of independent journalism in this country, or we'll not save capitalism from its own excesses, and we'll not save democracy from its own inertia.

I find having a column a very difficult form of journalism. I'm not a natural like Tom Friedman and Anna Quindlen.

Rachel Maddow is a national treasure. I think that we need honest voices like that and we need journalism like that.

We have lost the good old British spirit. Instead we have American journalism and black-shirted buffoons making a cheap imitation of ice-cream sellers.

My father was the Prime Minister of Pakistan. My grandfather had been in politics, too; however, my own inclination was for a job other than politics. I wanted to be a diplomat, perhaps do some journalism - certainly not politics.

There's a certain elitism that has crept into the attitudes of some in journalism, and it played out perfectly over the issue of these little [American flag] lapel pins.

They call me the father of illustrated journalism. What folly! I never thought any such thing. I had a small newspaper, which had been dead for years, and I was trying in every way to build up its circulation. What could I use for bait? A picture, of course.

With the possible exception of things like box scores, race results, and stock market tabulations, there is no such thing as Objective Journalism. The phrase itself is a pompous contradiction in terms.

As electronic journalism came to be evaluated for its cost effectiveness, the network world began breaking up.

Journalism can go right up to the door of the room in which the decisions are made. A novel can go inside the room - and inside the character's heads.

Journalism's been a continuing course in adult education for me.

Paste Magazine really embodies all that's left of a true independent thought and expression in music journalism in the states right now. Please support the cause and lift them up to keep them moving forward.

Journalism has become a sort of competitive screeching: what is trivial but noisy and immediate takes precedence over important matters that develop over time.

I personally feel that there's a lot of music journalism that is dominated by genre, because you need a language in which to write, but actually the things that strike people about music, are very hard to write about, and its sonic connections, it's a sense of harmony that I think we all have even if we don't know how to express it - it's something musical, it's synapse connections in our brain.

Everything in journalism is about the detail that makes the whole, the attempts to reproduce speech patterns while not actually quoting the whole thing the person said.

I always thought writing was the foundation and the basis for journalism in the same way being able to draw is the foundation for art.

I would just like to see hip-hop journalism in general take a step up and match the artistry. There have been great writers in music who are the caliber of artist as a writer as the people that they're covering.

I really support criticism as a craft and as a vocation. People who devote as much time to thinking about sound through writing as I do practicing and forming it, the whole system of journalism seems to not yield rewards sustainable as a craft. So few can spend enough time to be serious about it and approach it with confidence and a kind of depth. And that's good on one level, because you have some leveling, that's kind of maybe leveled the petty fiefdoms of undeserving people but it's also made it hard to make a living as a writer.

The day was warm and clear. Kids were playing soccer in the parking lots and women were sunning their babies and having their tea all over the lawns. The scene was entirely too cheery for journalism.

Journalism is literature in a hurry.

Journalism wishes to tell what it is that has happened everywhere as though the same things had happened for every man. Poetry wishes to say what it is like for any man to be himself in the presence of a particular occurrence as though only he were alone there.

But my point is that competitive eating is a real sport, and I considered taking it up. But when I thought about what this would mean sitting around for hours, stuffing my face with unhealthy food I realized it was basically the same thing as journalism.

I had become too accustomed to the pseudo-Left new style, whereby if your opponent thought he had identified your lowest possible motive, he was quite certain that he had isolated the only real one. This vulgar method, which is now the norm and the standard in much non-Left journalism as well, is designed to have the effect of making any noisy moron into a master analyst.

I couldn't think about novels at all. It seemed the only writing that was appropriate to that horrendous event was journalism, reportage. And, in fact, I think the profession rose quite honorably to the task. Novelists require a slower turnover, I mean, in time.

The junk food of political journalism...all reshuffle stories are crap.

Today, much of journalism and politics are in a kind of collusion to oversimplify and personalize issues. No room for ambivalence. Plenty of room for the personal attack.

Where would we in Washington and we in America be without the Center? We would know much less about the workings of our Congress, and our tax dollars. We would know much less about the powers of the Executive, and its ability to hide wrong doing behind secrecy and classification. The Center takes the notion of integrity very seriously, and its investigations are a model for today's good journalism and, we all hope, an inspiration for the mainstream press to do more.

In journalism, a fact is just a fact. But in fiction, you have to build your case. It has to be made, step by step.

In a time of transition for journalism all around the world, it's reassuring to know that some of the old ways endure.

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.

I think facts and truth are essential to journalism but you need to reckon with emotion. You have to deal with how people feel, otherwise you miss the story.

There is no doubt that the way journalism worked when I was growing up and getting started has changed forever.

Journalism is a way of voicing opinion, of participating in the political, social, or cultural debate.

When I was in college, there were a couple years there where I was just not sure what to do, and it was actually my mom who suggested I take some journalism classes.

The tragedy of journalism lies in its impermanence; the very topicality which gives it brilliance condemns it to an early death. Too often it is a process of flinging bright balloons in the path of the hurricane, a casting of priceless petals upon the rushing surface of a stream.

I've always enjoyed writing, I graduated with a degree in English; I've done bits of journalism.