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There aren't enough good journalists. There are too many who really weren't groomed to be reporters and, as a result, some of the reporting is shallow.

I think some of the best reporters are the ones who can really illustrate the differences between societies, at the same time trying to connect the fact that there are a lot of shared values in addition to those differences.

I've always thought of myself as a reporter.

Reporters now are better educated than the crowd I knew when I broke in. We still had guys shaped by Prohibition and the Depression, so the news business still had badly paid people who loved it for the life, because every day was different.

I think people of my generation became journalists - you know, right after the broadcast pioneer fathers - because we wanted to report the big stories.

Some of our best journalists take themselves even more seriously than the politicians they write about.

I had pictured journalism as I'd seen it in the most ennobling films, where the reporter battles for the truth, propelled by conviction, and is triumphant. There are journalists who fit that ideal.

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.

I've been avoiding journalists my whole life.

The best writers who have put pen to paper have often had a journalism background.