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I think all good reporting is the same thing - the best attainable version of the truth.

The first step in good reporting is good snooping.

It's not just that reporting gives you a bigger slice of life, gives - lends verisimilitude to what you are doing - it's that it feeds the imagination.

I don't think journalism changes. It's about digging into stories and telling them well. The basic tenets of great reporting stay the same while things around it change. Technology has made reporting easier, but it has also caused job loss. Social media has increased discussion around topics, but it has its own challenges at times.

Reporting provides reminders that things are always more complicated than you think.

One of the exciting things about reporting is going to places you've never been to before.

I used to work for a newspaper that covered local resource issues, and my coworkers and friends were journalists. Their reporting work was always pretty grim.

Good reporting should have the same standard as in a courtroom - beyond a reasonable doubt.

When you practice reporting for as long as I have, you keep yourself at a distance from True Believers. Either conservatives or liberals or Democrats or Republicans.

I love to run smart essays and commentary. But it doesn't replace the other kind of reporting.