Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and life seen in the newspapers another.
—G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English Journalist, Novelist, Essayist, Poet
The man must have a rare recipe for melancholy, who can be dull in Fleet Street.
—Charles Lamb (1775–1834) British Essayist, Poet
It was when “reporters” became “journalists” and when “objectivity” gave way to “searching for truth,” that an aura of distrust and fear arose around the New Journalist.
—Georgie Anne Geyer (1935–2019) American Journalist, Correspondent
Like Eden’s dead probationary tree, Knowledge of good and evil is from thee.
—William Cowper (1731–1800) English Anglican Poet, Hymn writer
We need not be theologians to see that we have shifted responsibility for making the world interesting from God to the newspaperman.
—Daniel J. Boorstin (1914–2004) American Historian, Academic, Attorney
The dominant and most deep-dyed trait of the journalist is his timorousness. Where the novelist fearlessly plunges into the water of self-exposure, the journalist stands trembling on the shore in his beach robe. The journalist confines himself to the clean, gentlemanly work of exposing the grieves and shames of others.
—Janet Malcolm (1934–2021) American Writer, New Yorker Journalist
Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice; journalism what will be grasped at once.
—Cyril Connolly (1903–74) British Literary Critic, Writer
You can crush a man with journalism.
—William Randolph Hearst (1863-1951) American Newspaper Publisher, Tycoon
I’d get into a room and disappear into the woodwork. Now the rooms are so crowded with reporters getting behind-the-scenes stories that nobody can get behind-the-scenes stories.
—Theodore H. White (1915–86) American Journalist, Historian, Novelist
You will generally find that the person who doesn’t give a continental what the newspapers say about ‘im either one way or the other subscribes to a press clipping bureau anyway.
—Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American Writer, Publisher, Artist, Philosopher
To write weekly, to write daily, to write shortly, to write for busy people catching trains in the morning or for tired people coming home in the evening, is a heartbreaking task for men who know good writing from bad.
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English Novelist
Be careful. Journalism is more addictive than crack cocaine. Your life can get out of balance.
—Dan Rather (b.1931) American Newscaster, Author
Journalism is the entertainment business.
—Frank Herbert (1920–86) American Science Fiction Writer
The daily newspaper sustains the same relation to the young writer as the hospital to the medical student.
—George Horace Lorimer (1867–1937) American Magazine Editor, Writer
Most rock journalism is people who can’t write, interviewing people who can’t talk, for people who can’t read.
—Frank Zappa (1940–93) American Rock Guitarist, Singer, Composer
The real news is bad news.
—Marshall Mcluhan (1911–80) Canadian Writer, Thinker, Educator
Journalism is the first rough draft of history.
—Indian Proverb
If a person is not talented enough to be a novelist, not smart enough to be a lawyer, and his hands are too shaky to perform operations, he becomes a journalist.
—Norman Mailer (1923–2007) American Novelist Essayist
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.
—Harold Evans (1925–2020) British-American Journalist, Writer
Journalism is literature in a hurry.
—Matthew Arnold (1822–88) English Poet, Critic
Personal columnists are jackals and no jackal has been known to live on grass once he had learned about meat—no matter who killed the meat for him.
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American Author, Journalist, Short Story Writer
The journalists have constructed for themselves a little wooden chapel, which they also call the Temple of Fame, in which they put up and take down portraits all day long and make such a hammering you can’t hear yourself speak.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–99) German Philosopher, Physicist
The paper which obtains a reputation for publishing authentic news and only that which is fit to print, … will steadily increase its influence.
—Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919) Scottish-American Industrialist
Evidently there are plenty of people in journalism who have neither got what they liked nor quite grown to like what they get. They write pieces they do not much enjoy writing, for papers they totally despise, and the sad process ends by ruining their style and disintegrating their personality, two developments which in a writer cannot be separate, since his personality and style must progress or deteriorate together, like a married couple in a country where death is the only permissible divorce.
—Claud Cockburn (1904–81) English Journalist
In the real world, nothing happens at the right place at the right time. It is the job of journalists and historians to correct that.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
Journalism is concerned with events, poetry with feelings. Journalism is concerned with the look of the world, poetry with the feel of the world.
—Archibald MacLeish (1892–1982) American Poet, Dramatist
Media is just a word that has come to mean bad journalism.
—Graham Greene (1904–1991) British Novelist, Short Story Writer, Playwright
The lowest form of popular culture—lack of information, misinformation, disinformation, and a contempt for the truth or the reality of most people’s lives—has overrun real journalism. Today, ordinary Americans are being stuffed with garbage.
—Carl Bernstein (1944–73) American Journalist, Writer
The difference between journalism and literature is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
The smarter the journalists are, the better off society is. [For] to a degree, people read the press to inform themselves-and the better the teacher, the better the student body.
—Warren Buffett (b.1930) American Investor
Leave a Reply