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You can't expect that because you find a story and report it out that your newspaper and broadcasting company is going to want to publish and broadcast it - and you're going to be a hero.

Newspaper reporting is really storytelling. We call our articles 'stories,' and we try to tell them in a way that even people who don't know all the background can understand them.

If you're a good journalist, what you do is live a lot of things vicariously, and report them for other people who want to live vicariously.

But there's a big difference between, say, reporting on a story and simply making up a story.

My inclination, as an old-school, classically trained journalist, is not to go with a story unless I have it hard. It's not good enough to say something based on rumors that were flying around.

Most reporters who come to me get their stories directly from press releases. Very few do what one would consider to be their professional duty.

When we report stories, we don't just want to talk to people who did the right thing. We want to talk to people who did the wrong thing.

I have nothing to do with the selection of stories. I'm the reporter.

Many people have their reputations as reporters and analysts because they are on television, batting around conventional wisdom. A lot of these people have never reported a story.

In journalism I can only tell what happened. In fiction, I can show it.