Jake Tapper Quotes

I became a journalist because one didn't have to specialise.

I knew I wanted to be a journalist ever since I was a teenager. While it is interesting and gratifying to be on the business side and to see how that all works, the main reason I kept a business role here was to protect the editorial integrity of Salon.

I had discovered journalism to be my life's ambition.

I ended up switching over to journalism in college. A few weeks into freshman year, I realized that business school wasn't for me. And writing stories and reading and talking to people is something that I just enjoy doing, so I figured why not try to build up a post-basketball career with that.

Very early in my career, I almost went to journalism school.

At a certain age it just became apparent to me that this was probably the work that I would have to do.

When I started working for Rolling Stone, I became very interested in journalism and thought maybe that's what I was doing, but it wasn't true. What became important was to have a point of view.

I grew up with 'The Denver Post' and the 'Golden Transcript.' There was never a moment that I thought I'd work at the 'New York Times.' My goal, starting out, was just to see if I could be a journalist.

My father was a journalist.

I knew I was going to be a journalist when I was eight years old and I saw the printing presses rolling at the Sydney newspaper where my dad worked as a proofreader.

Well, I don't know how astute I am, but I did want to be a journalist when I was growing up.

When I started working for Rolling Stone, I became very interested in journalism and thought maybe that's what I was doing, but it wasn't.

I was originally going to train as a journalist, passing a series of exams that winnowed ten thousand applicants down to one hundred places on a National Union of Journalists course.

No ideas and the ability to express them - that's a journalist.

I liked journalism and thought it was important, certainly more important than fiction. I'd probably still be doing it if I hadn't been elbowed out.

I think that having a job in journalism, despite all of the changes, is still a fantastic way to be - make a living observing your society and having a chance to use your voice.

When I was at a newspaper, I knew what an opportunity that was, and I religiously protected my time on the cop beat.

I studied journalism, though I never really became a scribe.

I don't think I would have made for a good doctor. It was not meant to be, and it took me a long time to realize that.

I wrote to the local news guy when I was 12 years old. I said, 'What do I need to do to be you one day?'

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.

The question isn't, 'What do we want to know about people?', It's, 'What do people want to tell about themselves?'

We go through our careers and things happen to us. Those experiences made me what I am.

That's a paradox I've noticed, too: The news business held little romance for me, yet writing about it somehow stirred my affections.

A career in journalism suddenly lost its appeal.