All successful newspapers are ceaselessly querulous and bellicose. They never defend anyone or anything if they can help it; if the job is forced upon them, they tackle it by denouncing someone or something else..
I really consider myself a writer, and a writer who is sometimes a social critic. I'm not an ideologue, I don't join a party. I follow along and take notes. Sometimes I throw in my two cents.
I know there are reporters who ridicule pundits.
I often don't read reviews.
I have yet to see a piece of writing, political or non-political, that doesn't have a slant. All writing slants the way a writer leans, and no man is born perpendicular, although many men are born upright.
A writer will not keep quiet. He will express his opinion through writings.
Our most noted satirists are true columnists, and their opinions can be worth more than any well-documented expose.
Editorials are editorials. They a supposed to have an opinion, even a very strong one.
I'm not a great Maureen Dowd fan, because I really find her poisonous, on the record.
I have written on all sorts of subjects... yet I have no enemies; except indeed all the Whigs, all the Tories, and all the Christians.
Give a critic an inch, he'll write a play.
Novelists, it seems to me, are the very last people who should be asked to comment on the news of the day, and sooner or later, when they have been pilloried for their views, most of them recognise this.
I realized I couldn't be a journalist because I like to take a side, to have an opinion and a point a view; I liked to step across the imaginary boundary of the objective view that the journalist is supposed to have and be involved.
I like to say that a 'Times' editorial presents a strong opinion based on reality.
If you're doing a column, you kind of have to. Like in the back of Sports Illustrated, Rick Reilly has to find something to be mad about. It's not really the way I approach things.
I look for strong people. I don't like people who'll say yes to everything I might bring up. I want people who can argue and disagree and have a point of view that's reflected in the magazine. My dad believed in the cult of personality. He brought great writers and columnists to 'The Standard.'
When you're given a newspaper column, you're not being paid to sit on a fence and scratch your chin and say 'On the one hand this' and 'On the other hand that.' You're getting paid for your opinion.
A little irreverence is always important to being a columnist. I try to do that.
I hate reading reviews.
I don't read reviews.
I have sparred with commenters as a music writer (on The Rumpus, among other places, see e.g., my review about Taylor Swift), and that was plenty of training!
The thing that has always baffled me about people's perception of my writing is the sense that I'm a very controversial, opinionated, polarizing person. I feel like I write about things that I'm interested in, and I describe why they're interesting to me. I could be negative, I guess. It's far easier to write why something is terrible than why it's good.
If I have a certain opinion, I try to incorporate that into my work.
We probably give newspaper columnists too much weight.
There's one thing I know for sure: When I'm most opinionated, my writing sucks.
