Quotes from Ken Auletta

Perhaps the biggest problem in journalism is the cult divide between journalists and corporate owners.

Passion without focus can lead you astray.

Objective is the wrong word. Rather, it's fairness. Objectivity is a false God. Instead we should strive for fairness and transparency.

Zuckerberg had the good sense to know both his own limitations and interests. He wanted an executive who would free him to do what he loved: code, and enhancing the Facebook platform.

The first of the brothers to leave their home in search of fortune was Henry, then twenty-three and the oldest. Henry settled in this city of 4,000 citizens and 2,000 slaves. His two brothers soon followed, and in 1850 they established a trading and dry-goods business called Lehman Brothers.

Marcus Goldman in 1869 launched what would become Goldman, Sachs & Company and pioneered the use of what is known today as commercial paper. In return for lending a merchant, say, $900, Goldman would receive a written promise from the merchant to pay back $1,000. That paper could then be traded like a security.

The state arbitrarily set the mortgage interest rate at 8.5 percent—below the prime rate of 9 or so percent—so banks could make more money out of state. The bottom line for financial institutions is profit.

Media companies can be divided into two broad categories: the few who create waves, and the many who ride them - or drown.

when Henry, Emanuel and Mayer Lehman decided to leave the family cattle business in Bavaria, they chose by instinct or luck to settle in Montgomery, Alabama, a hub of the cotton trade. The

The government, in effect, declared privacy privatized.

Personal ambition and greed are essential to the success of a banking firm, but other qualities contribute to success, including teamwork, leadership, strong management, luck, a common tradition or culture.

As in any insincere relationship, each man responded to shadows.

Paul Starr, whose authoritative history of the media, The Creation of the Media

They tend to be entrepreneurial rather than managerial; they

Poorer people tend to watch more television because they can't afford other diversions.

Journalists prize independence - not teamwork.

Always point your finger at the chest of the person with whom you are being photographed. You will appear dynamic. And no photo editor can crop you from the picture.

Stanford University is so startlingly paradisial, so fragrant and sunny, it's as if you could eat from the trees and live happily forever.

The digital revolution has disrupted most traditional media: newspapers, magazines, books, record companies, radio.

The importance of humility. We need the humility to know that truth can be ephemeral, that this can be but one version of the truth.

Among the enduring truths I keep bumping into when there is the luxury of time to get to know people or institutions, is that their decisions are often made for what are not, strictly speaking, reasons of logic.

I think the press, which arguably was cowed by the (Bush) administration in the run-up to the war with Iraq, was certainly not cowed in covering the aftermath of Katrina.

An important reason Google is usually listed among the world's most trusted brands is that it conveys a sense that the user comes first.

If the Ivy League was the breeding ground for the elites of the American Century, Stanford is the farm system for Silicon Valley.