Quotes About Journalism

I got in journalism for any number of reasons, not least because it's so much fun. Journalism should be in the business of putting pressure on power, finding out the truth, of shining a light on injustice, of, when appropriate, being amusing and entertaining - it's a complicated and varied beast, journalism.

The only school that let me in was U.C. Santa Cruz, which is where I went. They didn't have a journalism program, so I took sociology, which is the closest thing to journalism.

I want to set up a new standard: ‘scientific journalism.’ If you publish a paper on DNA, you are required, by all the good biological journals, to submit the data that has informed your research—the idea being that people will replicate it, check it, verify it. So this is something that needs to be done for journalism as well. There is an immediate power imbalance, in that readers are unable to verify what they are being told, and that leads to abuse.

Obviously, in journalism, you're confined to what happens. And the tendency to embellish, to mythologize, it's in us. It makes things more interesting, a closer call. But journalism taught me how to write a sentence that would make someone want to read the next one.

Ultimately journalism has changed... partisanship is very much a part of journalism now.

If an investigative reporter finds out that someone has been robbing the store, that may be 'gotcha' journalism, but it's also good journalism.

Good journalism is crucial. Good journalism isn't easy so I think it's less about what story and more about the layers and context that need to be explored in the story. That's one of the reasons why I'm excited to be a part of CNN. This is the kind of place that you can do that.

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.

From about ninth grade on, I knew I was a writer at heart. I had fantasies of being a great novelist, but I thought that seemed like an iffy way to try to make a living. So I tried journalism while in college, and really liked it. But even in journalism, I've always pursued ways to be somewhat literary, whether writing a column or writing books.

In a sense, journalism can be both helpful and detrimental to a writer of fiction because the kind of writing you need to do as a journalist is so different. It has to be clear, unambiguous, concise, and as a writer often you are trying to do things that are more ambiguous. I find that writing fiction is often an antidote to reading and writing too much journalism.

I think we need to reckon in a very serious way with the emotional content of news and the way that people perceive facts and their perception of their situation and to me I think the tabloid is like fundamentally an emotional form of journalism and that kind of emotional valence is what distinguishes it from the broad sheet.

Profiles aren't journalism.

I hated the culture [working in the bank], I hated the work. I very quickly realized that this wasn't what I wanted to do. So, after two years, I took some writing courses - I always loved to write - and I figured the only way I was going to get paid to write was in journalism.

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.

At Gallaudet, deafness isn't an issue. You don't even think about it. Students can pay attention to accounting or psychology or journalism. But when a deaf person goes to another college, no matter how supportive it is, that person doesn't get the same access.

Journalism is one of the devices whereby industrial autocracy keeps its control over political democracy; it is the day-by-day, between-elections propaganda, whereby the minds of the people are kept in a state of acquiescence, so that when the crisis of an election comes, they go to the polls and cast their ballots for either one of the two candidates of their exploiters.

Let me say this: I only expect the black media to uphold the standards of excellence in journalism and when you do that, you have to go in with a neutral mind.

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

If I do, I say so. That's the only way out of that. If there are three words that need to be used more in American journalism, commentary, politics, personal life... it's the magic words "I don't know." I mean, there are certain basic principles, like the dignity of the individual and the individual's responsibility, and certain basic economic principles, like how when something costs less, more of it will be consumed... There are certain things that I feel pretty confident about.

The story of journalism, on a day-to-day basis, is the story of the interaction of reporters and officials

There is a very big difference between American and British travel journalism, and that's this whole business of the assisted or freebie trip. In Britain we are unashamed about any travel company paying for you to go and then writing about it. That's the only way we can do it. But I have tried the same in the States, and I can't write for any sizeable American newspaper because they tell you to do it on this basis.

Well, I mean, the real attack on truth is tabloid journalism in the United States.

When people ask what kind of nonfiction I write, I say 'all kinds,' but really I mean I don’t write any kind at all: I’m trying to dissolve the borders between memoir and journalism and criticism by weaving them together.

I was raised by a formidable woman. She always pushed me to be competitive in a man's world. That's maybe one of the attractions to journalism in the beginning. It was a male profession, and I was comfortable in that.

I think the worst thing we can do is to concede to fanaticism its devotion, say. Well, you have to understand, these people are really fanatics, so we should back down from them. I think if journalists start doing that then they won't be practicing journalism. If satirists start doing that then they won't be practicing satire.

I obviously prefer writing novels but I take my journalism very seriously, and I enjoy doing it between novels. It gives me an opportunity to move in the outside world.

Journalism is the entertainment business.

There is no democracy without journalism.

Journalism is just the art of capturing behavior.

We have standards. Anybody with the kind of journalism experience and professionalism that you have displayed over these years can not work for my program.

Joe Klein is the flower of American political journalism, a sharp raconteur who shows traces of the gonzo style that was in vogue when he was honing his craft at Rolling Stone back in the day.

Internet journalism is not a world we know very well at all. It's conducted more on the screen and less in bars, which makes it rather less useful for getting stories about people throwing up over one another, which is what one's after.

We've seen how grassroots journalism by blogs has had an impact at various points politically, as ordinary people have amplified stories that were being ignored by the traditional press.

Media has changed dramatically, as you and I know. We're in a world now where you're rewarded for being outrageous. Punditry has replaced reporting as the gold standard of journalism.

There is no more respected or influential forum in the field of journalism than the New York Times. I look forward, with great anticipation, to contributing to its op-ed page

Journalism is often simply the industrialisation of gossip.

The truth is not that the problem is the newsroom does not understand capitalism. The problem is that the front office does not understand journalism. The problem is not that the average reporter does not understand what it is that's necessary to make the payroll, to make the good edifice, to make the thing that he wants. It is that in fact those who control too many of the edifices have actually come to believe that Wall Street has wisdom, and that that wisdom should instruct our business.

People ask whether I put the politics first, journalism first or the comedy first; it doesn't really matter. I'm just playing with the cards that I have been dealt because I really love doing what I do.

Art can't be compared with journalism; it can't deal with concrete issues.

Surely the glory of journalism is its transience.

When I entered politics, I took the only downward turn you could take from journalism.

PR is a mix of journalism, psychology, and lawyering - it's an ever-changing and always interesting landscape.

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

At the core of investigative journalism is exactly the same thing that drives a page-turning thriller: telling a great story.

There`s a fine line between balanced journalism and trial by television.

Confronting the US made him [Hugo Chavez] a target for demonization. Partisan and/or lazy journalism exaggerated his faults, ignored his virtues, and downplayed the influence of strident and on occasion anti-democratic opponents. The flip side is his anti-imperialist posturing so dazzled his cheerleaders they overlooked his flaws, flaws which worsened over time, and they created their own caricature.

I believe that the demand for long-form quality journalism is strong and I think that despite all of the changes in technology over the past few years, people still want in-depth, rigorous reporting.

Journalism is a great profession. It's complicated now. People talk about the demise of investigative reporting. I was a judge in some award contest recently, and the stuff that is being done by major newspapers, and local, regional papers around the country, is great. Newspapers play an amazing role in our society, and I still think they are important. I'm sorry newspaper circulation is down. Ultimately, the importance of newspapers can't be replaced.