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You're under pressure when you produce facts. You're working with facts in journalism, but you're under all kinds of formal constraints; there are expectations.

Headline writing is an art form.

Headline writing is tough because often times you are given a predetermined number of spaces and words depending on the layout and the type of the story.

Headlines are so great in a sense that they can take a little bit from an article completely out of context and blow it into something it's not. Some people really only read headlines.

People often think that reporters write their own headlines. In fact, they almost never do. The people who do write headlines are the copy editors who are the front and last lines of quality-checking in a newspaper before it goes to print.

In journalism, there has always been a tension between getting it first and getting it right.

It is grievous to read the papers in most respects, I agree. More and more I skim the headlines only, for one can be sure what is carried beneath them quite automatically, if one has long been a reader of the press journalism.

In a newspaper, you only have so much room. It teaches you the value of getting to the point, of not pampering yourself with your glorious writing. I've always been much more interested in one powerful sentence that stays with you. That's my style.

Careful writing is important for many reasons, not least that intelligent but hurried reporters will trust the presser, resulting in a cascade of secondary damage.