Quotes About Journalism

Look, I went into journalism to do journalism, not advertising.

There is a growing literature about the multitude of journalism's problems, but most of it is concerned with the editorial side of the business, possibly because most people competent to write about journalism are not comfortable writing about finance.

I reluctantly signed up for a journalism major, thinking I needed a fall-back way to make money should my career as a novelist fail to take off. As I started to try on journalism, including doing internships and working at the campus paper, I found I actually liked it. So I started to want to be a journalist.

The best I can hope for is that I might provoke a water cooler argument between you and somebody else. But it is not journalism. It doesn't have the rigor of journalism. It doesn't have the proof positive that facts provide. So it can be readily dismissed as mere propaganda. But I can certainly reach more people.

I always thought that I could write a novel. In my case, it was misguided. I do believe that the best nonfiction is not "literary journalism," a misleading term, but rather journalism that asks the questions that serious literature asks. It's storytelling that happens to be true. So I don't think it was a missed opportunity. After awhile you learn what you're really good at. Life is short, so spend time doing that.

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.

The best writers who have put pen to paper have often had a journalism background.

Profiles aren't journalism.

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.

I found in investigative journalism it is always best, if you have any language skills, not to admit them.

I hear, more than ever, people actively searching for women to direct, actively wanting to finance women's films, which is not to say it is easy, but I think it's been a great instance of how journalism has put pressure on business to be more fair between genders.

In a way, film and television are in the same sort of traumatic trance that print journalism is. The technology has outpaced our comprehension of its implications.

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

Many of the most important stories in the history of modern journalism have come from sources who have taken information without authorization.

I'm an expert on the NewsHour and it isn't how I practice journalism. I am not involved in the story. I serve only as a reporter or someone asking questions. I am not the story.

Journalists cover words and delude themselves into thinking they have committed journalism.

Among the reasons that you go into journalism, I suppose, are some rather idealistic, even foolish reasons. In my case one of the reasons was I wanted to explain how things really work, how political power really works.

Journalism only tells us what men are doing; it is fiction that tells us what they are thinking, and still more what they are feeling. If a new scientific theory finds the soul of a man in his dreams, at least it ought not to leave out his day-dreams. And all fiction is only a diary of day-dreams instead of days. And this profound preoccupation of men's minds with certain things always eventually has an effect even on the external expression of the age.

I've heard it said that the first law of journalism is to confirm existing prejudice, rather than contradict it.

You could say that this book is ripped from the headlines, but that wouldn't be fair. Bret Anthony Johnston's riveting novel picks up where the tabloids leave off, and takes us places even the best journalism can't go. Remember Me Like This is a wise, moving, and troubling novel about family and identity, and a clear-eyed inventory of loss and redemption.

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.

Letting journalism be from the perspective of the journalist. It's usually a no-no, and journalists are encouraged to be completely objective.

My abject hatred of actors and the acting world. I went to college as an actor, and halfway through, I switched to playwriting and directing. Then I spent a couple years working in publishing, doing some freelance journalism for The Village Voice and Musician magazine. I thought my life was going to be as a writer, but then I realized I missed performing, so I got into comedy. It was a nice combination of things I was sort of good at. I was a pretty good writer and a decent actor, but I didn't really like acting, and I didn't have the discipline to be a writer.

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.

In journalism, there are only two stories - "Oh, the wonder of it," and "Oh, the shame of it."

There is nothing more common than critics of journalists accusing them of practicing journalism. It is our function in the world to take things that are complicated and render them in a form that non-experts can follow and make sense of.

As for documentary, it was a natural progression from my earlier career in journalism. The two media are connected, but of course making films is much more complicated, because you have image, sound and music to work with, not simply words.

Most magazines have become wallpaper, they're all the same, all the same celebrities. It's really an abysmal time in American journalism right now. But occasionally one story or two will pop out.

Choosing my favorite moment in journalism would be like picking a favorite among my children. I can't pick one favorite.

There is no other industry that is more self-congratulatory and self-delusional than journalism. Well, maybe with the exception of Hollywood.

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.

I've always liked elliptical writing, whether it's Kafka or Paula Fox, and I'm often bored by writers who explain too much. I think that becomes journalism. Mostly I don't try to explain to readers who somebody is - I just write about the somebody. I'm thinking through ideas. And I have the sense that, if you're reading this, you have some interest.

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

If we're going to live as we are in a world of supply and demand, then journalists had better find a way to create a demand for good journalism.

And I've been incredibly lucky to have a long career in journalism that has given me a front-row seat to some of the most important moments in modern American political life.

There was a lot of tabloid journalism about my supposed sex addiction. Bullshit. It's all bullshit. I mean, come on, I never pretended to be a saint. But give me a break.

Poetry is supposed to be musical. But people don't understand prose. They're so used to reading journalism - clunky, functional sentences that convey factual information - facts, more than just the surfaces of things.

Simplification seems to be the removal of objects for the goal of making a graphic as clean and uncluttered as possible. Whereas, with optimization, it feels like there's more intelligence in that. It maintains the usability, but tries to distill something down to its essence. But with some data-sets you have to be careful because, as with linear, print journalism, it's easy to shave off facts that don't quite fit the flow.

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.

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.

I'm happy to have interns at The Weekly Standard and happy to have readers of The Weekly Standard, but if you all tell me that you were busy reading Plato and [Lev] Tolstoy and playing violin in the orchestra, I'd say that was great. I wouldn't tell you to take time out from that to get involved in political journalism.

I think my journalism is for readers who are smart and know that most people are lying to them, or being patronizing...

One good thing about leaving daily journalism was that I was no longer obliged to read all the book prize short lists.

I want to go to college to study journalism. I want to speak French fluently, to travel. My mom was a journalist and it's in my blood.

As I'm sure anyone who's born after the '70s' access point is - is '70s films and '70s culture and there is a kind of a paranoiac atmosphere in that time in America. Yes, it's the golden age of journalism, Watergate, and all the rest of these people making these great breakthroughs - but it's also the moment that "if it bleeds, it leads" becomes mainstream and sensationalizing the news becomes more and more the given. Checking how many numbers you're getting, whatever you can do to get more numbers.

I have seen, and I know firsthand, indeed from my own pen, how the organized Right has sabotaged not only journalism but also democracy and truth.

I want to help clean up the state that is so sorry today of journalism. And I have a communications degree.