Kristen Welker Quotes

There are a lot of really good skills you get from doing journalism - it completely changed my world and how I interact with other people.

Journalism makes you think fast. You have to speak to people in all walks of life. Especially local journalism.

From journalism I learned to write under pressure, to work with deadlines, to have limited space and time, to conduct and interview, to find information, to research, and above all, to use language as efficiently as possible and to remember always that there is a reader out there.

Reporters have to use their imagination, really put themselves in the shoes of the person they want to interview.

Great questions make great reporting.

I was fortunate that I was at newspapers for eight years, where I wrote at least five or six stories every week. You get used to interviewing lots of different people about a lot of different things. And they aren't things you know about until you do the story.

I think the most important thing journalism taught me is to mine for details. The details are key. You can't try to be funny or strange or poignant; you have to let the details be funny or strange or poignant for you.

In the beginning, my mother humored me when I told her I wanted to be a reporter.

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

The most profound lessons about journalism I've learned have been taught to me by the people I've covered.

It's not easy, but I truly that think being a good listener is an important part of being a good journalist.

I have my limited skills as a journalist and a father, and the journalist part is really part of my mindset, to use my skills to try to solve problems.

Fiction writing and journalism, in my experience, are really excellent training grounds for each other.

As a print journalist, you can be frustrated by people who don't call you back, parts of the story you can't get. TV gets you access to everyone because people call you back. It also allows you to satisfy your curiosity. I am a very curious person.

A good listener is not only popular everywhere, but after a while, he knows something.

I'm not a big fan of journalism schools, except those that are organized around a liberal arts education. Have an understanding of history, economics and political science - and then learn to write.

I think journalism is useful training for a writer in the way it takes the preciousness out of the pragmatic side of the craft.

I continue to enjoy looking for stories, and trying to do the best job I can reporting and writing them.

I'm a reporter - if I don't interview someone, I don't have much to say, and I definitely can't just sit down and knock out 800 words on any subject you give me.

At the end of the day, there is still one function of journalism that cannot be computerized, and that is reporters. You're always going to need reporters.

One of the most important disciplines in journalism is to challenge your working premises.

I see journalists as the manual workers, the laborers of the word. Journalism can only be literature when it is passionate.

I'm an inexperienced reporter, and I'm still learning.

To me, the newspaper business was a way to learn about life and how things worked in the real world and how people spoke. You learn all the skills - you learn to listen, you learn to take notes - everything you use later as a novelist was valuable training in the newspaper world. But I always wanted to write novels.

Training to be a therapist teaches you to shut up and listen, and that is certainly useful as a writer.