Frank Bruni Quotes

It's amazing that the amount of news that happens in the world every day always just exactly fits the newspaper.

The fact is, the media never gets off the interstate unless there's a major explosion.

Journalism can never be silent: that is its greatest virtue and its greatest fault. It must speak, and speak immediately, while the echoes of wonder, the claims of triumph and the signs of horror are still in the air.

Journalism talk is part of the nonstop background noise of American life.

I talk about things that are front page news.

When you are a journalist and there is a big story like Dominic Cummings, it's great to be at the heart of it. What I love, and it sounds a bit cheesy, is you feel connected to other people.

If you chance to live and move and have your being in that thin stratum in which the events that make the news transpire,--thinnerthan the paper on which it is printed,--then these things will fill the world for you; but if you soar above or dive below that plane, you cannot remember nor be reminded of them.

On an average day 7 minutes of news happens. Yet there are currently three full-time, 24-hour news networks.

We still write too many stories that are "state of the race" stories that are informed almost solely by what the polling shows and by what we're then deducing about who's up, who's down, and I'm just not sure that's very helpful to readers, it certainly doesn't elevate the debate and, and the problem is if you, if you cover these things, and I don't think the Times is particularly culpable, I think other news organizations are worse, if you cover them in an entirely "who's up, who's down" horse race way.

For too long, reporters for the big media outlets have been fixated on novelty, always moving too quickly onto the next big score or the next hot get. Paradoxically, in these days of instant communication and sixty-minute news cycles, it's actually easier to miss information we might otherwise pay attention to. That's why we need stories to be covered and re-covered until they filter up enough to become part of the cultural bloodstream.

I think that the media spends far too much time [on personalities].

I don't think I was ever thinking critically about my aesthetic, I think it's enough when you're little just to understand that you can give yourself the permission to try and see things differently or create something original, even though you probably won't make anything original for a really long time.

The Chicago City News Bureau was a tripwire for all the newspapers in town when I was there, and there were five papers, I think. We were out all the time around the clock and every time we came across a really juicy murder or scandal or whatever, they'd send the big time reporters and photographers, otherwise they'd run our stories. So that's what I was doing, and I was going to university at the same time.

The government is just you know, blowing the doors off the media. And not everywhere, and I think, this is where you know, a lot of those blog reporters and all of those things are bringing a lot of urgency and a lot of momentum to stories that wouldn't normally carry any momentum.

I know it's cheaper to fund an op-ed columnist than a team of reporters, but I think it confuses the mission of what these great journalistic brands are about.

The media loves to spend a lot of time talking about itself and do a lot of navel-gazing, which the general public isn't quite that interested in. They aren't really particularly concerned with whether our feelings are hurt or the things that we complain about. They have their own lives and their own jobs that are difficult as well. I think where the media has gotten itself in trouble is the sense that they're much more interested in things like parsing words and getting into fights about little minutia, as opposed to stepping back and seeing what the big picture is.

Any belief in Creators or Purpose is wishful thinking. And when you point out that perhaps ALL thinking is wishful, reactions of intense irritation give evidence that we are not dealing with logic but with faith.

I think the news people no longer have any idea of what covering the news is.

I am almost sick and giddy with the quantity of things in my head, all tempting and wanting to be worked out.

I think it's important to remember that writing is a gift and our stories are gifts to ourselves and to the world and sometimes giving isn't always the easiest thing to do but it comes back.

Don't take too much advice. Most people who have a lot of advice to give ~ with a few exceptions ~ generalize whatever they did. Don't over-analyze everything. I myself have been guilty of over-thinking problems. Just build things and find out if they work.

I work using the Brian Eno school of thinking: limit your tools, focus on one thing and just make it work… You become very inventive with the restrictions you give yourself.

My boyfriend's a musician, and I think when he's on stage is the only time he's not worrying. And so that's the reason he keeps doing it is because it gives him that sort of experience of weightlessness that I only get out of being sort of, deep into writing something or really lost in a moment on set, like it's available to me in these select moments through my work.

I have not moved out of the comedian's box into the news box. The news box is moving towards me.

It's always better to shock people and change people's expectations than to give them exactly what they think you can do.