Thomas Friedman Quotes

You can't be a reporter using Google. It can be a tool. But you have to get out of the house.

History, like journalism, is ever a journey outwards, and you must report back what you find and no more.

As a journalist, the details always tell the story.

The initial research will be very indiscriminate. I do a lot of reading, buy a stack of books and read and digest them, and then I start doing phone interviews and archival research and then the travelling.

When I'm anchoring, I miss chasing stories in the field.

I'm a journalist and author. I make my living by finding things out and writing about them.

In journalism it is simpler to sound off than it is to find out. It is more elegant to pontificate than it is to sweat.

Oh, it's essential. I mean, you have to - if I'm writing about the Middle East, I have to go there, and if possible, stay long enough to get a real feeling for what's going on.

The first step in good reporting is good snooping.

I don't think I ever wanted to be a journalist - I was more interested in what comes from being a journalist.

I have learned as a journalist that if you look long enough and hard enough and carefully enough, most truths are discoverable.

Report, report, report. Dig, dig, dig. Think, think, think. Don't stop being a reporter because you've become a columnist.

I know that I work hard for the things that I do, and I really go to the places that I report on.

I have interviewed face-to-face, sitting beside me, over 19,000 people.

You can’t report on something that you don’t know about.

Find out what happened and put it in the paper

People often talk about parachute journalism, but one of the skills that you get when you are a correspondent is the ability to look at facts fast and work out what the story is.

I think the best research is people you meet and things that they say, rather than second hand accounts of something. I think when you meet someone and talk to them, then you get the real thing and that's what you can use. That's the material you can actually put on the page.

I've been a journalist for too long to stop calling myself a journalist, and also when I'm doing 'Fake or Fortune?' I'm going through a rigorous investigation.

A journalist finds out things by asking questions of people who know.

I approach stories as a private educational enterprise: I want to learn about something. I teach myself through research, reporting, and thinking, and then, when I feel like I know the story, I tell it to readers.

The research is the most interesting part… That’s how I work. I go some place and I walk it and I talk to people until I find what I’ve come for. Or not. Fortunately, I tend to find what I’m after.

I really admire really good reporters. Obviously not the gossip ones, but it could be quite an interesting profession, depending on what you're investigating.

It's very important to get out, to do reporting. It's also really interesting. I come at it as a journalist, and I think that's helped me, and I come at it as someone who sees nature wherever he looks, and that helps.

People en masse have lost the ability to go out there and meet people in real life.