Quotes from Bob Schieffer

I had the chance to make every possible mistake and figure out a way to recover from it. Once you realize there is life after mistakes, you gain a self-confidence that never goes away.

Go vote now it will make you feel big and strong

In many parts of the country outside those metropolitan areas, it's no longer a question of whether readers are getting biased news, it's whether they are getting any news—or at least reliable news.

As one former fake news writer told 60 Minutes, if it is in a news-ish format and agrees with preexisting biases, people will believe just about anything.12

Dean Owen did what a lot of reporters seem to have forgotten how to do these days, he asked the people who were there that awful day what they saw and how they felt. This is a must-read for anyone who wants a better understanding of what happened on the weekend that America lost its innocence. A terrific read.

But I do wish some of these young reporters had the opportunity I had to work more closely with editors who could help them shape a story and make it better. "They still get edited, but not the way I worked with editors every step of the way on a story—it was the way we all learned the craft in those days. Today we just don't have that many people.

For all the problems print underwent in 2016, newspapers—where they could be found—still provided information available nowhere else to those who still chose to read them.

Dowd alluded to another factor necessary to understand the digital age: the technology that allows news to travel at warp speed also gives innovators the freedom and the ability to move quickly and make change to embrace new models in order to find an audience. That means we are only at the beginning. We should expect even more change, not less.

Learning on the job and having the backup of experienced editors are luxuries unavailable to many young journalists, and this puts new emphasis on what they need to know as they embark on that first job. It is somewhat akin to pickup sandlot sports. Sure, you can learn the game without a coach, but a coach can help the learning process.

The scarcest resource in journalism now is attention span.

Campaign laws are virtually nonexistent. By 1975, thirty-two people from the Nixon era had gone to jail or paid heavy fines for campaign finance law violations. All of the things for which they were convicted are now legal.

What America needs more than political reform is political courage—candidates and politicians who are not afraid to risk losing the office they hold to accomplish the greater good. The Founders were not concerned about political survival; they worried about being hanged when they signed the Declaration of Independence. Yet they pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to the cause in which they believed so strongly.

together on solutions to fix them.

The state of journalism is a national security issue, if our people don't have a clear understanding what our problems are and the threats we face, they can't come together on solutions to fix them.

Bill Brock, the former Tennessee senator and one-time head of the Republican Party said recently that many Americans choose their favorite channel (or website) not to get just the latest information but "to get the ammo to back up their previously formed opinions." And it was getting harder to separate opinion from fact.

The history of American journalism, then, is a history of change. To survive the change foisted on it by new delivery systems, journalism's delivery mechanisms must change.

I have always loved art and am an aspiring painter, and in early years when I was struggling to find a style, a wise teacher told me: "Just pick out an artist you like and copy him. You come to understand how he solved the problems you're struggling with and your own style will grow out of that in time.

To put it another way, Donald Trump was not having an impact on the culture but simply reflecting a culture that has grown more impolite and vulgar.

He had this great curiosity. If there was a car wreck and Walter saw it, it would be like the first car wreck he ever saw in his life.

While no solutions seem obvious, there is general agreement throughout the industry that if local newspapers go away and some entity does not rise to do what we have come to expect of them—that is, keep an eye on local government—we will experience corruption at levels we have never seen.

millennials are a median age of twenty-seven. There's seventy-five to eighty million of us. We are now the biggest group of employees in the workforce. There's more of us than boomers or gen X. We're also approaching peak spending years. And so as a foundational part of the economy, millennials are by far the most important group for the next forty years. And so, as a business, that's the group you want to build your audience around.

The truth is the Super Bowl long ago became more than just a football game.

The best thing about the Congress is that it is the last place where you can have face-to-face interviews and interaction with the newsmakers themselves.

I mean, you know, God knows everything, but I'm not quite that good. Every once in a while, something will slip by me.