Journalism makes you think fast. You have to speak to people in all walks of life. Especially local journalism.
I read about eight newspapers in a day. When I'm in a town with only one newspaper, I read it eight times.
I don't pay any attention to what the 'Baltimore Sun' editorial page says about anything.
I believe that a newspaper is a great civic asset and that ownership is best in the hands of foundations or wealthy families that want to own it for reasons other than maximizing profits. I also believe newspapers should remain in local hands.
These communities that are losing local news coverage are losing something deeper. They're losing a connection to American democracy. And those connections must be rebuilt. We need more of a bottom-up sense of what it means to produce news.
My worry about the New York Times is that it's got the only position as a national elitist general-interest paper. So the network news picks up its cues from the Times. And local papers do too. It has a huge influence. And we'd love to challenge it.
If you take the more general role of going to local stations around the country in Montana or South Carolina or wherever, and start in the local news, it's a lot more difficult to get to the stories that you want to really cover.
I've been doing the 'Sherman's Lagoon' strip for about 18 years, and I was a political cartoonist before that for my hometown paper in Alexandria, Va.
Newspapers have an extraordinary amount of local content, including real estate listings and restaurant reviews.
I'm a unicorn in the world of journalism; I've stayed in the same mid-sized city, and that staying has allowed me to write two deeply-reported books.
At Al Jazeera, we are getting our local Somalis, Yemenis and Sudanese, local correspondents from within the society, who understand much better than the people who come from overseas. We will get a much better insight.
There are so many websites I read; I look at everything from Slashdot to Ars Technica to the business technology sites, major newspapers like the 'New York Times,' and my local papers where I live, which cover the sports teams I'm involved with. There are about 20 sites we go to regularly, and I do use Twitter and Facebook as well.
I always love it when a small paper wins. When I was growing up in the Bronx, the editor of the Riverdale Press - a neighborhood rag - kept submitting his columns for a Pulitzer. We laughed and laughed at his ego. He finally won.
My perfect day in Baltimore begins with getting my five newspapers. Then I would write.
When I was a 12-year-old middle-schooler in Richmond, Virginia, my local newspaper published an op-ed that I wrote all by myself.
I've traveled around the country and I read local newspapers and all of that, and it's a sad, sad thing to go from city to city and see the small newspapers and they're tiny. They're tiny not only in size but also in scope.
Longer distances yield local media coverage that tends to be more one-dimensional and absolute, less nuanced, and more sporadic.
There's a kind of journalistic narcissism that New York-based journalists are guilty of.
When U.S.-based editors and columnists parachute into a news storm, it is often the stringers who keep us out of trouble, helping us glimpse the complexity behind the headlines.
I get 'USA Today,' the 'New York Times,' 'Wall Street Journal' and the 'Star-Telegram' at my doorstep. I can't do without them.
There is no substitute for a local newspaper that is doing its job.
My local newspaper, the 'Bend Bulletin,' interviewed me while I was at high school after I had just signed with the University of Oregon. I remember I wore a University of Oregon hooded sweatshirt, and they took a picture of me in the long jump pit. I was freezing!
The media has to go local and go social.
I started in local news in South Carolina, so viewers there supported me. We had a morning show that we put to No. 1, and then I moved to San Antonio, Texas, and we became the No. 1 morning show there, too.
People essentially like local news better than network news.
