The challenge in fiction is to write a terrific story. The challenge in journalism is to communicate solid, objective information. The challenge in creative non-fiction is to do it both and to do it well.
The TV business is uglier than most things. It is normally perceived as some kind of cruel and shallow money trench through the heart of the journalism industry, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs, for no good reason.
The Fox News makeup treatment is unlike any other in journalism. It involves false lashes, layers and layers of foundation, and heavy applications of come-hither lip gloss.
I always thought writing was the foundation and the basis for journalism in the same way being able to draw is the foundation for art.
When I was in college, I walked by the journalism school every day on my way to my own classes, and that’s the closest I’ve come to having any sort of journalism background.
One of the reasons it’s important to make a new project is it always seems to improve the reputations of the previous one. Whatever you did before is better than what you’ve just done, apparently. But I’ve had to follow the first rule of journalism: Never read the comments.
It was this fascination with hidden lives, I suspect, that led me to journalism; seeking to uncover the truth about people became a job.
I am suspicious of writers who go looking for issues to address. Writers are neither preachers nor journalists. Journalists know much more than most writers about what’s going on in the world. And if you want to change things, you do journalism.
In Haiti, it – people seemed – in my experience in Haiti, people are so open to photographs and journalism. And there doesn’t seem to be the same sort of restrictions or wariness about the press that you would experience in Washington, for instance, on many levels.
I start each of my scripts by going on a journey of painstaking research and discovery, much as I do a piece of long-lead journalism.
Well, my background is journalism. I don’t have any creative-writing experience except for one class I took as a sophomore in college.
If I’d written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people – including me – would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.
I’ve always been a big consumer of American journalism over the years and had an interest in the history of it and of the press in America; how it has changed.
Stanford had no journalism program so I just learned by doing, effectively.
If political cartoonists continue to rely on newspapers, we may be in serious trouble. It’s a very transferable form of journalism, though – it works great on Web sites.
Rule number one of journalism is that trying to get in between a journalist and a story he wants to tell is like trying to stop a herd of stampeding cattle.
You will always have partial points of view, and you’ll always have the story behind the story that hasn’t come out yet. And any form of journalism you’re involved with is going to be up against a biased viewpoint and partial knowledge.
The Guardian’s ‘Word of Mouth’ blog bridges the gap between blogging and serious food journalism.
As a journalist, I’ve always treaded carefully about being Jewish and caring a lot about Israel and having that not become too big of an issue that could affect my journalism. But I also don’t think it’s essential to my Judaism, as I think it might be for some other people.
If you’re in journalism, the U.S. – and New York City in particular – is an exciting place to work.
In 1967, my mother – then Francie Weinman – graduated from Northwestern University with a degree from the prestigious Medill School of Journalism. But because she is a woman, the only television news job she could get in her hometown of Chicago was as a secretary at a network affiliate.
Journalism is literature in a hurry.
I’m always very careful to make the distinction between music criticism and music journalism. A lot of people don’t. But criticism doesn’t require reporting. You can write criticism at home in your underwear. On the other hand, journalism takes legwork – you have to get out there and see things and talk to people.
My dream was to do political journalism.
I have a journalism degree, but I’d rather be the person who is being written about rather than the person who is writing.
The Internet has essentially democratized the music industry in terms of what is popular and it’s democratized the music journalism industry as well.
I actually went to study journalism at Northwestern, thinking that would be my Plan B for a career. But then I realized, if I’m going to struggle and make no money, I might as well do what I really want to do.
After I left high school and got my GED, I studied broadcast journalism for a year at a community college.
Journalism is not writing.
It’s important to make a distinction between the news and journalism. The news is about recent, incidental and sensational events. It’s mostly about exceptions.
‘Guardian’ journalism itself will remain what it has always been: thoughtful, progressive, fiercely independent and challenging, and also witty, stylish, and fun.
The Village Voice gave me an outlet. They encouraged writers to publish idiosyncratic, intellectually ambitious journalism in voices that ranged from demonic to highfalutin. And they paid me well once the magazine was unionized. Getting paid is motivational.
I wanted to be a fashion journalist and went to the London College of Fashion to do a journalism and promotion course.
In journalism, as in politics, other people’s lives are a currency to be bartered on behalf of notoriety and influence.
I am a writer who happens to use some tools of journalism.
Media is just a word that has come to mean bad journalism.
If the next thing I do is not necessarily filling the role of ‘the future of journalism,’ it’ll probably be whatever is making me happiest, and that’s enough for me.
The point of journalism is to hold people in positions of power accountable.
In America the President reigns for four years, and Journalism governs forever and ever.
I think if you look at the failure of journalism in the modern age, then I don’t want to be called a journalist.
I got my start in lefty journalism as a labor reporter at ‘In These Times’, and it’s in my blood.
My journalistic heroes are all the guys like Peter Arnett of Vietnam, and my style in journalism is you got to stand there, and you got to see it with your own eyes.
Investigative journalism is never mass-based; it’s very focused, and you want people who are passionate about it to take it.
I think it’s this congenital problem with journalism that we oversell the difference we make. We make small differences.
One of the most important disciplines in journalism is to challenge your working premises.
I was more interested in journalism and fact-finding than other things, so I didn’t plan to work 30 years as a lawyer.
AIM started in 1997, and I remember when I started using it in earnest, in 1999, when I joined TheStreet.com from ‘The San Jose Mercury News’. We digital journalism pioneers communicated obsessively by AIM, and as a newbie, I recall being amazed that the whole newsroom was ‘chatting’ this way.
I still believe that if your aim is to change the world, journalism is a more immediate short-term weapon.
Formerly well-respected news organizations and experienced national journalists are making the sorts of mistakes that aren’t tolerated in journalism schools. When their mistakes are corrected at all, it’s with little seeming regret.
Absolutely everything undergoes evolvement – whether it’s technology, journalism, the NFL, medicine.
Some people call it the ‘Al Jazeera spirit’ – courage, re-thinking authority, giving a voice to the voiceless. We have never been favored by the authority. The human being is the center of our editorial policy. We are not a TV station that rushes after stars, big names, press conferences, hand-shake journalism.
All of us just go to college and waste our time and to pass our exams. So just learning journalism does not mean I’m good at it or any of the journalists are, either. There is no difference; it’s just class, and it’s just college.
CNN is an American symbol of independent journalism and First Amendment free speech. My board and I are clear: CNN will remain completely independent from an editorial perspective.
I want the news delivered unbiased. I thought that was the whole point with journalism.
I have always been of the opinion that the right kind of journalism is a critical part of our democracy.
Chris Matthews can’t start any sentence without ‘Let me ask you this… ‘ And I love Chris Matthews! But almost everybody in journalism does it. Who’s stopping you? Just say it!
In most daily journalism, you only fact-check something if it seems a little fishy.
Surely the glory of journalism is its transience.
I’ve always enjoyed writing, I graduated with a degree in English; I’ve done bits of journalism.
I still love following and thinking about politics. I enjoy recommending important journalism I read or see from other sources.
