Certainly in my own body of reporting, I was very acutely aware of the risk of any mischaracterized journalism and the need for anything I put out to be absolutely bulletproof.
Every patient tends to bury the most important story inside some other story, just the way new writers often 'bury the lede.' 'Burying the lede' is an old journalism term for when you only find out the real point about halfway into the article, but it also applies to therapy.
I think we in journalism were really late to social networks. We had a built-in network already in terms of our readers, and we didn't capitalize on that.
Before Truman Capote, journalism and non-fiction weren't taken very seriously.
The journalism school helped me develop writing skills, and I had been enjoying cartooning from a very young age. My interest in puppetry, however, came much later.
I graduated from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill with degrees in journalism and Spanish in 2001 and landed my first on-air job in Charlottesville, Va.
Online journalism has always had a sourcing problem. From using unverified 'anonymous tips' to repeating whatever rumor or speculation people are chattering about, the general ethic is, 'We'll publish just about anything.'
AIM started in 1997, and I remember when I started using it in earnest, in 1999, when I joined TheStreet.com from 'The San Jose Mercury News'. We digital journalism pioneers communicated obsessively by AIM, and as a newbie, I recall being amazed that the whole newsroom was 'chatting' this way.
I was not going to use writing for advertising or journalism. I would tend bar, load trucks, chauffeur - do whatever it took. But from the moment I took my first writing workshop, I was a writer.
I started writing by doing small related things but not the thing itself, circling it and getting closer. I had no idea how to write fiction. So I did journalism because there were rules I could learn. You can teach someone to write a news story. They might not write a great one, but you can teach that pretty easily.
When I say that I went to grad school in Iowa City, people often assume that I went to the famed writers' workshop MFA program at the University of Iowa. I didn't. I got a master's in journalism.
I kind of knew inside that I wanted to try comedy, but it was a mystery. How do you start? So when I hit 30 and I had done everything I wanted to do in journalism, so I went to a comedy class. I figured I'd learn how to do five minutes and see how it feels.
What I am is something unbearable for the world of journalism and the world of cliches. I'm a realist.
One of the great cliches of campaign journalism is the notion that American elections have long since ceased to be about issues and ideas.
I figure no matter what interview I do, the real good 'journalists' are going to find the completely irrelevant quotes that will drum up some controversy and stick it on their page to get some clicks and completely miss the real context of what the interview is about. That's what we do nowadays and call it 'journalism.'
No industry in living memory has collapsed faster than daily print journalism.
The critical importance of honest journalism and a free flowing, respectful national conversation needs to be had in our country. But it is being buried as collateral damage in a war whose battles include political correctness and ideological orthodoxy.
Journalism, as concerns collecting information, differs little if at all from intelligence work. In my judgment, a journalist's job is very interesting.
Objective journalism and an opinion column are about as similar as the Bible and Playboy magazine.
I majored in journalism at Arizona State University, where I began writing the columns I write now, but I cannot, in good conscience, refer to myself as a writer. I'm a columnist, maybe a journalist, I guess I'm an author, but writer... no. That's not up to me to call myself, that's rather lofty. It's for the reader to decide.