Writers and Editors

". . .without a truly free and independent press, this 250-year-old experiment in self-government will not make it. I am no romantic about journalism. Some of my best friends are journalists. We are all fallen creatures, like everyone else. But I believe more fervently than ever that as journalism goes, so goes democracy."
~Bill Moyers in a speech to the National Conference on Media Reform

"To love what you do and feel that it matters — how could anything be more fun?"
~ Katharine Graham

“Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”
~ Thomas Jefferson

"Every journalist has a novel in him, which is an excellent place for it."
~Russell Lynes

"Journalism is literature in a hurry."
~ Matthew Arnold

"Some of the qualities that go into making a good reporter — aggressiveness, a certain sneakiness, a secretive nature, nosiness, the ability to find out that which someone wants hidden, the inability to take "no" with any sort of grace, a taste for gossip, rudeness, a fair disdain for what people will think of you and an occasional and calculated disregard for rules — are also qualities that go into making a very antisocial human being."
~ Linda Ellerbee, And So It Goes

"Being a reporter is as much a diagnosis as a job description."
~ Anna Quindlen, in The New York Times (1993)