Paula Zahn Quotes

Whether people care enough about local news to pay for it is, sadly, an entirely different question than whether our democracy requires a strong watchdog function at the local level to ensure safeguards against abuse, chicanery, and outright dishonesty.

I've always been a firm believer in local news, because it's an opportunity to connect with the community where you live.

In essence, I see the value of journalism as resting in a twofold mission: informing the public of accurate and vital information, and its unique ability to provide a truly adversarial check on those in power.

It won't make for a quiet life but it will make for an interesting paper vastly more significant because it is doing something only a daily paper can do.

Read the editorial page of your local paper. It introduces you to opinion and can be terrifically provocative and perhaps a great motivating force for you to get involved in your community, regardless of your political ideology.

My goal, as always, is simply to inform the public about an issue that is nearly impossible for them to learn about on their own. That is my only goal as a reporter.

I have this sort of heuristic view that journalism, we possibly offer hope because the world is clearly run by total nincompoops more than ever... Not that journalism is always wonderful - it's not - but at least we offer some way out, some integrity.

These communities that are losing local news coverage are losing something deeper. They're losing a connection to American democracy. And those connections must be rebuilt. We need more of a bottom-up sense of what it means to produce news.

Part of our pedagogy is, you report on what's going on in your neighborhood and your city.

I'm a unicorn in the world of journalism; I've stayed in the same mid-sized city, and that staying has allowed me to write two deeply-reported books.

I was drawn to journalism as a young guy because I felt like there was some purpose to it, not always but sometimes.

The function of journalism is, primarily, to uncover vital new information in the public interest and to put that information in a context so that we can use it to improve the human condition.

I am a big believer in the power of journalism; it's a heroic pursuit.

It's important that communities support local, independent journalism, which many people rely upon for information relevant to their daily lives.

I have been asking if I'm an activist or a journalist. And my answer is very simple. I'm just a journalist who asks questions.

Anybody who's spent thirteen or fourteen years in print journalism has a lot of stories he thinks were inwardly satisfying as far as preparation, understanding, and diligence.

Journalism is a way of voicing opinion, of participating in the political, social, or cultural debate.

I believe that young kids have agency and can make a difference in the world.

There are a lot of ways to make a positive impact on the community without necessarily being a politician.

I don't understand Chicago, but I really do hope that the Commander-in-Chief addresses his home town. I think those young kids don't see outside their small box. I think they don't see outside their circumstances, so they kind of resort to anything.

That's what I think a journalist from the '70s and '80s should look like - as though he has led a full journalistic life.

When we make these decisions that we're going to commit ourselves to making a difference in the life of one person every single day, what happens is we actually build a whole generation of citizen leaders.

I will always treasure the nearly 3 years I spent working for James O'Keefe as an undercover journalist at Project Veritas.

You've got a bunch of kids out here that might not want to be athletes, but they want to learn how to make a difference in their community, and I'm trying to as best I can show an example of that.

A+E has always looked in places where others didn't want to look. There's a service in that.