Famous Quotes about Journalism and Journalists (61 Quotations)

Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice; journalism what will be grasped at once.

More than illness or death, the American journalist fears standing alone against the whim of his owners or the prejudices of his audience. Deprive William Safire of the insignia of the New York Times, and he would have a hard time selling his truths to a weekly broadsheet in suburban Duluth.

Most rock journalism is people who can't write, interviewing people who can't talk, for people who can't read.

Now he is a statesman, when what he really wants is to be what most reporters are, adult delinquents.

Opinionated writing is always the most difficult… simply because it involves retaining in the cold morning-after crystal of the printed word the burning flow of molten feeling.

Our job is like a baker's work — his rolls are tasty as long as they're fresh; after two days they're stale; after a week, they're covered with mould and fit only to be thrown out.

People accuse journalism of being too personal; but to me it has always seemed far too impersonal. It is charged with tearing away the veils from private life; but it seems to me to be always dropping diaphanous but blinding veils between men and men. The Yellow Press is abused for exposing facts which are private; I wish the Yellow Press did anything so valuable. It is exactly the decisive individual touches that it never gives; and a proof of this is that after one has met a man a million times in the newspapers it is always a complete shock and reversal to meet him in real life.

Personal columnists are jackals and no jackal has been known to live on grass once he had learned about meat — no matter who killed the meat for him.

The dominant and most deep-dyed trait of the journalist is his timorousness. Where the novelist fearlessly plunges into the water of self-exposure, the journalist stands trembling on the shore in his beach robe. The journalist confines himself to the clean, gentlemanly work of exposing the grieves and shames of others.

The facts fairly and honestly presented; truth will take care of itself.

The journalists have constructed for themselves a little wooden chapel, which they also call the Temple of Fame, in which they put up and take down portraits all day long and make such a hammering you can't hear yourself speak.

The lowest form of popular culture — lack of information, misinformation, misinformation, and a contempt for the truth or the reality of most people's lives — has overrun real journalism. Today, ordinary Americans are being stuffed with garbage.

The man must have a rare recipe for melancholy, who can be dull in Fleet Street.

The press is like the air, a chartered libertine.

The real news is bad news.

There is much to be said in favor of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community. By carefully chronicling the current events of contemporary life, it shows us of what very little importance such events really are. By invariably discussing the unnecessary, it makes us understand what things are requisite for culture, and what are not.

We need not be theologians to see that we have shifted responsibility for making the world interesting from God to the newspaperman.

We now demand the light artillery of the intellect; we need the curt, the condensed, the pointed, the readily diffused — in place of the verbose, the detailed, the voluminous, the inaccessible. On the other hand, the lightness of the artillery should not degenerate into pop-gunnery — by which term we may designate the character of the greater portion of the newspaper press — their sole legitimate object being the discussion of ephemeral matters in an ephemeral manner.

What a squalid and irresponsible little profession it is. Nothing prepares you for how bad Fleet Street really is until it craps on you from a great height.

Write the news as if your very life depended on it. It does!