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When U.S.-based editors and columnists parachute into a news storm, it is often the stringers who keep us out of trouble, helping us glimpse the complexity behind the headlines.

I used to think that the image of the press in the 1940s - a bunch of guys in hats screaming on the courthouse steps - was all baloney. I used to say, 'I know reporters. We're not like that.' But we are.

People are looking to have more meaning in their lives. It is a sign the technology community is coming of age.

I think when companies are struggling, they don't want to talk to the press. The guys who write business books aren't interested in it because nobody wants to learn what it's like to be a mess, you want to learn how to be successful. That's slanted the whole thing quite a bit.

Things are rarely as exciting or dramatic as we make them out to be in the press.

There may be something to the suggestion about the pace of technological change intimidating writers, though - it's been awfully hard to keep ahead of real developments.

People are hysterical about the death of newspapers, and I would say, 'They're not dying; they're just kind of reinventing themselves.'

The press is still investing itself, it seems to me, in a sort of cynicism. It comes out better for them if they can predict hard times, bogging down, sniping, attrition.

The American press has the blues. Too many authorities have assured it that its days are numbered, too many good newspapers are in ruins.

The trouble with progress is that it tends to happen slowly and quietly. It's not necessarily going to shout about itself, or make the nightly news like a disaster or a scandal would.