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The fact of the matter is, particularly when covering a campaign, which is a very high-speed story, it's incredibly unusual for the reporter to be in the same place as the dateline when the story is filed.

On time is 10 minutes late.

'Monday Night Football' has the good and the bad points. The bad point is you have to wait around all day, and it disrupts your schedule for the next week. Now you have one less day to prepare for the following week.

It's not like I just have to go to Washington and go to the White House everyday, and go to the same press conference at 10 in the morning and then be briefed at 4 in the afternoon, and then get a story on at 6.

Things happened there that I don't think are the finest hours for anybody, whether it was a journalist, the legal system or, in that case of the political system, who would say that was an example of when Washington worked best.

The deadlines are much, much longer with books. When I was a reporter, a lot of times I'd come in at 8:30 a.m., get an assignment right away, interview somebody, turn the story in by 9:30, and have the finished story in the paper that landed on my desk by noon.

The news changes every day. So it's not like being involved in any litigation that goes on for four years, and the trial lasts three months.

It's not a 24-hour news cycle, it's a 60-second news cycle now, it's instantaneous. It has never been easier to get away with telling lies. It has never been easier to get away with the glib one liner.

I was once hired to write a column for 'The Guardian' and then got fired before I'd submitted my first one. That was unusual. Most newspapers wait until I've written at least one piece for them before firing me.