Quote

I don't think anybody would argue now that the Internet isn't becoming a major factor in our lives. However, it's very new to us. Newsreaders still feel it is worth a special and rather worrying mention if, for instance, a crime was planned by people 'over the Internet.'

I hate to think of a day where a compelling book or a compelling authorial voice would be lost simply because that person doesn't have a Web site. But I think that, to use the Internet in a positive way, to turn people on to reading, is something that authors shouldn't really shy away from necessarily.

Everything is accessible to everyone all the time, and I think there are wondrous things to treasure with what the Internet has made available to journalists. But I think it's also had some effects that are less pleasant. It has chipped away at a sense of privacy and secrecy.

On the Internet, news is consumed a la carte. If someone shows up on the main page of a website and doesn't see anything of interest, they leave. This negatively impacts ad revenues. The solution on the Internet is to pack news websites full of things that will draw people in, regardless of whether they are news or not.

People really do not have time to read all the newspapers in the world and all the sites that we now commonly use on the web. There is no possibility of keeping up.

I read a lot of news online, but I like buying a paper because I'll read an article I wouldn't normally read. And more often than not, the articles that you don't expect to care about are the ones that grab you.

People are interested in things not necessarily covered by the mainstream media, so they download things online. The categories are growing because people find out that they're not able to get information about stories that are of interest to them on the evening news.

Henry Kissinger once told me he was very concerned about the Internet's impact on people's ability to absorb information in a concentrated way, because we've become accustomed to looking up something, getting a snippet and being satisfied with that - as opposed to reading through and considering a weighty tome that goes into great depth.

I just love when the Internet is wrong. It's the only thing that will save journalism.

In general, I think very few people have a sustained interest in news.