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Television news is now entertainment, and the stories are being written by the people that have a special interest in them.

People hear about stuff from their friends or a magazine or a newspaper.

Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and life seen in the newspapers is another.

I do know something about the news world. I was sitting on the floors of newsrooms since I was seven years old, and I've been around them my whole life. I understand that someone looks at a story with famous people in it, and you want to put it out.

I think any journalist who spends time in a place realizes that there are lots of stories around beyond their primary story. You meet so many interesting people and have all kinds of experiences.

People magazine had been around for a short period of time, but nobody had thought about putting entertainment news on a nightly basis on television.

There was a time in the 1930s when magazine writers could actually make a good living. 'The Saturday Evening Post' and 'Collier's' both had three stories in each issue. These were usually entertaining, and people really went for them. But then television came along, and now of course, information technology... the new way of killing time.

I've always admired the tradition of storytellers who sat in the public market and told their stories to gathered crowds. They'd start with a single premise and talk for hours - the notion of one story, ever-changing but never-ending.

Stories, as we're taught in journalism school early on, are told through people. Those stories make our documentaries powerful. You can explore someone's culture, you can explore their experience, you can explore an issue through human beings who are going through it.

I have great family and good friends; the stories I told became popular, and people all over the world bought them.