Quotes & Sayings About Journalism

When you do a piece of journalism, you may have to cut away 95 percent of what you are experiencing. — Leslie Cockburn

Father: 'Anything but journalism.' I rebelled. — Malcolm Gladwell

Journalism is a low trade and a habit worse than heroin, a strange seedy world of misfits and drunkards and failures. — Hunter S. Thompson

What they call philosophy I call literature; what they call literature I call journalism; what they call journalism I call gossip; and what they call gossip I call (generously) voyeurism. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Never awake me when you have good news to announce, because with good news nothing presses; but when you have bad news, arouse me immediately, for then there is not an instant to be lost. — Napoleon Bonaparte

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

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. — Savannah Guthrie

The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers. — Thomas Jefferson

Never joke with the press. Irony does not translate into newsprint. — Erica Jong

I understand the difference between journalism and scholarship that comes 20 years later. — David Remnick

There can be no higher law in journalism than to tell the truth and to shame the devil. — Walter Lippmann

If you're in Journalism and you're looking for friends, you should get a dog. — Dan Rather

There's a lot of essay writing that could pass for journalism and journalism that could pass for essay. Some of it is just taxonomy. — Eula Biss

Media was once about protecting a name; on the web it is about building one. — Ryan Holiday

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. — Leslie Jamison

No industry in living memory has collapsed faster than daily print journalism. — P. J. O'Rourke

There is no democracy without journalism. — Scott Pelley

The quality of life in America is dependent on the quality of the journalism. Most people don't realize that, but if you think about it, journalism is one of the pillars on which our society is perched. — Scott Pelley

Concussions is one of these pack journalism issues, frankly. There's no increase in concussions. The number is relatively small. The problem is, it is a journalist issue. — Paul Tagliabue

The reason I often say, for me, photography is analogous to poetry, for my kind of work more so than journalism, is because it's so open to interpretation. And I'm very happy having different interpretations of it. — Alec Soth

I chose Journalism by default. I always loved TV, and I had no idea what else to do, so I studied what interested me. — Frank Caliendo

Looking back on the event, I find myself thinking there are three approaches to journalism represented here. One is the "cool" approach of traditional journalism, including network broadcasting in which NPR is no exception. One is the "hot" approach of talk radio, which has since expanded to TV sports networks and now Fox TV. The third is the engaged approach of weblogging. — David "Doc" Searls

In journalism, especially, we tend to deal with large, complex systems by finding especially interesting people and story lines to focus on. — Nicholas Lemann

American journalism's crazy old aunt in the attic. — Helen Thomas

I had the most incredible English and literature teachers in school, and it really influenced my love of storytelling. It's what made me excited to study journalism in college. I love editorials and documentaries. All of that came from being given the opportunity to lose myself in good writing when I was a kid. — Sophia Bush

The newspaper journalists like to believe the worst; they can sell more papers that way, as one of them told me himself; for even upstanding and respectable people dearly love to read ill of others. — Margaret Atwood

The marvellous thing about writing, whether it be fiction or journalism, is that it is simultaneously the most intimate and the most anonymous of meetings between people. It is profoundly intimate in reaching into the psyche of another, at the same time as being devoid of social characteristics, cultural characteristics, economic characteristics. — Will Self

I've been able to write at least one book a year for 20 years, and I don't think I would've had that kind of drive if I hadn't come out of the journalism business. — Michael Connelly

Some taxpayers may object to a print journalism bailout on the grounds that it mostly benefits the liberal elite. And we can't blame taxpayers for being reluctant to subsidize the reportorial careers of J-school twerps who should have joined the Peace Corps and gone to Africa to 'speak truth to power' to Robert Mugabe. — P. J. O'Rourke

The 'I' character in journalism is almost pure invention. — Janet Malcolm

We don't claim perfection; even the best journalism is but a first draft of history. But we bring to the challenge certain basic beliefs that aren't much in fashion these days. We believe facts are facts and that they are ascertainable through honest, open-minded and diligent reporting. We thus believe that truth is attainable by laying fact upon fact, much like the construction of a cathedral. News, in short, is not merely a matter of views. And truth is not merely in the eye of the beholder.
[Letter From the Publisher: A Report to The Wall Street Journal's Readers, 12 January, 1993] — Peter R. Kann

Finally, I applied to one of my roommates, more sagacious than the rest, for advice. Dave, I said. I'm broke and without prospects. I've blown my GI Bill on flying lessons. I can't hide out here in college much longer. What should I do?

Well, he said, at this crucial juncture you need to coldly appraise yourself. "I've only known you these few short years, but it strikes me you wouldn't be good for anything important; I'd have to say you're lazy, self-absorbed, glib and facetious, always ready to mock the suggestions of others, but never offering anything positive of your own. Intellectually shallow, no tap root anywhere, spiritually neutered, without feeling or compassion, unsteady of focus, lacking the fortitude for the long pull, with no fixed belief in anything."

I shook his hand and thanked him. The acuity of his analysis made my path clear. My only hope lay in daily journalism. — Phil Garlington

Poetry, the best of it, is lunar and is concerned with the essential insanities. Journalism is solar (there are numerous newspapers named The Sun, none called The Moon) and is devoted to the inessential. — Tom Robbins

(aspiring journalist to Carl Kolchak)
'Andy knows I want to be a reporter. Like you'
This took me by surprise. 'Sallie, my dear, nobody wants to be a reporter like me. — Elizabeth Massie

Journalism combines adventure with culture. — Oriana Fallaci

Simons, as restrained as Bradlee could be hard-charging and obstreperous, liked to tell of watching Bradlee grind his cigarrettes out in a demitasse cup during a formal dinner party. Bradlee was one of the few persons who could pull that kind of thing off and leave the hostess saying how charming he was.
Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward — Carl Bernstein

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. — Ian Hislop

Chomsky's description of the neoliberal/corporate hold over our economy, polity, journalism, and culture is so powerful and overwhelming that for some readers it can produce a sense of resignation. In our demoralized political times, a few may go a step further and conclude that we are enmeshed in this regressive system because, alas, humanity is simply incapable of creating a more humane, egalitarian, and democratic social order. — Noam Chomsky

Quit your bitching, if you're not pitching — Rebecca Aguilar

"Not sure," he retorted; "you call yourself a journalist, and admit there is a subject under Heaven of which you are not sure!" — Jerome K. Jerome

Liberal humanists now seem to dominate the fields of art, journalism, and communication, which are powerful and uniquely able to spread anti-Christian thought. — Tim LaHaye

Investigative journalism has been relegated to a very, very tiny space in America. We don't really have much investigative journalism left. And the last refuge for it is documentary filmmaking. — Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Needless, heedless, wanton and deliberate injury of the sort inflicted by Life's picture story is not an essential instrument of responsible journalism. — Abe Fortas

As I went to college, I went into radio and television. Now I suppose most people think that's one step ahead of basket weaving as a major in college, but it was part of the journalism department. — Sam Donaldson

That [photographs] disturb readers is exactly as it should be: that's why photojournalism is often more powerful than written journalism. — Nora Ephron

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. — Chris Hughes

Journalism consists in buying white paper at two cents a pound and selling it at ten cents a pound. — Charles A. Dana

I always lamented that I wasn't a writer during the late '60s and the early '70s, with the New Journalism and Tom Wolfe and Hunter Thompson and all those people. — Meghan Daum

The stories about epidemics that are told in the American press - their plots and tropes - date to the nineteen-twenties, when modern research science, science journalism, and science fiction were born. — Jill Lepore

I'm a professional journalist. Making up lies to fit the facts - it's what we do. — Andrew Klavan

The fundamentals of what journalism is about don't necessarily change. What will change is the delivery of news. — Stephen Kinzer

Journalism encourages haste ... and haste is the enemy of art. — Jeanette Winterson

I came over here and worked for rock magazines, and I worked for Rolling Stone, which has a very high standard of journalism, a very good research department. — Kurt Loder

I was never interested in the two-party system per se. I was interested in how authority was abused by government, and how lies were told, and rewritten, to seem to be true. I came up out of a tradition of radical journalism. — Jules Feiffer

Don't count out other amazing programming like Frontline. You will still find more hours of in-depth news programming, investigative journalism and analysis on PBS than on any other outlet. — Gwen Ifill

Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations. — George Orwell

In my second year of Harvard Divinity School, where I was studying to be a minister like my father, I met a guy named Robert Cox, who had been the editor of the Buenos Aires Herald during the Dirty War in Argentina. Bob used to print the names of those who had been disappeared the day before, above the fold in his newspaper. It was a kind of an awakening to me to see what great journalism can and should do. — Chris Hedges

Good journalism is being criminalized or otherwise rendered perilous to its best practitioners. Attack a government agency like the CIA, or a Fortune 500 member ... , or the conduct of the military in Southeast Asia and you find yourself in deep trouble, naked and often alone. — Daniel Schorr

I often attribute my screenwriting to journalism because they drill in the who, what, when, where and why - but we really need to land on that why. That's what I've been exploring in my writing for many years and trying to get better at. — Mara Brock Akil

The thrill of working in this building, with its iconic globe on top, would never fade. — Gwenda Bond

I was a journalist and I liked to watch. I was in awe. — Nora Ephron

If I'm still wistful about On the Road, I look on the rest of the Kerouac oeuvre
the poems, the poems!
in horror. Read Satori in Paris lately? But if I had never read Jack Kerouac's horrendous poems, I never would have had the guts to write horrendous poems myself. I never would have signed up for Mrs. Safford's poetry class the spring of junior year, which led me to poetry readings, which introduced me to bad red wine, and after that it's all just one big blurry condemned path to journalism and San Francisco. — Sarah Vowell

I'm not an advocacy journalist - that's not what I do. My role in journalism is to be able to engage the most interesting people with the best ideas. — Charlie Rose

By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, journalism keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community. — Oscar Wilde

The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read. — Oscar Wilde

A journalist's job is to collect information," Ovid said to Pete.
"Nope," Pete said. "That's what we do. It's not what they do."
Dellarobia was unready to be pushed out of the conversation just like that. "Then what do you think the news people drive their Jeeps all the way out here for?"
"To shore up the prevailing view of their audience and sponsors."
"Pete takes a dim view of his fellow humans," Ovid said. "He prefers insects.
Dellarobia turned her chair halfway around to face Pete, scraping noisily against the cement floor. "You're saying people only tune in to news they know they're going to agree with?"
"Bingo," said Pete. — Barbara Kingsolver

Required for good fiction: character, conflict, change through time. And if you're really blessed, you get resolution. But life doesn't usually work out that way. — Ted Conover

A lot of journalism wants to have what they call objectivity without them having a commitment to pursuing the truth, but that doesn't work. Objectivity requires belief in and a commitment toward pursuing the truth - having an object outside of our personal point of view. — Nate Silver

How we react to the tragedy of one small person accurately reflects our attitude towards a whole nationality, and increasing the numbers doesn't change much. — Anna Politkovskaya

Reporters trade in pain. It sells papers. Everyone knows that. — Jonathan Maberry

Why did you become a journalist?"
"Better than working for a living. — Leslie Cockburn

I don't mind my friends calling me "Thornes," but the fact of people calling me "Prickly Thornes" draws the line. — Simi Sunny

Look, everybody in journalism has a reputation of sorts. — Bernard Goldberg

Now I know that there's no such thing as the truth. That people are constantly misquoted. That news organizations are full of conspiracy (and that, in any case, ineptness is a kind of conspiracy). That emotional detachment and cynicism get you only so far. But for many years I was in love with journalism. I loved the city room. I loved the pack. I loved smoking and drinking scotch and playing dollar poker. I didn't know much about anything, and I was in a profession where you didn't have to. I loved the speed. I loved the deadlines. I loved that you wrapped the fish. You can't make this stuff up, I used to say. — Nora Ephron

A free press doesn't mean it's not a tame press. — Andrew Vachss

There were influences in my life that were more important than journalism, such as comic strips and radio. — Guillermo Cabrera Infante

Carelessness is not fatal to journalism, nor are cliches, for the eye rests lightly on them. But what is intended to be read once can seldom be read more than once; a journalist has to accept the fact that his work, by its very todayness, is excluded from any share in tomorrow. — Cyril Connolly

In journalism, there has always been a tension between getting it first and getting it right. — Ellen Goodman

Lion emits a low whistle as he spots Bo entering his fifth-period Journalism class. 'What happened to your face?'
Bo touches it tenderly and smiles. 'Nothing ...
'This wasn't your Dad.'
Bo smiles again. 'No. My dad leaves bruises on the inside. — Chris Crutcher

It's very hard to be a screenwriter. I remember getting a couple of awards. I got a PEN West award a million years ago when I did Running on Empty, and I sat in the room with all these writers. They wrote everything from novels to non-fiction to children's books to journalism - any kind of writing - and I realized that there was no one in the room who would ever read anything I'd written. — Naomi Foner Gyllenhaal

I got a degree in broadcast journalism at Northwestern but was running a sketch-comedy group and then went to Second City. When the writers' strike happened in 2007-2008, I went to work at E! because I had that background. — Robin Thede

You're under pressure when you produce facts. You're working with facts in journalism, but you're under all kinds of formal constraints; there are expectations. — Denis Johnson

David Brinkley was an icon of modern broadcast journalism, a brilliant writer who could say in a few words what the country needed to hear during times of crisis, tragedy and triumph. — Tom Brokaw

But when our elected officials and our political campaign become entirely untethered to reason and facts and analysis, when it doesn't matter what's true and what's not, that makes it all but impossible for us to make good decisions on behalf of future generations. It threatens the values of respect and tolerance that we teach our children and that are the source of America's strength. It frays the habits of the heart that underpin any civilized society -- because how we operate is not just based on laws, it's based on habits and customs and restraint and respect. — President Barack Obama

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. — Amy Hempel

The ethics of plagiarism have turned into the narcissism of small differences: because journalism cannot own up to its heavily derivative nature, it must enforce originality on the level of the sentence. — Malcolm Gladwell

Naturally, people - especially in America - live in the moment and, given the "crisis" orientation of cable news, think that [the 2000s are] the worst period the country has ever gone through. Not really. — Ivan Eland

Leggett feels that to be excitingly right in general is better than to be dully accurate in particular. That is why he is such an effective journalist. — Gore Vidal

I used to think the most important thing for a reporter was to be where the news is and be the first to know. Now I feel a reporter should be able to effect change. Your reporting should move people and motivate people to change the world. Maybe this is too idealistic. Young people who want to be journalists must, first, study and, second, recognize that they should never be the heroes of the story..A journalist must be curious, and must be humble.
Zhou Yijun — Judy Polumbaum

I wasn't the kind of kid like Spielberg or Lucas who knew to go to film school. I didn't know at 12 what I was going to do; it took me until I was about 23. I studied journalism in college, but after school, I got a job in public television and I never worked as a journalist for one moment. — Nancy Meyers

It is hard news that catches readers. Features hold them. — Alfred Harmsworth

Uncertainty is as good a way as any to kill a story. — Sidney Zion

In the end, the discipline of verification is what separates journalism from entertainment, propaganda, fiction, or art. — Bill Kovach

I am thrilled to share the news that Andrew Sullivan is bringing his trailblazing journalism to 'The Daily Beast.' — Tina Brown

Journalism is the art of coming too late as early as possible. I'll never master that. — Stig Dagerman

I have a passion for words. I love words. And I'm just learning and developing my skills for words. I do books and I do journalism and plays. I have a broad palette. I don't have a great eye for direction. I love working with actors and I work very well with them because I appreciate what they bring to the table. I'd never say never, of course, but I look at it and don't really fancy it. I want to try and master the word side of it first. — Geoff Thompson

Documentaries can embrace contradictions in a way that journalism can't. — Alex Gibney

I went into journalism to do journalism, not advertising. — Michael Hastings

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. — David Simon

I can't recall a story that played out exactly as I'd expected it to. That's one of the thrills of journalism - being surprised, and learning new stuff, but it also poses the biggest challenge to a writer's character. — Dave Barry