Journalism Practices Quotes

Most "off the record" never continues to be "off the record.

Anonymous sources are a practice of American journalism in the 20th and 21st century, a relatively recent practice. The literary tradition of anonymity goes back to the Bible.

I trained as a journalist in America where paying sources is frowned upon. Now I work in the U.K. where there is a more flexible attitude.

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

My favorite thing is still journalism. I'm almost 50. This has been my life ever since I was in college.

I like to say that journalism is the graduate school from which you never graduate.

News is like the tilefish which appears in great schools off the Atlantic Coast some years and then vanishes, no one knows whither or for how long. Newspapers might employ these periods searching for the breeding grounds of news, but they prefer to fill up with stories about Kurdled Kurds or Calvin Coolidge, until the banks close or a Hitler marches, when they are as surprised as their readers.

I'm a recovering journalist, I should say.

I consider what I do on Deadspin to be based in the foundations of journalism, yes, based on the foundations of journalism that I have been trained and that I certainly use when I write for GQ and The New York Times and so on. Certainly, I think the language can be a little looser on the web, but I am held to the same standards and accuracy everyone else is.

I've had a lot of fun, and when I talk to kids in journalism schools, I say, look, I know what the journalism teachers tell you that this is a great way to perform public service and all that, but I say the main reason, if you decide what you want to do is be a reporter, the main reason you want to do it is because it's just so much fun.

In journalism, we recognize a kind of hierarchy of fame among the famous. We measure it in two ways: by the length of an obituary and by how far in advance it is prepared. Presidents, former presidents, and certain heads of state are at the top of the chain.

A career in journalism suddenly lost its appeal.

In my day a reporter who took an assignment was wholly on his own until he got back to the office, and even then he was little molested until his copy was turned in at the desk; today he tends to become only a homunculus at the end of a telephone wire, and the reduction of his observations to prose is commonly farmed out to literary castrati who never leave the office, and hence never feel the wind of the world in their faces or see anything with their own eyes.

I am not one of the great journalists of my time.

Journalists always like an excuse for why are they talking about something now when they didn't talk about something a week ago. They always like to say something is new.

I want to institutionalise and automate chequebook journalism.

People often think that reporters write their own headlines. In fact, they almost never do. The people who do write headlines are the copy editors who are the front and last lines of quality-checking in a newspaper before it goes to print.

Reporters tend to launch on what seems to be the clearest, most stark aspects of someone's life in terms of an interview.

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

I don't believe in these headline-hunting interviews. That's just not my style.