Quotes & Sayings About Columnists

I don't have to work extra hard, but that's because there are a lot of women in my professional network and I have hired a lot of women as full-time writers and part-time columnists. — Ann Friedman

Political columnists and sports pundits are rewarded for being overconfident. — Daniel Kahneman

By now, legions of tireless essayists and op-ed columnists have dressed feminists down for making such a fuss about entering the professions and earning equal pay that everyone's attention has been distracted from the important contributions of mothers working at home. This judgment presumes, of course, that prior to the resurgence of feminism in the '70s, housewives and mothers enjoyed wide recognition and honor. This was not exactly the case. — Mary Blakely

I look for strong people. I don't like people who'll say yes to everything I might bring up. I want people who can argue and disagree and have a point of view that's reflected in the magazine. My dad believed in the cult of personality. He brought great writers and columnists to 'The Standard.' — Anna Wintour

Personal columnists are jackals and no jackal has been known to live on grass once he had learned about meat - no matter who killed the meat for him. — Ernest Hemingway,

Many of the writers who have inspired me most are outside the genre: Humorists like Robert Benchley and James Thurber, screenwriters like Ben Hecht and William Goldman, and journalists/columnists like H.L. Mencken, Mike Royko and Molly Ivins. — John Scalzi

Everything written, if it has anything in it, will offend someone, and if the mere taking of offence was to amount to a licence to kill the offender, well the world would be sadly underpopulated of novelists, columnists, bloggers, and the writers of editorials. — Rex Murphy

Do not be taken in by 'insiderisms.' Fledgling columnists, eager to impress readers with their grasp of journalistic jargon, are drawn to such arcane spellings as 'lede.' Where they lede, do not follow. — William Safire

Lots of you know me as a lone, hard-bitten columnist, prone to lurking on deserted rocky promontories while searching for my muse. — Cynthia Heimel

When the political columnists say 'Every thinking man' they mean themselves, and when candidates appeal to 'Every intelligent voter' they mean everybody who is going to vote for them — Franklin P. Adams

He was nice. But the waitress spilled a drink in my lap during dinner, and then I noticed he had a
piece of spinach in his teeth, and ... you know, there's nowhere to go but down from there."
"And then what?"
"I faked a work emergency."
"Do newspaper columnists have work emergencies?"
"I might have led him to believe I was an ace reporter. And that there was a robbery somewhere — Maisey Yates

I used to write a monthly column for the 'New York Times' syndicate. But I stopped because I found it really hard to have one extreme opinion a month. I don't know how these columnists have two or three ideas a week; I was having difficulty having 12 things to say a year. — Salman Rushdie

From the late David Broder on down, the most powerful and influential of the great Washington columnists and journalists tend to cultivate the driest, least lively voices possible. — Alex Pareene

One of the issues that we professional newspaper columnists are required by union regulations to voice grave concern about is the federal budget deficit, which we refer to as the "mounting" deficit, because every extra word helps when you have to produce a certain number of gravely concerned newsprint inches. — Dave Barry

The permanent power brokers of this city are the columnists. — Hugh Newell Jacobsen

Gossip columnists patrol their mundane arena with the same sort of mysterious merit the advice-givers do. Plainly put, how does anyone become a gossip columnist? I can't simplify it down to a lower scale than that. Are there universities that offer courses in gossip writing? How about plain old Gossip 111? Are there that many literate people who could not write a gossip column? What then, qualifies the chosen few above the rest? — Donald Jeffries

These days, however, I am much calmer - since I realised that it's technically impossible for a woman to argue against feminism. Without feminism, you wouldn't be allowed to have a debate on women's place in society. You'd be too busy giving birth on the kitchen floor - biting down on a wooden spoon, so as not to disturb the men's card game - before going back to quick-liming the dunny. This is why those female columnists in the Daily Mail - giving daily wail against feminism - amuse me. They paid you £1,600 for that, dear, I think. And I bet it's going in your bank account, and not your husband's. The more women argue loudly, against feminism, the more they both prove it exists and that they enjoy its hard-won privileges. — Caitlin Moran

As the saying goes: "If you're not part of the solution, you're a newspaper columnist." — Dave Barry

There were reprints of American editorials. Liberals saw it as a resurgence of social protest and decried the discrimination, poverty, and hunger that had provoked it. Conservative columnists acidly pointed out that hungry people don't steal stereo systems first and called for a crackdown in law enforcement. All of the reasoned editorials sounded hollow in light of the perverse randomness of the event. It was as if only a thin wall of electric lighting protected the great cities of the world from total barbarism. — Dan Simmons

The major gossip columnists were more concerned with protecting the industry than with gunning down sinners. — Gloria Swanson

Leonard Pitts, Jr. is the most insightful and inspiring columnist of his generation. — Tavis Smiley

Our most noted satirists are true columnists, and their opinions can be worth more than any well-documented expose. — Umberto Eco

It's a good thing that columnists don't make homosexuality their last taboo anymore. But I wish the columnists themselves would come out too. — Michael Musto

Mother is the first word that occurs to politicians and columnists and popes when they raise the question, 'Why isn't life turning out the way we want it?' — Mary Kay Blakely

Chats are so new to newspapers, historically. But they're so incredibly valuable because editors/reporters/columnists get to find out what's on the minds of our readers, what you think we should be writing about, what ticks you off, what makes you happy. Sometimes it can confirm what you think readers are interested in; sometimes it can turn you around 180 degrees. — Michael Wilbon

There is such a polarized discussion of economics among people like analysts, columnists, bloggers; often, they end up just saying that views other than their own should not even be discussed. I find that frustrating. There is no intellectual progress without considering lots and lots of different views. — Adam Davidson

The best way to get thrown out of the columnists' club is to be uncertain about anything whatsoever on this earth. — Eric Sevareid

I have been attacked in Turkey more for my interviews than for my books. Political polemicists and columnists do not read novels there. — Orhan Pamuk

It is customary for columnists to complain about the excesses of Premiership footballers, whenever - as happens regularly - there is an incident involving some combination of sex, drugs, drink, violence and the constabulary. But modern footballers have a lot of both money and disposable time, a combination that has proved a recipe for personal disaster throughout history. And these incidents take place generally round night clubs rather than football clubs. The average Premiership player who turned up for work drunk would have a career-expectancy measurable in minutes. — Matthew Engel

There's a nastiness out there that wants to harm me with words. These are my enemies - the ideologues, the populists, the columnists who don't like the fact that I take them on toe-to-toe. What I try to do is tell the truth. It's not the coin of the realm in politics. — Ed Koch

Celebrity is a national drama whose characters' parts and plots are written by the tabloids, gossip columnists, websites and interactive buttons. The famous don't actually have to turn up to their own lives at all. — A.A. Gill

I don't usually comment on columnists' ideas of what I'm thinking. That's a dangerous game to get into. — Leon Panetta

Because of television, sports columnists have become personalities. I went to a party [during Super Bowl week] and there must have been 500 people who wanted to talk to me because they saw me on TV. I've become sort of the Soupy Sales character on TV, and people do not really know me as a writer. — Woody Paige

When U.S.-based editors and columnists parachute into a news storm, it is often the stringers who keep us out of trouble, helping us glimpse the complexity behind the headlines. — Nancy Gibbs

Gossip columnists are diseases, like 'flu. Everyone is subject to them. — James Goldsmith

I don't know any other columnists, and I don't know what they do. I work the single! And nobody does what I do, anyway. — Jimmy Breslin

The columnists have a very personal relationship with their readers, and the readers deserve to hear directly from the columnists. — Andrew Rosenthal

All of our columnists have areas of interest and expertise that they will return to frequently, but the subject matter of any given column is up to them. — Andrew Rosenthal

Columnists must make sure that when they describe an event, they are being accurate in their description. When they quote someone, they are required to do so accurately. Errors that are made must be corrected openly and quickly. — Andrew Rosenthal

High-profile columnists should remember they are in a privileged position. Writing isn't a dreadfully specific skill - it's taught to millions via our schooling system. And opinions? Well, I've yet to meet people without opinions. — Rob Manuel

I don't watch the nightly newscasts on TV ... nor do I watch the endless hours of people giving their opinion about things. I don't read the editorial pages; I don't read the columnists. It can be a frustrating experience to pay attention to somebody's false opinion. — George W. Bush

If editors truly want to improve their byline ratio, they need to stop lamenting the fact that few women journalists send them cold pitches and start taking a hard look at their stable of regular contributors. How many women are on the masthead? How many women columnists or bloggers are on the payroll? This is how real change is going to happen. — Ann Friedman

She became a morality tale stiff with Schadenfreude, and so many columnists made allusion to Icarus that Private Eye ran a special column. — Robert Galbraith

YOUNG: Self-appointed advisors have taken this line about Negro responsibility almost solely, and these are the very people who in the past have been largely indifferent to the plight of the Negro citizen, they've been people who fought against civil rights. I'm thinking of columnists like David Lawrence and Fulton Lewis. Now these are the people who speak of Negroes' assuming certain responsibilities before these rights are to be given. — Robert Penn Warren

The real enemy is the totality of physical and mental constraints by which capital, or class society, or statism, or the society of the spectacle expropriates everyday life, the time of our lives. The real enemy is not an object apart from life. It is the organization of life by powers detached from it and turned against it. The apparatus, not its personnel, is the real enemy. But it is by and through the apparatchiks and everyone else participating in the system that domination and deception are made manifest. The totality is the organization of all against each and each against all. It includes all the policemen, all the social workers, all the office workers, all the nuns, all the op-ed columnists, all the drug kingpins from Medellin to Upjohn, all the syndicalists and all the situationists. — Bob Black

As the 2012 elections approach the finish line, the chatter among columnists and political reporters is about upcoming books that take readers inside the campaigns, cutting-edge efforts to micro-target voters on Internet social applications, the enormous money flowing through super-PACs, and extreme political polarization. — Juan Williams

Public life, politics and industry should all of them be within our sphere of influence ... If we are to infiltrate the professional and social activities of other people I think we must imitate the Totalitarians and organize some kind of fifth column activity! If better ideas on mental health are to progress and spread we, as the salesmen, must lose our identity ... Let us all, therefore, very secretly be 'fifth columnists.' — John Rawlings Rees

Each one of us is an individual, just like talk show hosts are different from one another, and newspaper columnists are different from each other. So, former presidents are different from each other, too. Some have gone into relative seclusion. Some have decided to teach. — Jimmy Carter

If there's one thing I sincerely hope this book might get you to reconsider," Rudder writes in the introduction, "it's what you think about yourself. Because that's what this book is really about. OKCupid is just how I arrived at the story." Rudder wants to convince us that data is how we can arrive at our own stories. "As the Internet has democratized journalism, photography, pornography, charity, comedy, and so many other courses of personal endeavor, it will, I hope, eventually democratize our fundamental narrative." Gone are the days when our moment is defined only by researchers, effete columnists or whoever else gets to say what a millennial is. Now, Rudder argues, the story is ours to tell. — Christian Rudder