journalistic skills Quotes

Julie Chen. She's my ultimate celebrity idol. I think she's one of the most amazing interviewers and hosts ever - and would kill to pick her brain. I am a fangirl of talent, so to see someone slaying the competition doing what I'd love to do, that's inspiring to me.

I'm a reasonably accomplished journalist. I've worked as an investigative journalist, I've done crime beat stuff.

Although we were never pals and occasionally butted heads, my relationship with Clinton and his wife, Hillary, made me a better journalist.

Journalism isn't about how smart you are. It's not about where you're from. It's not about who you know or how clever your questions are. And thank God for that. It's about your ability to embrace change and uncertainty. It's about being fearless personally and professionally.

There aren't enough good journalists. There are too many who really weren't groomed to be reporters and, as a result, some of the reporting is shallow.

I do think my childhood is one of the fundamental reasons that I'm able to do my job. We were raised in this totally nonjudgmental family. We never knew who was going to walk in the front door. And as a journalist and a photographer, you walk into so many different scenes that you have to be open to everything.

Fiction writing and journalism, in my experience, are really excellent training grounds for each other.

I can enjoy an Arsenal-Chelsea match without having to worry about getting exclusive quotes afterwards from one of the participants as he makes his way to his Bentley. I was never very good at steaming up to someone and engaging them in conversation like that.

My formal education as an extension to my college degree in journalism was the time that I spent working with the student newspaper. I would argue that my greatest education occurred by working for the student newspaper. It wasn't necessarily the classroom work that made my formal education special. It was the idea that I had the opportunity to practice it before I went into the real world.

I don't usually read reviews. I usually read the interviews, just because I figure it's a good way to try to do them better if I ever have to do them again.

Journalism taught me how to write a sentence that would make someone want to read the next one. You are trained to get rid of anything nonessential. You go in, you start writing your article, assuming a person's going to stop reading the minute you give them a reason. So the trick is: don't give them one.

Journalists like to talk and write and produce, but the most important part of that process is learning how to listen. And that's what makes you a good journalist.

Whenever you can bring your chops in as a reporter to unearth a cool story, that's always a good thing.

Reporters have to use their imagination, really put themselves in the shoes of the person they want to interview.

One of the skills of a journalist, though, is to find people who can teach him what he needs to know. So instead of taking courses, I've been very lucky in that I found teachers - scientists, especially - who were willing to teach me what I needed to know, whether it was about genetically modified crops or how photosynthesis works, and so on. I just find my teachers and don't have to pay for my education.

From journalism I learned to write under pressure, to work with deadlines, to have limited space and time, to conduct and interview, to find information, to research, and above all, to use language as efficiently as possible and to remember always that there is a reader out there.

Of necessity, we made the discovery that it is easier to turn poets into business journalists than to turn bookkeepers into writers.

A reporter is never put off by somebody not wanting to be interviewed.

People like Bryant Gumbel and Bob Costas are terrific broadcasters because they get challenged every day.