Quotes About Journalism

I cling to the basic set of tenets laid out in Tom Wolfe's 'New Journalism' - to get out there like the great French novelists of the 19th century and study life. I am a Tom Wolfe fan of the first order.

I find having a column a very difficult form of journalism. I'm not a natural like Tom Friedman and Anna Quindlen.

I was a huge fan of Tom Snyder.

I'd say Bill Bixby's character in 'Beantown' is Tom Brokaw with a heart and a sense of humor.

I have been active as a writer and journalist for nearly forty years. But the number of great reporters I have run across in that time would make, as they say, a slim book. Without question, the top man on my list would be Tommy Thompson.

When I started my airline business, I didn't know everything, right? If I start up a newspaper tomorrow, I might get ripped off by journalists. You'd be naive to think you know everything from day one.

I'm really not a journalist, and I don't do a ton of newsy pieces. Occasionally I'll write about something that's going on recently, but I really don't do a ton of stuff that's tied to current events.

I was an English major in college, took a ton of creative writing courses, and was a newspaper reporter for 10 years.

I watch a ton of CNN.

Whenever journalism students ask me what they should be doing, I say that if you're on social media, you should be following a ton of people that you don't necessarily agree with just to get their perspectives.

I think it's a shame that we have 'Bild' like you have the 'Sun'. Now serious newspapers like 'FAZ' and 'Spiegel' use a bit of the tone of 'Bild.' This is terrible.

You reach a time... when fact and fiction blend seamlessly. If you do it too soon, it's journalism. If you do it too late, you forget, and it's fantasy. There's an optimum time.

However much some journalists may criticize me, I know that I look, feel, and behave several decades younger than my actual age, and much of that is because I believe you are what you think you are. This is called positive affirmation, and it's a really strong tool.

Al Jazeera is not a tool of revolution. We do not create revolutions. However, when something of that magnitude happens, we are at the center of the coverage.

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

Textbook journalism everywhere in the world has always frowned upon the sting as a tool of reporting.

I don't actually see that much difference between telling stories in journalism and telling them on film. The tools are very different, but the basic idea is the same.

Yes, the disruption of the Internet can be blamed for the destruction of the business model that once made journalism a thriving, well-paying enterprise, but it has also created an array of new tools for reporting. Somebody will eventually figure out how to make online newspapers profitable - I hope.

As far as the balance between being a journalist, being an artist, being a storyteller - documentary filmmakers are all three of those things. The balance between them is affected by the film itself, the topic of the film.

I know better than to ever attempt to get a reporter removed from covering any topic. That would never be an option.

I don't think journalism changes. It's about digging into stories and telling them well. The basic tenets of great reporting stay the same while things around it change. Technology has made reporting easier, but it has also caused job loss. Social media has increased discussion around topics, but it has its own challenges at times.

But political parties must claim to be radically different from one another, and political journalism must play along, or else why exist? So the Liberals and Tories concentrate on what does distinguish them: their leaders. That in itself just about guarantees a campaign of ad hominem gooning.

When I left Toronto and entered journalism in the late 1990s, I had many notions about the news business, nearly all of them wrong, as it turned out.

There's usually one piece in 'Vanity Fair' every month that grabs me, but when it presents hatchet jobs without substantiation to impress its liberal friends, I laugh first, then toss.