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Probably the biggest influence on my career was the late John Hersey, who, while he was at 'The New Yorker,' wrote one of the masterpieces of narrative non-fiction, 'Hiroshima.' Hersey was a teacher of mine at Yale, and a friend. He got me to see the possibility of journalism not just as a business but as an art form.

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.

I knew I wanted to be a journalist ever since I was a teenager. While it is interesting and gratifying to be on the business side and to see how that all works, the main reason I kept a business role here was to protect the editorial integrity of Salon.

There are journalists who are drawn to the most extroverted, aggressive jobs because they get an ego high from it. It can be shocking to encounter them and even worse to work with them.

I became a journalist because one didn't have to specialise.

I was a lousy journalist. I could never be objective. Sometimes I invented the whole story.

For me, a really radical position for journalism to take is to stop being cynical. Cynicism is what passes for insight among the mediocre.

I was a writer for 'New York' magazine. I had been to business school, but what did I know? Still, everybody from the receptionists on up to the editor would ask me what they should do with their money.

I firmly believe that any good journalist must essentially be temperamentally an outsider. I don't think full sense of belonging and security is conducive to creativity.

There are a lot of really good skills you get from doing journalism - it completely changed my world and how I interact with other people.