Michael Dirda Quotes

For many years I was engaged in journalism, writing articles and chronicles for the daily press without ever joining the staff of any newspaper.

My own career started in New York at the 'Associated Press', a fast-paced news agency where we rarely had time for deep reporting.

Well, my background is journalism. I don't have any creative-writing experience except for one class I took as a sophomore in college.

I had an idea in the beginning to do a book about some of the events that I had covered, just various stories that I've covered. Reporters spend a lot of time telling each other tales about how they covered stories, and that's what this book started out to be.

I wasn't the greatest reporter in the world, but I wasn't starting at zero.

The best writers who have put pen to paper have often had a journalism background.

I started as a print reporter.

I wrote newspaper articles professionally for seven years, and I love newspapers.

I come from a newspaper background, so maybe I'm attuned to current events.

In the fall of 1989, I was writing 600-word columns at the 'Herald.' My heart always was in long-form narrative writing, though. It's what I cut my teeth on at the 'Boston Phoenix.'

Before I ever heard about '60 Minutes,' I had been a writer, a columnist for 'Life' magazine and for 'Newsweek' - that was about as high as you could get in column writing. I care about my writing. I'm not a quack-quack TV journalist.

I write pretty quickly. Write pretty fast. I was an old press service man. That was part of the necessity of that occupation.

I was a freelancer at CNN during the second semester of my senior year at George Washington University.

I've basically worked as a journalist and a writer.

I am thrilled to be joining 'CBS News' and to have the opportunity to collaborate with some of our profession's most talented journalists.

I got into journalism, actually, when I started my graduate program at Portland State and ended up becoming the multimedia editor of the student paper and covered very uninteresting stories on campus: this culture event, dance night.

I always wanted to use my newspaper background in a novel.

In my mind, I still think - and wish - that I'm going to be a journalist or a writer. That's been my dream job my entire life.

I had grown up as a feature writer, and basically my career had been in The National Lampoon and as a magazine editor, and I'd never been a reporter.

Journalism has been very important for me - for a long time I made my living as a journalist, and it also serves as a source of ideas. Many of the things I have written I would not have written without the experience of being a journalist.

A lot of college graduates approach me about becoming screenwriters. I tell them, 'Do not become a screenwriter, become a journalist,' because journalists go into worlds that are not their own. Kids who go to Hollywood write coming-of-age stories for their first scripts, about what happened to them when they were sixteen. Then they write the summer camp script. At the age of twenty-three they haven't produced anything, and that's the end of the career.

CNN is not and never will abandon our first and fundamental brand equity, which is news and breaking news.

'The New York Times' is a great newspaper: it is also No Fun.

Some years ago, I was fortunate enough to land a reporting job at 'The Washington Post,' which pretty much put me in a state of constant awe. Bob Woodward would dish up ice cream sundaes for anyone stuck working on the weekend.

I'm a member of the media. I'm America's Anchorman.