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Journalism will kill you, but it will keep you alive while
you're at it.
Horace Greeley
(1811-1872)
US newspaper editor, reformer
There is another reason journalists like to drink and eat together:
they simply cannot think of better company.
Osborn Elliott
'The World of Oz'
1980
It is part of the social mission of every great newspaper to provide a refuge and a home for the largest possible number of salaried eccentrics.
Lord Thomson,
owner of 'The Times' and 'Sunday
Times' of London 19611981
Journalists as a Breed
Your connection with any newspaper would be a disgrace and
degradation. I would rather sell gin to poor people and poison
them that way.
Sir Walter Scott
To a friend
1829
The lowest depth to which people can sink before God is defined
by the word 'journalist'. If I were a father and had a daughter
who was seduced I should despair over her; I would hope for her
salvation. But if I had a son who became a journalist and continued
to be one for five years, I would give him up.
Soren Kierkegaard
The only qualities for real success in journalism are ratlike
cunning, a plausible manner and a little literary ability."
Nicholas Tomalin
If a person is not talented enough to be a novelist, not smart
enough to be a lawyer, and his hands are too shaky to perform
operations, he becomes a journalist.
Norman Mailer
A journalist is a person who works harder than any other lazy
person in the world.
Anon
Nothing is more idealistic than a journalist on the defensive.
Melvin Maddocks
'How Journalists Regard Their Field'
1985
Journalists do not like to report on uncertainties. They would
almost rather be wrong than ambiguous.
Melvin Maddocks
'How Journalists Regard Their Field'
1985
If you don't have a sensation of apprehension when you set
out to find a story and a swagger when you sit down to write it,
you are in the wrong business.
A M Rosenthal
Executive editor, 'New York Times',
on his retirement.
We trotted, coach-dog fashion, at the heels of the human race,
our tails awag.
Ben Hecht
On crime reporting in Chicago
1957
The fact that a man is a newspaper reporter is evidence of
some flaw of character.
Lyndon Baines Johnson,
US President 19631968
Individual Reporters
Archibald Forbes
Archibald Forbes rarely waited for the end of a battle to report
it and sometimes did not even wait for the beginning.
R.J. Cruickshank
Editor of the 'Daily News' describing Forbes,
the paper's famous war correspondent of
the 1870s and 1880s.
Duncombe Jewell
Well I did see some people bobbing about in the water as I
came away, but
Duncombe Jewell
'Daily Mail' reporter with literary pretensions,
after being confronted back at his office with
the fact that his purple-prosed account of
the launching of HMS Albion on the Thames
contained no reference to the 30 people
who had drowned at the event.
1902
Godfrey Turner
'Listen to this, boys," Turner shouted, and he read out
some pages he had just written.
'But there is not one word of truth in that,' the others protested.
'Well, what does it matter?' replied Turner, "It is jolly
good copy.'
J. Hall Richardson
His record of the exchange between 'Daily
Telegraph' reporter Godfrey Turner and
other journalists covering a colliery
disaster in Barnsley.
Ed Murrow
Ed Murrow didn't stride into the newsroom. He walked in slowly,
preoccupied, with his left hand in his pocket, right hand holding
the cigarette, his head lowered, the weight of the world on his
shoulders. He came in in his shirt sleeves. His pants rose to
two points in the back where the suspenders buttoned, revealing
the Savile Row tailoring. It was a noisy place, the newsroom.
Everybody would be busy working, typing.
When he came in, it was like the Red Sea parting. Everyone hushed
and moved back as he walked through. It was not pomposity, just
a presence, an awesome presence about the man. The spell was finally
broken when he spoke to someone.
Marvin Kalb
Quoted by Joseph E. Persico in
'Edward R. Murrow: An American Original'
1988
Louella Parsons
Lolly was possessed by a fiendish, auntielike excitement when
on the trail of a hot "exclusive," and would sit at
her telephone all night long if necessary, interpreting the denials
of those she was interrogating as the great horned owl interprets
the squeaking of distant mice.
Paul O'Neil
On Hollywood columnist Louella Parsons
1965
She was, for all her lifelong love affair with motion pictures,
a reporter first. She would skewer her best friend on the greasy
spit of scandal if circumstances warranted it.
Paul O"Neil
On Louella Parsons
1965
Hedda Hopper
Her virtue was that she said what she thought, her vice that
what she thought didn't amount to much.
Peter Ustinov
On Hollywood columnist Hedda Hopper
1980
H.L. Mencken
Mr Mencken's prose sounds like large stones being thrown into
a dumpcart.
Robert Littell
Advice to reporters
Our major obligation is not to mistake slogans for solutions.
Edward R. Murrow
(1908-1965)
US broadcast journalist
Good stories flow like honey. Bad stories stick in the craw.
What is a bad story? It is a story that cannot be absorbed on
the first time of reading. It is a story that leaves questions
unanswered. It is a story that has to be read two or three times
to be comprehended. And a good story can be turned into a bad
story by just one obscure sentence.
Arthur Christiansen
Editor of the "Daily Express', in one
of his almost daily curtain lectures
to his staff.
Go to where the silence is and say something.
Amy Goodman
In accepting on award from Columbia University
for her coverage of the 1991 massacre in East Timor.