I had the chance to make every possible mistake and figure out a way to recover from it. Once you realize there is life after mistakes, you gain a self-confidence that never goes away.
I think journalism is a great way to do public service, to have an impact on your community.
American politics used to be an amateur sport. But somewhere along the way, we handed over to professionals all the things people used to do for free.
I always thought writing was the foundation and the basis for journalism in the same way being able to draw is the foundation for art.
The truth is the Super Bowl long ago became more than just a football game. It's part of our culture, like turkey at Thanksgiving and lights at Christmas, and like those holidays - beyond their meaning - a factor in our economy.
Talk about threats to national security -- how about government so big, so complicated and so unmanageable, it cant get out of its own way?
And after about two years, I realized that creative writing was not going to help you ace those biological tests. So I switched over to journalism. I didn't graduate with honors, but I did graduate on time and with some doing.
Good policy always trumps bad public relations and the best PR can't trump bad policy.
It's no longer just reporting the headlines of the day, but trying to put the headlines into some context and to add some perspective into what they mean.
And I came away from that experience, and it was a very difficult experience - I came to understand that you have to practice at being a good father and practice at being a good husband, just as you have to practice at being a good journalist.
Well, you know, in any political campaign, you're gonna have people on one side that are gonna slip a reporter something because they think it'll hurt the guy on the other side.
But if you don't enjoy doing something, you'll be miserable no matter how much money you make.
Had there been a reporter along with Lieutenant Calley when he massacred those people in Vietnam, I think that probably wouldn't have happened.
There's fierce competition between all the networks to get the guest who can bring the most pertinent information about whatever the story of the moment happens to be.
Nowadays I'm not even sure if newspapers take into account whether a person is a good writer.
When Sam Snead was asked how to putt, he said, 'Putt for one hundred dollars'.
The government's view is that the best time to announce bad news, news that it doesn't want the public to dwell on is late on a Friday, when it will wind up in the Saturday papers, which if you were readers, then the week day editions. A holiday weekend is even better.
A great deal of our ratings on the morning news are people who died during the night with their TV on.
At the White House, everybody works for the same person. They're all part of the same company. But on Capitol Hill, they're all independent contractors. They all work for themselves. That's a formula for getting news.
I can't think of any other job in journalism where the newsmakers come to you.
The Iraq war was fought by one-half of one percent of us. And unless we were part of that small group or had a relative who was, we went about our lives as usual most of the time: no draft, no new taxes, no changes. Not so for the small group who fought the war and their families.
The truth is the Super Bowl long ago became more than just a football game.
They've asked me to do this temporarily. I don't know what temporarily means. Life is temporary.
A police reporter walks into the worst moment in someone's life on every single story that he covers. It's not like being a sports reporter. That's a great job and all that and takes certain skills. But, you know, they're glad to see you when you show up to cover the football game. Nobody is ever glad to see a police reporter when he shows up.
We now assume that when people turn on the evening news, they basically already know what the news is. They've heard it on the radio. They've seen it on the Internet. They've seen it on one of the cable companies. So that makes our job a bit different.
