Quotes About Journalism Writing

#1. For many years I was engaged in journalism, writing articles and chronicles for the daily press without ever joining the staff of any newspaper.

Johannes Vilhelm Jensen

#2. Mike Ruby, a writer in the magazine's Business section, used to call Newsweek writing f - k-style journalism: Flash (the lead), Understanding (the billboard - why is this story important), Clarification (tell the details of the story), and Kicker (bringing it all together with a clever ending).

Lynn Povich

#3. The secret of successful journalism is to make your readers so angry they will write half your paper for you.

C.E.M. Joad

#4. I always thought writing was the foundation and the basis for journalism in the same way being able to draw is the foundation for art.

Bob Schieffer

#5. Writing in journalism teaches you to be very comfortable taking criticism, being edited, and rewriting.

Neil Drumming

#6. There's a lot of essay writing that could pass for journalism and journalism that could pass for essay. Some of it is just taxonomy.

Eula Biss

#7. By far the most common task for which the machines are used is writing - or word processing, as it's known to the same people who call journalism 'content.

Robert Motherwell

#8. A short story is a writer's way of thinking through experience ... Journalism aims at accuracy, but fiction's aim is truth. The writer distorts reality in the interest of a larger truth.

John L'Heureux

#9. See, I have no journalism in my background, so I wasn't practised at research or writing non-fiction, nor at handling the truth in a journalistic way. Journalists know when to call a halt and write something, but I kept on looking for answers.

John Sladek

#10. I come out of journalism, and then book writing. There, it's just you and your editor and maybe a copy desk, looking over your editor's shoulder, and that's the story. It's right there. I can show it to you because it's on paper.

Wendell Pierce

#11. In almost all other professions a man must be able to observe carefully and report accurately what he has seen. Those qualifications are unnecessary for journalists, however, since their job is to write sensational stories that sell newspapers.

Robert Anton Wilson

#12. Definition of rock journalism: People who can't write, doing interviews with people who can't think, in order to prepare articles for people who can't read.

Frank Zappa

#13. Style and voice are different. Style is standard conventions of writing; voice is the distinct way an individual puts words together. All good writers have a near-uniform understanding of style, but a voice all their own.

Naveed Saleh

#14. I think because I came into journalism by way of the Black Panther Party - and not J-school or a corporate bourgeois institution - I tried to do news, writing and reporting that had social, political and racial content and context.

Mumia Abu-Jamal

#15. The lessons learned in journalism also apply. Writing for NPR has taught me to cut a piece in half and then in half again - without losing the essence. Apply that to the swollen prose of a bulky novel and you might reveal a beautiful work.

Julianna Baggott

#16. I've always enjoyed writing, I graduated with a degree in English; I've done bits of journalism.

Michael York

#17. Journalism equals intellectual male prostitution of speech and writing,

Malcolm Lowry

#18. I cherish the review-as-literature; as lapidary journalism in the eighteenth-century mode, the last hard sparkling diamond in theessayists's tarnished crown. To me, writing a good review is not just a way to make extra money, but a sacred duty.

Florence King

#19. When he was alive, you shared a great affinity. A love of writing, books, Shakespeare, journalism, a certain way of looking at the world," Marla says. "You must have felt very validated by him, understood for who you were. Your incredible connection to him was very empowering.

Donna Jackson Nakazawa

#20. Theorists of journalism have long noted parallels to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle in physics: by reporting on something, one subtly but irrevocably changes it.

Ben Yagoda

#21. Poetry allows me to write about what I don't know, whereas journalism demands a higher level of certainty to be worthy of being written.

Eliza Griswold

#22. You don't learn journalism in school, you learn it by WRITING FUCKING JOURNALISM. You teach yourself to wire up your own brain and gut and reproductive organs into one frightening machine that you aim at the planet like a meat gun.

Warren Ellis

#23. Better a good journalist than a poor assassin.

Jean-Paul Sartre

#24. I've been writing screenplays for a long time, and a lot of it came out of the journalism I was doing.

Peter Landesman

#25. I couldn't think about novels at all. It seemed the only writing that was appropriate to that horrendous event was journalism, reportage. And, in fact, I think the profession rose quite honorably to the task. Novelists require a slower turnover, I mean, in time.

Ian McEwan

#26. Required for good fiction: character, conflict, change through time. And if you're really blessed, you get resolution. But life doesn't usually work out that way.

Ted Conover

#27. We journalists love writing about eccentrics. We hate writing about impenetrable, boring people. It makes us look bad: the duller the interviewee, the duller the prose. If you want to get away with wielding true, malevolent power, be boring.

Jon Ronson

#28. I began my writing life as a poet, so poetry has always been fundamental. I evolved from poetry to journalism to stories to novels. But poetry was always there.

Ben Okri

#29. Indeed, tone or voice is what you get when, larynxlike, you breathe through structure.

Lawrence Weschler

#30. I've been able to write at least one book a year for 20 years, and I don't think I would've had that kind of drive if I hadn't come out of the journalism business.

Michael Connelly

#31. Traveling can never be taken for granted, no matter how meticulous the preparations.

Eugene Linden

#32. Most journalists are impatient to get their legwork done and to start the actual writing

David Halberstam

#33. The journalism school helped me develop writing skills, and I had been enjoying cartooning from a very young age. My interest in puppetry, however, came much later.

William Jackson

#34. I've always had standards about writing well. There is art in this business. There is potentially great art.

Gay Talese

#35. Journalism is a team sport. Writing novels is golf: it's you and the ball.

Pete Hamill

#36. Mort moved my ending to the beginning, took out all the adjectives, cut the whole thing in half, and made it one hundred percent better.
'That's how it's done,' he said. Best writing lesson I ever had.

Anita Diamant

#37. Being able to create your own work, being able to indulge your own fantasies is so much better than journalism, so much more fulfilling than journalism, to me, that as long as I can continue to write fiction, I shall.

Tom Robbins

#38. I love writing journalism because it's all over in two hours and comes straight off the top of the head. Writing novels is soooooo much harder. It's the hardest thing I've ever done.

Rachel Johnson

#39. Kathy Dewar, my high-school English teacher, introduced me to journalism. From the moment I wrote my first article for the student paper, I convinced myself that having my name in print - writing in English, interviewing Americans - validated my presence here.

Jose Antonio Vargas

#40. Novel writing should never be confused with journalism. Unfortunately, in the case of Primary Colors, a fair number of journalists confused.

Joe Klein

#41. There is a growing literature about the multitude of journalism's problems, but most of it is concerned with the editorial side of the business, possibly because most people competent to write about journalism are not comfortable writing about finance.

Russell Baker

#42. You can't be wrong in journalism. Take a wrong turn in journalism, and you are writing fiction. You can take a wrong turn in poetry, and something wonderful can happen.

Eliza Griswold

#43. When I got a little older, I started writing for the high school newspaper, 'The Maroon Wave,' and that's when I fell in love with journalism.

Jeannette Walls

#44. I went into journalism to learn the craft of writing and to get close to the world I wanted to write about - police and criminals, the criminal justice system.

Michael Connelly

#45. A lot of people, myself included, are excited about blogging and stuff like that, citizen journalism, but I do remind people that no matter how excited we are, there's no substitute for professional writing, no substitute for professional editing, and no substitute for professional fact-checking.

Craig Newmark

#46. Before this century shall run out, journalism will be the whole press. Mankind will write their book day by day, hour by hour, page by page. Thought will spread abroad with the rapidity of light
instantly conceived, instantly written, instantly understood at the extremities of the earth.

Alphonse De Lamartine

#47. And after about two years, I realized that creative writing was not going to help you ace those biological tests. So I switched over to journalism. I didn't graduate with honors, but I did graduate on time and with some doing.

Bob Schieffer

#48. I went into journalism in a grandiose way. I thought maybe I'd do a little journalism whilst I write the great novel of all time you see
one has to keep oneself afloat.

Neal Ascherson

#49. An exciting and yet highly lucid account of the formation and significance of Karl Kraus's modernist journalism, an activity that Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem regarded as the most Jewish writing in the German language. The Anti-Journalist is the best book I have seen on this engaging topic.

Istvan Deak

#50. I hated the culture [working in the bank], I hated the work. I very quickly realized that this wasn't what I wanted to do. So, after two years, I took some writing courses - I always loved to write - and I figured the only way I was going to get paid to write was in journalism.

Sharif Abdel Kouddous

#51. As journalism dies, I kind of feel like I want some skills besides writing. I'd like to be able to write movies or host TV shows or whatever. Things that I might actually not inherently like quite as much, but are interesting and fun things to do. A good backup plan.

Joel Stein

#52. An editor is someone who is paid to tell a writer what she thinks about how he wrote what he thinks about.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

#53. But my way of writing is rather to think aloud, and follow my own humours, than much to consider who is listening to me; and, if I stop to consider what is proper to be said to this or that person, I shall soon come to doubt whether any part at all is proper.

Thomas De Quincey

#54. Well, my background is journalism. I don't have any creative-writing experience except for one class I took as a sophomore in college.

Dave Eggers

#55. I did my degree in journalism, and I then went on to being a games journalist, reviewing and previewing games and writing about the industry, visiting and interviewing developers.

Rhianna Pratchett

#56. I obviously prefer writing novels but I take my journalism very seriously, and I enjoy doing it between novels. It gives me an opportunity to move in the outside world.

Mordecai Richler

#57. Uncertainty is as good a way as any to kill a story.

Sidney Zion

#58. Writing is for men who can think and feel, not mindless sensation seekers out of nightclubs and bars. But these are bad times. We are condemned to work with upstarts, clowns who no doubt got their training in a circus and then turned to journalism as the appropriate place to display their tricks.

Naguib Mahfouz

#59. (Feedback) People become addicted to it. That's why journalism is so popular, because you want to hear, every day, what people think of what you just wrote. I think a little patience on that front can be good, too.

Zadie Smith

#60. Reading usually precedes writing. And the impulse to write is almost always fired by reading. Reading, the love of reading, is what makes you dream of becoming a writer.

Susan Sontag

#61. All things must be examined, debated, investigated without exception and without regard for anyone's feelings.

Denis Diderot

#62. I started in business journalism from the outside, so when I started writing about markets and business, I was struck by the fact that markets seemed to work well even though people are often irrational, lack good information and are not perfect in the way they think about decisions.

James Surowiecki

#63. He reads every book in his home but it is not enough. The country boy craves stories. He devours every poem and fable in his school and library. Still he hungers. For stories.

Jennifer Lanthier

#64. My first real writing job was at 'Rolling Stone,' so I wrote about rock-and-roll and politics and the like. At the time, I really didn't know what I wanted to write, and I did a bunch of investigative journalism.

Tim Cahill

#65. There is a tradition that sees journalism as the dark side of literature, with book writing at its zenith. I don't agree. I think that all written work constitutes literature, even graffiti.

Eduardo Galeano

#66. The story unfolded quickly as I typed, in a way I was becoming familiar with. There was something about putting the truth on paper, bringing facts into the light of day where everyone could look at them, that made my fingers move faster -- it was becoming one of my favorite sensations on earth.

Gwenda Bond

#67. Writing one's first novel, getting it sold, and shepherding it through the labyrinths of editing, production, marketing, journalism, and social media is an arduous and nerve-wracking process.

Paul Di Filippo

#68. The day you write to please everyone you no longer are in journalism. You are in show business.

Frank Miller

#69. I hope to keep writing journalism as long as I write fiction; it's afforded me such amazing adventures and opportunities. It does take a lot of time, so it's hard to do both at once, but I try to do a big journalism piece every couple of years, and I'll hopefully continue with that.

Jennifer Egan

#70. The best journalism is sometimes about footnotes - when we write small to say something big.

Anthony Shadid

#71. It's a distillation of all I know about writing: short-story writing, screenwriting, journalism - everything. There is no future in the novel, so far as I can see. I'm trying to show where writing is going to be. I may not get there, but I will point the way." In

Gerald Clarke

#72. As well as writing novels and doing short-order journalism, I am also the full-time carer of my husband, who has Alzheimer's. Each day feels like a race that must be run.

Laurie Graham

#73. If a person is not talented enough to be a novelist, not smart enough to be a lawyer, and his hands are too shaky to perform operations, he becomes a journalist.

Norman Mailer

#74. Journalism is writing that first appears in any periodic journal.

William Zinsser

#75. I guess I went into journalism to save the world. I always felt through writing that I wanted to rotate the world slightly.

Carl Honore

#76. I was not going to use writing for advertising or journalism. I would tend bar, load trucks, chauffeur - do whatever it took. But from the moment I took my first writing workshop, I was a writer.

Dennis Lehane

#77. In politics, the pen is at its heaviest because it is weighed down by the collective responsibility it holds towards its people and their future in the eyes of the world.

Aysha Taryam

#78. I think the deepest thing is that many fiction writers tell stories but are not elegant writers. But, we're not writing journalism when we're making literature.

Edward Hirsch

#79. This is the very structure of sports journalism: deification and damnation, death and resurrection, failure and redemption. You succeed so you can falter so you can succeed again. We need a rise and a fall. We need hubris and retribution and recovery.

Will Leitch

#80. In junior high, I was still writing poems and stories. In college, I was a journalism major. When I got out of college, I went to work for an educational publisher, so I was still writing, developing curriculums.

Doreen Cronin

#81. I've still got lots of writing in me. I have not left journalism, but I put it on hold to focus on acting. I love actors. I think it's a crazy thing to do with your life, and I have a tremendous amount of respect for them.

Liane Balaban

#82. The problem of knowledge is that there are many more books on birds written by ornithologists than books on birds written by birds and books on ornithologists written by birds

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

#83. I often attribute my screenwriting to journalism because they drill in the who, what, when, where and why - but we really need to land on that why. That's what I've been exploring in my writing for many years and trying to get better at.

Mara Brock Akil

#84. When people ask what kind of nonfiction I write, I say 'all kinds,' but really I mean I don't write any kind at all: I'm trying to dissolve the borders between memoir and journalism and criticism by weaving them together.

Leslie Jamison

#85. As I said, I had no publisher for What a Carve Up! while I was writing it, so all we had to live off was my wife's money and little bits I was picking up for journalism.

Jonathan Coe

#86. You're miserable, edgy and tired. You're in the perfect mood for journalism.

Warren Ellis

#87. I think there's always satisfaction that comes from digging in and telling a story and being on the front line and writing about it. I think there's a venue available if you look. Even print journalism is in good shape in areas.

Cameron Crowe

#88. I have a journalism degree, but I'd rather be the person who is being written about rather than the person who is writing.

Chris Jericho

#89. If you don't hit a newspaper reader between the eyes with your first sentence, there is no need of writing a second one.

Arthur Brisbane

#90. These empty pages are your future, soon to become your past. They will read the most personal tale you shall ever find in a book.

Anonymous