Reporter Quotes & Sayings

A litterateur is not a confectioner, not a dealer in cosmetics, not an entertainer ... He is just like an ordinary reporter. What would you say if a newspaper reporter, because of his fastidiousness or from a wish to give pleasure to his readers, were to describe only honest mayors, high-minded ladies, and virtuous railroad contractors. — Anton Chekhov

Being a reporter is as much a diagnosis as a job description. — Anna Quindlen

An artist is a prophet and seer, not a paint craftsman or design maker, or reporter or entertainer ... the artist has the superiorly searching perception with which that world outside of man's contamination can be penetrated and the truth drawn out from it. — Morris Graves

To be a good reporter, writing about war, you have to write about the people. It's not about the tanks or the RPGs or military strategy. It's always about the effect war has on civilians, on society, and how it disrupts and destroys lives. — Janine Di Giovanni

Every reporter who came up in legacy media can tell you about a come-to-Jesus moment when an editor put them up against a wall and tattooed a message deep into their skull: show respect for the fundamentals of the craft, or you would not soon be part of it. — Mary Karr

When Taft gives way to his (anger), one reporter observed, it is to inflict a merciless thrashing upon its victim, for whom thereafter he has no use whatsoever. With Roosevelt is a case of powder and spark; there is a vivid flash and a deafening roar, but when the smoke is blown away, it is the end. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

You can't be a reporter using Google. It can be a tool. But you have to get out of the house. — Pete Hamill

You know that things are not going well when you lose the moral high ground to a TMZ reporter, — John Oliver

I don't know that I will ever make a political speech again." Would he care to qualify that statement? one reporter queried. "Yes," Roosevelt laughingly said. "I won't say never. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

When a reporter is quoting Sid Blumenthal on president Bush, you know he's scraping the barrel. — Andrew Sullivan

He still had the problem with getting the album finished. Now was definitely not the time to be messing around with a reporter or a woman. And now he had both those things rolled into one glorious package. He just hoped he survived them both. — Samantha Chase

It is not the reporter's job to be a patriot or to presume to determine where patriotism lies. His job is to relate the facts. — Walter Cronkite

From REQUSISITION FOR: A THIEF - Book 1
Female Reporter: "Agent Garret, could you answer one more question?... Why can't the FBI catch this guy?"
Director Denny Garret: "The problem is two-fold, really. ...If we're ever gonna catch him it's gonna be because he's failed. If you want to see Gregg Hadyn fail, a jewel heist is the last place to look."

Carly Macklin: "What is your thing, Gregg Hadyn?"
Gregg Hadyn: "You know, I'm really good at taking things that don't belong to me."

Director Denny Garret: "Bobby pins?"
International Jewel Thief Gregg Hadyn: "They make the best handcuff picks. — J.A. Devereaux

Being a gossip reporter just isn't a respectable job. It'll chew you up and spit you out. — Kim Cattrall

I think that any reporter or columnist will be a little more careful when doing interviews with me. — Mark Cuban

I used to be a print reporter. — Bob Schieffer

And when I'd be reporting in Israel, Palestinians would say, the Jews they're not like us, and the Jews would say the same things about the Palestinians, they don't want what we want. And I never bought it as a reporter and I don't buy it as a novelist. I think, you know, the sound of somebody crying for their lost child sounds the same. — Geraldine Brooks

Well, the movie isn't bad. For a while, I even told myself I liked it, even as it missed one mark after another. But in the end, it's shapeless and blandly apolitical, apart from its watered-down feminism. You see, Fey's Kim Baker - changed from Barker - transforms herself from a neophyte reporter, condescended to by male war correspondents, soldiers and Afghan officials, into a hard-charging political animal who speaks the language fluently and parties as hard as men. That's about as edgy as a sitcom. — David Edelstein

On the day he unveiled the Macintosh, a reporter from Popular Science asked Jobs what type of market research he had done. Jobs responded by scoffing, Did Alexander Graham Bell do any market research before he invented the telephone? — Walter Isaacson

Gabriel Levin's book is a journey through time and through entrenched animosities of the Middle East. What's astonishing and refreshing is his ability to combine the reporter's perspective with a deep knowledge of poetry, including pre-Islamic Arab poems. A brilliant poet is at work here-a poet in the rugged landscape of conflict and pain. — Adam Zagajewski

If women ran Hollywood, 'The Hollywood Reporter' would have a 'Men in Entertainment' issue every year, and those jerks would have to write something. — Elizabeth Meriwether

I'm a reporter," Rachel said. "I write about the arts, festivals, new projects in the city. What I'm not is some kind of psychic astral traveler! How did I get here? Planning a trip to another dimension? — G.G. Collins

If someone says you're a reporter and doesn't want you to anchor then you wonder why you worked so hard at it. — Gayle Gardner

A reporter discovers, in the course of many years of interviewing celebrities, that most actors are more attractive behind a spotlight than over a spot of tea. — Phyllis Battelle

Being a good writer doesn't make you a good reporter, it takes hustle. — David

But human deciding what to eat without professional guidance - something they have been doing with notable success since coming down out of the trees - is seriously unprofitable if you're a food company, a definite career loser if you're nutritionist, and just plain boring if you're a newspaper editor or reporter. — Michael Pollan

He once told a reporter he wanted his obituary to be short - "just make it born in Russia, first lesson at 3, debut at 7, debut in America in 1917". — Jascha Heifetz

Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporter's gallery yonder, there sat a fourth estate more important far than they all. — Thomas Carlyle

I had a great editor, Rebecca Corbett, from the time I was a city reporter right through to the years I worked on the 'Sun's' enterprise reporting team. — David Simon

Next time you hear that tone of self-regard, you might like to pick up Dispatches for the New York Tribune and read the only reporter of whom it was ever actually true. — Christopher Hitchens

I became a reporter because I never found out the ending to my own story. Thirty years after Ben's abduction, the only answers I could find were for others, the victims, or those they left behind. The crime beat was a natural for me. The people I wrote about were the most fragile, the most broken, and they needed the most answers. I pieced together the frayed strands that had once been their lives, not always happy, but better off than where they ended up. I had to tell their stories. I felt like I owed the victims at least that...Julia Gooden, THE LAST TIME SHE SAW HIM — Jane Haseldine

How old are you, Billie?"
"Thirty-three."
"With such innocent eyes for a cutthroat Illicit reporter."
She studied his expression, found it sincere. "Despite rumors to the contrary, not all of us fit the hard-hitting mold."
"I see that." He reached up and brushed an errant strand of hair from her cheek, a tender gesture that caught her completely off-guard. "And I like it. — Shelby Reed

I read a lot of history, biographies, science, and novels,' he says, ushering a reporter out the door with a hint of relief. 'I do not read management or economics.'
(from an interview in the Christian Science Monitor, July 26, 1993) — Peter F. Drucker

A farmer, a hunter, a soldier, a reporter, even a philosopher, may be daunted; but nothing can deter a poet, for he is actuated by pure love. Who can predict his comings and goings? His business calls him out at all hours, even when doctors sleep. — Henry David Thoreau

What if pretending is interfering with the person you're meant to be?" he said. — Robin Bielman

Abraham Lincoln wasn't much of a dancer. "Miss Todd, I should like to dance with you in the worst way," he told his future wife. Miss Todd later said to a friend, "He certainly did."

"John Quincy Adams was a first-rate swimmer. Once when he was skinny-dipping in the Potomac River, a women reporter snatched his clothes and sat on them until he gave her an interview."

"(Andrew Johnson couldn't read until he was fourteen! He didn't learn to write until after he was married!) — Judith St. George

For most of my adult life, I have been an emotional hit-and- run driver
that is, a reporter. I made people like me, trust me, open their hearts and their minds to me, and cry and bleed on to the pages of my neat little notebooks, and then I went back to a safe place and made a story out of it. — Anna Quindlen

A Swedish newspaper reporter called and said, You've been awarded the Prize. I was quite sure it was a practical joke. — Joshua Lederberg

I've always thought of myself as a reporter. — Gwendolyn Brooks

In Quiet Dell, Phillips mesmerizingly spins together fact and fiction, vividly imagining the circumstances leading to their deaths, and sets a young female reporter on the case to solve it. — Elissa Schappell

The reporter wrote with the hope that he would get a by-line in the Times, a testimony to his being alive on that day and all the tomorrows of microfilm. — Gay Talese

I think what drove me away from being a reporter was an inability to accept that the world came in neat stories. Every story you have to report is just part of something bigger. The news isn't what happened last night - it's some cumulative thing that's happened over centuries. I found it hard to think of one event and drag it out of a bubbling pot and present it as the story that explains it all. — Terry Pratchett

I'm the official unofficial reporter. — I.B. Nosey

Whenever you can bring your chops in as a reporter to unearth a cool story, that's always a good thing. — J. Michael Straczynski

[Lizzie Bennington to a reporter who has asked for her opinion about Jack Archer's celebrated thighs.] When you come back from a set down and bring the match to a final set tiebreak and are a point away from winning the match, only to have what looks like an extremely fit player call a time out because of a cramp and then watch that player sit back and casually converse and laugh while you do your best to keep your mental focus and your body moving so you don't grow cold and cramp yourself, I hardly think you'd concern yourself with his burgeoning manhood, let alone his thighs! — A.G. Starling

I would say the best moment of all was when I caught a 7.5-lb. perch in my lake. (Answering a reporter who asked him to name the best moment of his Presidency.) — George W. Bush

If a reporter doesn't like the person he's writing about, it shows up in his article. — Willie Stargell

'The Hollywood Reporter' was always in. You always got great tables. You always got great seats at screenings. You always got treated well if you were at the paper. — Robert Osborne

Wherever a man commits a crime, God finds a witness. Every secret crime has its reporter. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Recognition should come to the reporter who uncovers public cheating or proves a convicted man innocent. — Phil Donahue

You have to assume that everything you do is public knowledge. Everything. Because now everyone is a reporter. Everyone is a photographer. — Derek Jeter

As an old reporter, we have a few secrets, and the first thing is we try the phone book. — Andy Rooney

Personal experience is the surest method by which one can determine the truth of a supposition, no matter how reputable the reporter, since so many experiences are subject to individual proclivities. — Nick Offerman

I got my start in lefty journalism as a labor reporter at 'In These Times', and it's in my blood. — Chris Hayes

[I] settled down with the Daily News and the Post, glad to be back with journalism where all murders are "brutal," all prosecutors are "tough," and all blondes are
"attractive." And any lawyer who cooperates with the reporter is
"high-powered. — Andrew Vachss

Television broadcasts have, in the main, been more suggestive, less specific, more distant in their images than the print press: often you knew that lump was a dead body only because a chattering reporter told you it was. — Bruce Jackson

Read like a detective and write like a conscientious investigative reporter. — David Coleman

A reporter started off: "I know a lot of this is kind of speculation." Popovich interupting: "You're going to ask me anyway." Reporter: "And you're going to shoot it down." Popovich replied: "Next question." — Gregg Popovich

Jennifer to Beth I don't know. Writing headlines, I guess. Reading the same stories over and over to make sure some idiot reporter didn't use "they're" when he should have used "their." Changing "which"es to "that"s. Arguing with someone about sequence of tenses. What on earth is sequence of tenses? It's top-secret copy editor stuff. — Rainbow Rowell

A veteran reporter knows there is a disconnect between how an event in a region is experienced and the way it is perceived in distant capitals. He sends dispatches about violent insurrections, riots and clashes, and feels his words loom large in his mind, then become small, minuscule, in the sending,until eventually he discovers that none of his reporting produces more than a twinge or yawn in the wider world. — Kyo Maclear

A reporter from 'The Times' wanted to arm-wrestle, and as I recall, he kept challenging me. So we went at it, and there was a pop. His arm broke. Very strange. He went into a kind of swoon. — Charles Portis

She nodded, jotting something in her notebook.
You're writing that down? Has the interview started?
Lee, whenever you're talking to a reporter, you're being interviewed. — Curtis Sittenfeld

Someone else shoved a pencil in your hand and aimed you in the direction of a burning building somewhere and told you not to come back without a quote from the fire marshall, kid, and that was it: you were a reporter. — Garth Risk Hallberg

I never knew what a reporter looked like. — Dwayne Andreas

By this point, it was clear she wasn't interested in continuing the relationship. What publication on earth would continue a relationship with a writer who would refuse to discuss her work with her editors? What publication would continue to publish a writer who attacked it on TV? What publication would continue to publish a writer who lied about it - on TV and to a Washington Post reporter? ... It's true: Ann is fearless, in person and in her writing. But fearlessness isn't an excuse for crappy writing or crappier behavior. — Jonah Goldberg

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

If you spend 72 hours in a place you've never been, talking to people whose language you don't speak about social, political, and economic complexities you don't understand, and you come back as the world's biggest know-it-all, you're a reporter. Either that or you're President Obama. — P. J. O'Rourke

Everybody has a smartphone; everyone is a reporter. — Aaron Schock

One of the important things about being a small-town reporter is knowing what not to put in the paper. — Terry Pratchett

That's one thing about my shows. I tell people, I'm not a comedian, I'm just a really funny reporter. I put my life out there and make it entertaining. By putting it out there, it helps me to deal with it, you know, so I don't snap and so I don't go off the handle when I get home. — Gabriel Iglesias

(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

I was a finalist for the Pulitzer as a reporter. — Robert Scheer

We have entered a time when a writer's first idea is his best idea, when the first thing a reporter hears is the first thing that she reports. We live in a time now when we have seen major television networks take video off of YouTube and broadcast it to millions of Americans without verifying whether the video had been fabricated or not. — Scott Pelley

I grew up in L.A., and I worked for 'The Hollywood Reporter.' I knew enough about the business to know that the usual role of the author on a movie is to get out of the way and not say anything. — Cassandra Clare

A fierce literary woman with a penchant for married men, Margaret Fuller was ultimately torn between motherhood and her final career as a political reporter. — Susan Cheever

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

But not all Gaza residents were committed to the war. A reporter asked one of the Arabs what he most wanted. He was a taxi driver, father of ten. All he wanted was 'to eat and to work.' What did he think of Nasser? 'Nasser is good, Israel is good, America is good, Britain is good, Canada is good, India is good, Anything is good. — Robert John Donovan

That could be a very sexy story. — LynDee Walker

I'm still an old-school reporter at heart. Writing fiction satisfies my journalistic need to hear and relay the testimony of everyday people at the center of events. — Karen Traviss

Mitt Romney's rally in Mansfield, Ohio, on Monday began the way every political event begins. 'Please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance and our country's national anthem.' This is always an uncomfortable moment for me. While I sat at my laptop, most of the reporters around me stood and put their hands over their hearts. This time instead of just sitting and working, I tweeted what I was feeling: 'Ari_Shapiro: As a reporter I'm torn about joining in the pledge of allegiance/national anthem at rallies. I'm a rally observer, not a participant.' — Ari Shapiro

I guess, as a reporter, I always thought that my biggest strength was that I could get anybody to talk to me. I wasn't the best writer, but I could get people to talk to me. — Jose Antonio Vargas

The fact that a man is a newspaper reporter is evidence of some flaw of character. — Lyndon B. Johnson

I can remember a reporter asking me for a quote, and I didn't know what a quote was. I thought it was some kind of soft drink. — Joe DiMaggio

If the reporter has killed our imagination with his truth, he threatens our life with his lies. — Karl Kraus

Right now I'm trying to figure out what I'm gonna do, 'cause I don't want to sit around on my backside all day. If I'm gonna do that I'll be a newspaper reporter. — Joe Paterno

According to Beth-Anne, the next reporter is Nico Renault from Hollywood Japan Network. Nico's recently had his face tattooed to look like the Kabuki-made-up Gene Simmons of the pre-FUS rock band Kiss. He wears his hair in bright blond spikes. He also wears the body of a cow suit without the head, the rubber udders protruding at crotch level, lending the getup a rather multipenised look. — Ryan Boudinot

I was a cub reporter on a local newspaper in Limerick city, and I used to cover the district court meetings. All of life passed through the Limerick courthouse. Misery, malevolence, the dark side of humanity ... I tell ya, it made 'Angela's Ashes' look like 'The Wonderful World of Disney.' — Kevin Barry

I do a lot of work with the Red Cross, too. As a reporter, before I went to entertainment news, I tended to follow natural disasters. I went to Charleston, South Carolina, after Hurricane Hugo. I went to Miami the year after they were recovering from Hurricane Andrew. I came to California when they were recovering from a big earthquake. I've seen the Red Cross and how they stay there years after a natural disaster. They're not just there when a disaster is happening. — Nancy O'Dell

Thoughtfully or thoughtlessly he had left the keys in the ignition, and I switched on the radio. It was tuned to WQED. A local arts reporter I didn't particularly admire was interviewing old Q. about his life and work and personal demons. I reflected for a moment on the journalistic euphemism that allowed personal demons to writers who were only fucked up. — Michael Chabon

When you're a crime reporter, you see the nub of what life's about, and you don't have much patience for the falsity of politics. — Heather Brooke

I'm not much a TV reporter, as in someone who covers the daily machinations of the television industry, though I certainly follow it and weave it into my reviews and essays about the medium. — Hank Stuever

You can be a great reporter and not be such a great talk show host. — Dan Abrams

[To reporter who telephoned with news of her Oscar:] If you are joking me, I will get up immediately and kill you wherever you are. — Anna Magnani

It is important to remember that, as Ken Auletta wrote in his definitive Greed and Glory on Wall Street, "no reporter can with 100 percent accuracy re-create events that occurred some time before. Memories play tricks on participants, the more so when the outcome has become clear. A reporter tries to guard against inaccuracies by checking with a variety of sources, but it is useful for a reader - and an author - to be humbled by this journalistic limitation. — Bryan Burrough

You should spend more time with your families; write that novel you've always wanted to write. You know, the one about the fearless reporter who stands up to the administration. You know - fiction. — Stephen Colbert

Though Ailes had spent more than four decades in Washington, D.C., and New York City, he still saw himself as a scrapper from a small town in a flyover state who'd had to fight for everything he had. When asked by one reporter what his antagonists thought of him, he replied, "I can pretty much pick the words for you: paranoid, right-wing, fat. — Gabriel Sherman

"It all came from there," Lech Walesa said, pointing to a TV when a reporter asked him why communism fell. — Lech Walesa

I'm fully aware," Firth told a reporter for the English magazine Now, "that if I were to change professions tomorrow, become an astronaut and be the first man to land on Mars, the headlines in the newspapers would read: 'Mr. Darcy Lands on Mars. — Colin Firth

I wanted to be a war reporter - scrabbling around, exposing things. I didn't want to go to university, I wanted to get a job, but Auntie Beryl said I should go to Oxford. — Nina Bawden

Everyone finds their own version of Charles Dickens. The child-victim, the irrepressibly ambitious young man, the reporter, the demonic worker, the tireless walker. The radical, the protector of orphans, helper of the needy, man of good works, the republican. The hater and the lover of America. The giver of parties, the magician, the traveler. — Claire Tomalin