news quotes

After two or three weeks of this madness, you begin to feel As One with
the man who said, "No news is good news." In twenty-eight papers, only
the rarest kind of luck will turn up more than two or three articles of
any interest... but even then the interest items are usually buried deep
around paragraph 16 on the jump (or "Cont. on ...") page...

The Post will have a story about Muskie making a speech in Iowa. The
Star will say the same thing, and the Journal will say nothing at all.
But the Times might have enough room on the jump page to include a line
or so that says something like: "When he finished his speech, Muskie
burst into tears and seized his campaign manager by the side of the neck.
They grappled briefly, but the struggle was kicked apart by an oriental
woman who seemed to be in control."

Now that's good journalism. Totally objective; very active and straight
to the point.
-- Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing '72"

A help wanted add for a photo journalist asked the rhetorical question:

If you found yourself in a situation where you could either save
a drowning man, or you could take a Pulitzer prize winning
photograph of him drowning, what shutter speed and setting would you use?
-- Paul Harvey

I only know what I read in the papers.
-- Will Rogers

Journalism is literature in a hurry.
-- Matthew Arnold

Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.
-- Thomas Jefferson

I read the newspaper avidly. It is my one form of continuous fiction.
-- Aneurin Bevan

And that's the way it is...
-- Walter Cronkite

Everything you read in newspapers is absolutely true, except for that
rare story of which you happen to have first-hand knowledge.
-- Erwin Knoll

If I were to walk on water, the press would say I'm only doing it
because I can't swim.
-- Bob Stanfield

“A raccoon tangled with a 23,000 volt line today. The results blacked
out 1400 homes and, of course, one raccoon.”
-- Steel City News

An editor is one who separates the wheat from the chaff and prints the chaff.
-- Adlai Stevenson

A newspaper is a circulating library with high blood pressure.
-- Arthure "Bugs" Baer

Most rock journalism is people who can't write interviewing people who
can't talk for people who can't read.
-- Frank Zappa

In a medium in which a News Piece takes a minute and an "In-Depth"
Piece takes two minutes, the Simple will drive out the Complex.
-- Frank Mankiewicz

A prominent broadcaster, on a big-game safari in Africa, was taken to a
watering hole where the life of the jungle could be observed. As he
looked down from his tree platform and described the scene into his
tape recorder, he saw two gnus grazing peacefully. So preoccupied were
they that they failed to observe the approach of a pride of lions led
by two magnificent specimens, obviously the leaders. The lions charged,
killed the gnus, and dragged them into the bushes where their feasting
could not be seen. A little while later the two kings of the jungle
emerged and the radioman recorded on his tape: "Well, that's the end of
the gnus and here, once again, are the head lions."

Isn't it conceivable to you that an intelligent person could harbor
two opposing ideas in his mind?
-- Adlai Stevenson, to reporters

A journalist, thrilled over his dinner, asked the chef for the recipe.
Retorted the chef, "Sorry, we have the same policy as you journalists, we
never reveal our sauce."

A New Way of Taking Pills
A physician one night in Wisconsin being disturbed by a burglar, and
having no ball or shot for his pistol, noiselessly loaded the weapon with
small, hard pills, and gave the intruder a "prescription" which he thinks
will go far towards curing the rascal of a very bad ailment.
-- Nevada Morning Transcript, January 30, 1861

All newspaper editorial writers ever do is come down from the hills after
the battle is over and shoot the wounded.

“... And remember: if you don't like the news, go out and make some of
your own.”
-- "Scoop" Nisker, KFOG radio reporter Preposterous Words

Earth Destroyed by Solar Flare -- film clips at eleven.

I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens
who, reading newspapers, live and die in the belief that they have known
something of what has been passing in their time.
-- H. Truman

Journalism will kill you, but it will keep you alive while you're at it.

 *** NEWSFLASH ***

Russian tanks steamrolling through New Jersey!!!! Details at eleven!

FLASH!
Intelligence of mankind decreasing.
Details at ... uh, when the little hand is on the ....

A Hen Brooding Kittens
A friend informs us that he saw at the Novato ranch, Marin county,
a few days since, a hen actually brooding and otherwise caring for three
kittens! The gentleman upon whose premises this strange event is transpiring
says the hen adopted the kittens when they were but a few days old, and that
she has devoted them her undivided care for several weeks past. The young
felines are now of respectable size, but they nevertheless follow the hen at
her cluckings, and are regularly brooded at night beneath her wings.
-- Sacramento Daily Union, July 2, 1861

Never offend people with style when you can offend them with substance.
-- Sam Brown, "The Washington Post", January 26, 1977

You know the great thing about TV? If something important happens
anywhere at all in the world, no matter what time of the day or night,
you can always change the channel.
-- Jim Ignatowski

People who are funny and smart and return phone calls get much better
press than people who are just funny and smart.
-- Howard Simons, "The Washington Post"

“The New York Times is read by the people who run the country. The
Washington Post is read by the people who think they run the country. The
National Enquirer is read by the people who think Elvis is alive and running
the country ...”
-- Robert J Woodhead