John Gardner Quotes

Dullness is the only crime for which an editor ought to be hung.

I think editors have to come out of a certain kind of community.

You can verify that in news meetings I sometimes say, 'This is skewed too far to the left,' or 'The mix of stories seems overweeningly appealing to a reader with a certain set of sensibilities, and it shouldn't.'

You're at the mercy of the editors' hands.

Newspaper editors are men who separate the wheat from the chaff, and then print the chaff.

Most rock journalism is people who can't write, interviewing people who can't talk, for people who can't read.

There's usually one piece in 'Vanity Fair' every month that grabs me, but when it presents hatchet jobs without substantiation to impress its liberal friends, I laugh first, then toss.

I think people are confusing the right to write with the right to be published.

My mother, at least twice, cancelled our family's subscription to the newspaper I was working on, because she was so mad about its treatment of my father.

The press don't like to say nice things because nice is boring. It's much better to label me the devil. What we do is not brain surgery. We are entertainers, plain and simple, and we're responsible to bring that money back, to make a profit.

A specific editor in a specific place likes the book, and you're in. A different editor on a different day goes, 'Oh, this isn't for me', or doesn't even look at it, and that's it.

What happened was very sad. Mr. Lacey told the staff that he was disappointed and appalled that the front of the book was all commentary and that he wanted hard news.

Very few editors worry about heresy - their goals are much too commercial, thank goodness.

The Media is ruled by Satan. But yet I wonder if many Christians fully understand that.

The secret of a successful newspaper is to take one story each day and bang the hell out of it. Give the public what it wants to have and part of what it ought to have whether it wants it or not.

We don't need to dumb down our stuff. And it's important to know how far we can push readers.

Curators are great, but they're inherently biased. Curators are always making an editorial decision. Those biases have really big implications.

Publishers vet books, and they do a good job keeping out the low quality. But they also miss some good quality.

A good newspaper is never nearly good enough but a lousy newspaper is a joy forever.

For the most part, editors no longer view 'Doonesbury' as a rolling provocation, which is fine by me. It makes no sense to intentionally antagonize the very people on whose support you most depend.

There are two kinds of editors, those who correct your copy and those who say it's wonderful.

The decision of what, when, and how to publish is for editors, not judges.

For my part though silent I have at times felt that I would prefer to be governed by Davis, Beauregard & Bragg, [than] to be thus abused by a set of dirty newspaper scribblers who have the impudence of Satan. They come into camp, poke around among the lazy shirks & pick up their camp Rumors & publish them as facts.... They are a pest and Shall not approach me, and I will treat them as spies, which in truth they are.

'The New York Times' is a great newspaper: it is also No Fun.

Writing works when publications are writing and serving the best interest of their users; numbers are good yardstick but not a way to compensate a person.