Walter Isaacson Quotes

If I allow journalists to describe a collection and they make mistakes, I'm upset, because the retractions are never noticed.

If I said I was going to make a newsletter that made $2-$3 million a year, no one would question me. If I say, 'It's a blog,' everyone questions me.

I'm very committed to and interested in CNN's journalism and our magazines and our movie studio, not just HBO, where I grew up. But I do have a fondness for subscription television.

I think that the continuity of what I do as an editor with what I did when I started out 40 years ago is very direct. The delivery system is changing and will continue to, but the actual interaction between publisher and author is exactly the same.

The smarter the journalists are, the better off society is. For to a degree, people read the press to inform themselves - and the better the teacher, the better the student body.

If money can't be made reporting and writing articles, then professionals simply can't do it anymore. Unless we adopt the position that the amateur blogosphere is really capable of taking on the role that the 'New York Times' and CNN play, then we do need solutions for paying for content.

As long as we're monetizing our content... we still win at the end.

The news business is simple but it's not easy to do well. You know the story, you have to cover it, you need pictures, you need good writers, you have to get it to the screen but it's obviously not easy to do well.

Never throw up on an editor.

Since man does not create physical matter, those who handle material objects in the production process are not producers in that sense. Economic benefits result from the transformation of matter in form, location, or availability (intellectually or temporally). It is these transformations that create economic benefits valued by consumers, and whoever arranges such transformations contributes to the value of things, whether his hands actually come into contact with physical objects or not.

What I can say now about paid DLC is that we aren't working on anything at the moment. We've put all our efforts into making the actual game. Creating DLC would involve large additional costs and require the involvement of a lot of people.

The promise of every product and service is a better life. Profits are the prize for delivering on the promise.

Accuracy to a newspaper is what virtue is to a lady; but a newspaper can always print a retraction.

I don't want to do anything to revisit Freaks and Geeks that isn't awesome.

I got a letter one day from somebody saying, 'You're always criticizing the press. Why don't you talk about what Clay Felker is doing to your own paper [The Voice]?' And my 10-year-old son Tom, now with Williams & Connelly, put in a legal opinion, not - an opinion from the back of the car saying, 'You know why? What are you, afraid?' So I wrote the column. I - you know, - the column simply said that Felker is destroying this paper.

I don't write a word of the article until I have the lead. It just sets the whole tone - the whole point of view. I know exactly where I'm going as soon as I have the lead.

The basic problem is with the business model of journalism. That business model is premised on the idea that talk is cheap and reporting is expensive.

REPORTER, n. A writer who guesses his way to the truth and dispels it with a tempest of words.

A job on a newspaper is a special thing. Every day you take something that you found out about, and you put it down and in a matter of hours it becomes a product. Not just a product like a can or something. It is a personal product that people, a lot of people, take the time to sit down and read.

That's what makes great products. It's not process-it's content.

Journalism in America is dead. I've been saying it on the air since 2008.

If you build a great product or service, people will talk about it. But it starts with having something that's worth talking about.

A TV show can't hold people and institutions to account like good journalism can.

Absence of defects does not necessarily build business... Something more is required.

We make our profits through content and services.