Newsroom Quotes

He wandered into the Newsroom and asked for a job the same way he’d walk into a barbershop and ask for a haircut, and with no more idea of being turned down.

I'm a registered Republican, I only seem liberal because I believe that hurricanes are caused by high barometric pressure and not gay marriage.

The media have the ability to attract the craziest people to call in perfectly absurd tips. Every newsroom in the world gets updates from UFOlogists, graphologists, scientologists, paranoiacs, and every sort of conspiracy theorist.

The greater fool is actually an economic term. It’s a patsy. For the rest of us to profit, we need a greater fool— someone who will buy long and sell short. Most people spend their life trying not to be the greater fool; we toss him the hot potato, we dive for his seat when the music stops. The greater fool is someone with the perfect blend of self-delusion and ego to think that he can succeed where others have failed. This whole country was made by greater fools.

literally: This word should be deleted. All too often, actions described as “literally” did not happen at all. As in, “He literally jumped out of his skin.” No, he did not. Though if he literally had, I’d suggest raising the element and proposing the piece for page one. Inserting “literally” willy-nilly reinforces the notion that breathless nitwits lurk within this newsroom. Eliminate on sight—the usage, not the nitwits. The nitwits are to be captured

As you can see, the hyphen is a nasty, tricky, evil little mark that gets its kicks igniting arguments in newsrooms and trying to make everyone in the English-speaking world look like an idiot - it's the Bill Maher of punctuation.

We lead the world in only 3 categories: number of incarcerated citizens per capita, number of adults who believe angels are real, and defense spending, where we spend more than the next 26 countries combined, 25 of whom are allies. Now none of this is the fault of 20 year old college student, but you nonetheless are without a doubt a member of the worst period generation period ever period, so when you ask what makes us the greatest country in the world I don't know what the f^&k you're talking about.

She's a person; the doctor pronounces her dead, not the news.

The nerds have taken over the newsrooms.

Rumors never actually die in newsrooms, floating instead like ghosts in the still air above the conversation until relevant again. Newsrooms are as haunted as Louisiana cemeteries.

Intelligence is the ability to solve a problem, to decipher a riddle, to master a set of facts. Judgment is the ability to orbit a problem or a set of facts and see it as it might be seen through other eyes, by observers with different biases, motives, and backgrounds. It is also the ability to take a set of facts and move it in place and time—perhaps to a hearing room or a courtroom, months or years in the future—or to the newsroom of a major publication or the boardroom of a competitor. Intelligence is the ability to collect and report what the documents and witnesses say; judgment is the ability to say what those same facts mean and what effect they will have on other audiences.

The genuflection toward 'fairness' is a familiar newsroom piety, in practice the excuse for a good deal of autopilot reporting and lazy thinking but in theory a benign ideal. In Washington, however, a community in which the management of news has become the single overriding preoccupation of the core industry, what 'fairness' has often come to mean is a scrupulous passivity, an agreement to cover the story not as it is occurring but as it is presented, which is to say as it is manufactured.

Back at the office, Woodward went to the rear of the newsroom to call Deep Throat. Bernstein wished he had a source like that. The only source he knew who had such comprehensive knowledge in any field was Mike Schwering, who owned Georgetown Cycle Sport Shop. There was nothing about bikes - and, more important, bike thieves - that Schwering didn't know. Bernstein knew something about bike thieves: the night of the Watergate indictments, somebody had stolen his 10-speed Raleigh from a parking garage. That was the difference between him and Woodward. Woodward went into a garage to find a source who could tell him what Nixon's men were up to. Bernstein walked into a garage to find an eight-pound chain cut neatly in two and his bike gone. -- Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward

Good writing is like music. It has its distinctive rhythm, its pace, flow, cadence. It can be hummed. The great stylists seem to have an inner music...

The era of manufacturing consent has given way to the era of manufacturing news. Soon media newsrooms will drop the pretence, and start hiring theatre directors instead of journalists.

Unlike the early patriot press, today’s newsrooms and journalists are mostly hostile to America’s founding principles, traditions, and institutions. They do not promote free speech and press freedom, despite their self-serving and self-righteous claims. Indeed, they serve as societal filters attempting to enforce uniformity of thought and social and political activism centered on the progressive ideology and agenda. Issues, events, groups, and individuals that do not fit the narrative are dismissed or diminished; those that do fit the narrative are elevated and celebrated.

I led her into the newsroom, removed the sheet, and pointed to the statue of the Bombinating Beast. She gestured to me that I should be the one to take it. I gestured back that she was the chaperone and the leader of this caper. She gestured to me that I shouldn't argue with her. I gestured to her that I was the one who had gotten us into the house in the first place. She gestured to me that my predecessor knew that the apprentice should never argue with the chaperone or complain and that I might model my own behavior after his. I gestured to her asking what the 'S' stood for in her name, and she replied with a very rude gesture, and I grabbed the statue and tucked it into my vest.

The arctic atmosphere, necessary for the maintenance of broadcast equipment, is air-conditioner sterile, with occasional stray smells of brewed coffee and toner for photocopying machines.

I have always wanted to do that. To upload a post or be the centre of a news story that is so large that it results in so many people going online at the same time and the huge surge in activity causes havoc to servers and newsrooms around the world.

We got the bubble-headed-bleach-blonde who Comes on at five She can tell you 'bout the plane crash with a gleam In her eye It's interesting when people die - Give us dirty laundry Can we film the operation? Is the head dead yet? You know, the boys in the newsroom got a Running bet Get the widow on the set! We need dirty laundry You don't really need to find out what's going on You don't really want to know just how far it's gone Just leave well enough alone Eat your dirty laundry

Think about it: If you have saved just enough to have your own house, your own car, a modicum of income to pay for food, clothes, and a few conveniences, and your everyday responsibilities start and end only with yourself… You can afford not to do anything outside of breathing, eating, and sleeping. Time would be an endless, white blanket. Without folds and pleats or sudden rips. Monday would look like Sunday, going sans adrenaline, slow, so slow and so unnoticed. Flowing, flowing, time is flowing in phrases, in sentences, in talk exchanges of people that come as pictures and videos, appearing, disappearing, in the safe, distant walls of Facebook. Dial fast food for a pizza, pasta, a burger or a salad. Cooking is for those with entire families to feed. The sala is well appointed. A day-maid comes to clean. Quietly, quietly she dusts a glass figurine here, the flat TV there. No words, just a ho-hum and then she leaves as silently as she came. Press the shower knob and water comes as rain. A TV remote conjures news and movies and soaps. And always, always, there’s the internet for uncomplaining company. Outside, little boys and girls trudge along barefoot. Their tinny, whiny voices climb up your windowsill asking for food. You see them. They don’t see you. The same way the vote-hungry politicians, the power-mad rich, the hey-did-you-know people from newsrooms, and the perpetually angry activists don’t see you. Safely ensconced in your tower of concrete, you retreat. Uncaring and old./HOW EASY IT IS NOT TO CARE

Focus on what’s best for you and then throw yourself at it. And remember that the cause of women in newsrooms will take on urgency only if we make it happen—together.

BBC to axe 450 newsroom jobs... That's because all mainstream media again, they are all repiping the same power structure information and propaganda. So they don't need reporters...

Simply put, we have more people talking about news and less original reporting. Whether on television or online, there is no shortage of analysis. But analysis is only as good as the information that supports it. The deep cuts to newsrooms in print and electronic media have resulted in far fewer reporters waking up each morning deciding what story they will chase. There is less investigative reporting ....

McGinnis said her biggest challenge was her “never-ending quest to prove herself.” But what people remember most about her is how she managed to run a newsroom without ever appearing to order anyone around.

I want to be able to remember it all, not just the books but the newsrooms and the playgroups and the bad jokes and the holiday traditions. In my mind I can walk through the house where I grew up even though I have not been inside it for decades . . . I want to be able to walk through the house of my own life until my life is done. I want to hold on to who and what I have been even as both become somehow inevitably less.

As many regular consumers of news can attest, this condescending elitism, a fundamental characteristic of progressivism, abounds in the attitude of journalists, and undoubtedly in the environment of newsrooms in all their platforms.

While that may be true, we really should be on our way. We've got that experiment we need to check on in the laboratory. Remember?' 'Actually, you're wrong again, my dear.' I was so mad I could scream some of the worst obscenities I'd heard at the docks at him. He was ruining our exit strategy, and I was most certainly not his dear. When I thought all hope was lost, Thomas checked his watch. 'We should've left precisely three minutes and twenty-three seconds ago. If we don't run now, our experiment will be destroyed.' He turned to the editor and superintendent. 'It's been as pleasant as a fast day in Lent, gentlemen.' By the time they figured out his parting was, in fact, an insult, we were already rushing out through the bustling newsroom.

Cab Mulcahy was a patient man, especially for a managing editor. He had been in newspapers his entire adult life and almost nothing could provoke him. Whenever the worst kind of madness gripped the newsroom, Mulcahy would emerge to take charge, instantly imposing a rational and temperate mood.

In TV newsrooms, if it bleeds it leads remains the watchword. A study of 559 newscasts in twenty television markets across the United States compared the crimes covered by local news to the number and types of crimes actually committed. Although crime had fallen for eight years prior to the 2004 study, in all twenty markets “audiences were told essentially the same story—that random, violent crime was a persistent and structural feature of American society,” the researchers found. All the more misleading, the newscasts consistently gave the impression that murder and other serious crimes are rampant in places where they are rare.

McFarlin said she has worked with women who think the only way to succeed is to act as masculine as possible. That made sense for earlier generations of women who blazed trails in newsrooms, she said, but she doesn’t think the “tough broad routine” works any longer, and she is certain it would never have worked for her.

When everybody was, you know, pushing for multiculturalism in lead institutions, it really meant filtering a few people of color or women into university departments or newsrooms, while carrying out this savage economic assault against the working poor and, in particular, poor people of color in deindustrialized pockets of the United States. Very few of these multiculturalists even noticed. I am all for diversity, but not when it is devoid of economic justice. Cornel West has been one of the great champions, not only of the black prophetic tradition, the most important intellectual tradition in our history, but the clarion call for justice in all its forms. There is no racial justice without economic justice. And while these elite institutions sprinkled a few token faces into their hierarchy, they savaged the working class and the poor, especially poor people of color. Much of the left was fooled by the identity politics trick. It was a boutique activism. It kept the corporate system, the one we must destroy, intact. It gave it a friendly face.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that men thrive more easily in this environment. It was built with them in mind.

Every woman I know in the news business has at least one story to tell about another woman who helped show her the way.

Challenging institutional habits means pushing back, willfully so.

The most successful people I know don’t think of their career as a ladder but rather a jungle gym,

One of the things I’ve learned the hard way is that you actually have to lead by being who you really are. And you can’t fake who you are. —Margaret Low

Think about finding your own group of “large ladies” with whom you can commiserate, compare notes, and network. It could be just the lifeline you need.

Women, quite simply, are not supposed to excel at jobs and tasks that are designated as male in our culture. [If they do,] they are personally derogated, and they are disliked.”5

At stake was the virtue of free expression, and Franklin summed up the Enlightenment position in a sentence that is now framed on newsroom walls: “Printers are educated in the belief that when men differ in opinion, both sides ought equally to have the advantage of being heard by the public; and that when Truth and Error have fair play, the former is always an overmatch for the latter.

As women, she said, “we have to know ourselves and be true to ourselves and not try to adapt our natural instincts or strengths just because we think there’s some kind of mold we have to fit into.

They described feeling as if they had never truly arrived, questioned whether someone else could do the job better, and mentally steeled themselves to the possibility of getting tossed at any moment.

the most successful women adapt their approach, depending on the circumstances and the people with whom they’re dealing. Sometimes they speak out—loudly—and sometimes, like Kim Guthrie, they “lead from the back of the boat.

Work need not be concentrated in offices, companies can be run from homes, newspapers can be put out with almost no one in the newsroom; time spent commuting can be reduced; business meetings can be replaced by digital connecting. These impacts will last after lockdowns are well in the past. It took three years after 9/11 and more than seven years after the 2008 financial crisis for air travel in the United States to recover to the previous levels.

Many of the women we interviewed find themselves carefully calibrating their behavior in the workplace. They worry about being too motherly, too brash, too opinionated, and not opinionated enough. They worry about being judged.

She not only mastered whatever issue was up for discussion but she also became a student of those around her. “You have to understand who could cause trouble for you, who your natural allies are, and how you can get what you need,” she said.

Look, I think that women have been playing nice for an awfully long time, playing the game, climbing the ladder, being patient, accepting the tidbits and morsels that are handed out,” she said. “I think that we have to start kicking the door down.

She said women face far too many critics to add self-criticism to the mix. Her advice is to ignore the voice she calls “the obnoxious roommate living in our heads—that voice that feeds on putting us down and strengthening our insecurities and doubts.

Similarly at the Washington Post in 2005, one of the paper’s editors, Marie Arana, wrote “The elephant in the newsroom is our narrowness. Too often, we wear liberalism on our sleeve and are intolerant of other lifestyles and opinions. . . . We’re not very subtle about it at this paper: If you work here, you must be one of us. You must be liberal, progressive, a Democrat.” She added, “I’ve been in communal gatherings in the Post, watching election returns, and have been flabbergasted to see my colleagues cheer unabashedly for the Democrats.

The breakthrough we need is when we’re at a point where it’s socially unacceptable for a panel or conference or boardroom to be all men,” she said. “The breakthrough will come when no one finds it acceptable when only one or two women are in anything. We’re not anywhere close to a place where there is true assumed equality.

Tough is like bossy. It’s a crap word. But you do have to act confident, convincing, competent. You have to be competent and convinced of your abilities.” She also believes in being polite, convivial, and collegial. “I do believe in trying to work together,” she said. “And only when it doesn’t work, then you have to knock some heads together.

When a male colleague would say or do something she considered out of line, she would give him a pointed look, perhaps accompanied by an unamused laugh, and say something like, “Wait, did you really just say that?” The effect, Darbyshire said, was that “he knows you clocked him, but you’re not making a scene of it. But he also knows not to mess with you.

Good leaders constantly worry about their limited ability to see. To rise above those limitations, good leaders exercise judgment, which is a different thing from intelligence. Intelligence is the ability to solve a problem, to decipher a riddle, to master a set of facts. Judgment is the ability to orbit a problem or a set of facts and see it as it might be seen through other eyes, by observers with different biases, motives, and backgrounds. It is also the ability to take a set of facts and move it in place and time—perhaps to a hearing room or a courtroom, months or years in the future—or to the newsroom of a major publication or the boardroom of a competitor. Intelligence is the ability to collect and report what the documents and witnesses say; judgment is the ability to say what those same facts mean and what effect they will have on other audiences.

History determines your hiring policy. Why are tech companies being lectured by media corporations on “diversity”? Is it because those media corporations that are 20-30 points whiter than tech companies actually deeply care about this? Or is it because after the 2009-era collapse of print media revenue, media corporations struggled for a business model, found that certain words drove traffic, and then doubled down on that - boosting their stock price and bashing their competitors in the process?12 After all, if you know a bit more history, you’ll know that the New York Times Company (which originates so many of these jeremiads) is an organization where the controlling Ochs-Sulzberger family literally profited from slavery, blocked women from being publishers, excluded gays from the newsroom for decades, ran a succession process featuring only three cis straight white male cousins, and ended up with a publisher who just happened to be the son of the previous guy.13

After so many years, I was used to it. It was just another remark in a long, long list of offensive, obnoxious, ignorant, destructive things said to me and others by people with some power or sway. But the truth of the matter is this: It wasn’t OK. And it wasn’t OK for me to be OK with it. For me to put up with it. To laugh it off, to excuse it, to use it as a cocktail-party tale. It wasn’t OK for me. And it isn’t OK for my amazing nieces, for my brave colleagues, for the women coming up behind me.

The prevailing inability or unwillingness to talk about Hamas in a nuanced manner is deeply familiar. During the summer of 2014, when global newsrooms were covering Israel’s military operation in the Gaza Strip, I watched Palestinian analysts being rudely silenced on the air for failing to condemn Hamas as a terrorist organization outright. This condemnation was demanded as a prerequisite for the right of these analysts to engage in any debate about the events on the ground. There was no other explanation, it seemed, for the loss of life in Gaza and Israel other than pure-and-simple Palestinian hatred and bloodlust, embodied by Hamas. I wondered how many lives, both Palestinian and Israeli, have been lost or marred by this refusal to engage with the drivers of Palestinian resistance, of which Hamas is only one facet. I considered the elision of the broader historical and political context of the Palestinian struggle in most conversations regarding Hamas. Whether condemnation or support, it felt to me, many of the views I faced on Palestinian armed resistance were unburdened by moral angst or ambiguity. There was often a certainty or a conviction about resistance that was too easily forthcoming. I have struggled to find such. I have struggled to find such certainty in my own study of Hamas, even as I remain unwavering in my condemnation of targeting civilians, on either side.

The Times needed to adapt to the new realities of the digital age, and changing its anachronistic meeting was a way to reflect a commitment to change—and to help spur it. “It was no longer good for our readers to focus so much on print. But it was also bad for the journalists,” Sam Dolnick, an assistant editor on the newspaper’s masthead, told me. “We changed the meeting as a deliberate way to change the culture and values of the newsroom. We wanted people to think less about print, so we needed the meeting to be less about print. We used the meeting as a way to shift the values and the mindset” of the newsroom. Changing how the editors gathered—what they talked about, how much time was devoted to what, who got airtime—offered a way to nudge the culture of the newsroom toward new digital realities.

The new tech media establishment introduced foreign customs to the culture of newsrooms. Challenging authority was out. Sycophancy was in. It had always worked that way in Silicon Valley.

There are almost no investigative local news organizations left in the United States. Our huge nation is only a few organizations away from having no independent newsrooms with resources and clout.

Like all newsrooms of the era, it was dominated by men, but Willard never noticed Marie being fazed. “I heard about sexism from other women, but never a peep about it from her,” he remembers.

The metrics in which Narisetti was so conversant were available from a company called Chartbeat, which had established itself as a powerful force in America’s data-focused newsrooms. As Nielsen measured TV ratings, Chartbeat measured internet traffic,

Its newsroom was filled with Ivy League graduates, with especially large contingents from Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. These ranks bore little resemblance to the men who came before, many of whom had not graduated from college or had gone to City College, the alma mater of the legendary editors Abe Rosenthal and Arthur Gelb.

This wealthier, better educated newsroom was full of anxious overachievers.

By mid-December she was gone, abruptly dismissed by Sulzberger in a way that seemed needlessly hasty and mysterious. He had entered her office, handed her a folder with separation documents, and said, “We are prepared to be generous.” The extent of his generosity would astound the newsroom: her package was close to $25 million.

The Florida results began seesawing in the early morning hours, and Lelyveld bellowed “Stop the presses!,” the first and only time I have ever heard this shouted in a newsroom.

Maggad glances nervously around. He's well on the way to regretting this incursion into the newsroom, where he stands out like the proverbial turd in the punch bowl. He might own the place, but he doesn't belong.

No fooling, Keyes thought. He had arrived in Miami in 1979 from a small newspaper in suburban Baltimore. There was nothing original about why he’d left for Florida—a better job, no snow, plenty of sunshine. On his first day at the Miami Sun, Keyes had been assigned the desk next to Skip Wiley—the newsroom equivalent of Parris Island. Keyes covered cops for a while, then courts, then local politics.

The 1995 heat wave was a social drama that played out and made visible a series of conditions that are always present but difficult to perceive. Investigating the people, places, and institutions most affected by the heat wave—the homes of the decedents, the neighborhoods and buildings where death was concentrated or prevented, the city agencies that forged an emergency response system, the Medical Examiners Office and scientific research centers that searched for causes of death, and the newsrooms where reporters and editors symbolically reconstructed the event—

We are experiencing a dangerous time in our country, with a political environment where basic facts are disputed, fundamental truth is questioned, lying is normalized, and unethical behavior is ignored, excused, or rewarded. This is not just happening in our nation’s capital, and not just in the United States. It is a troubling trend that has touched institutions across America and around the world—boardrooms of major companies, newsrooms, university campuses, the entertainment industry, and professional and Olympic sports.

Even voices in the proud New York Times newsroom now cede that Facebook, not the Old Gray Lady itself, now drives the national conversation with the horsepower of its search traffic and algorithms providing traditional media its best chance to be seen. “Measured by web traffic, ad revenue and influence over the way the rest of the media makes money, Facebook has grown into the most powerful force in the news industry,” wrote Times media columnist Farhad Manjoo

Kara Sykes held the door. “That’s fine. You’ll go on in a few minutes, so we don’t have much time. Please come this way.” We followed her down a long hall, then through a newsroom filled with desks and production people and onto the news set. A man and a woman were seated at the anchor desk, facing cameras fitted with TelePrompTers. A floor director was standing between the cameras with his hand touching the TelePrompTer that the man was reading from. There were places at the anchor desk for a sportscaster and a weatherperson, but those seats were empty. The set was built so that the anchors were seated with their backs to the newsroom so the audience could see that the Channel Eight news team was bringing them personal news personally. Kara whispered, “Lyle Stodge and Marcy Bernside are the five o’clock anchors. Lyle is going to interview you.

She strode through the newsroom, made her way to the back of the offices. Richardson was there, chatting it up with one of the archival interns. She caught his eyes, signaled for him to step away. He did and turned to her, concern filling his eyes. “What’s wrong?” Taylor pitched her voice low; the intern was craning her neck, trying to hear what was up. “One of my detectives just called. There’s been a missing-persons report, a girl who matches the victim description. I need to go, follow it up. Can we get together later, talk about all this?” Richardson had the audacity to look crestfallen for a brief moment, then brightened as if he realized how ludicrous that was. “Of course, of course. I understand completely. Is there anything I can do? Do you need someone from here to help?

It never occurred to me to wonder why I, a religion reporter, got the biggest story of the day, though, clearly, whatever else it was, it was a religion story. It wasn't until about twenty years later that a friend who had been managing editor at a Gannett paper said to me: "Rob, don't your realize you were probably the ONLY religion reporter in the whole country who got that story?" I still don't know why I got it. Maybe they figure I was the only one in the newsroom who had any idea what a Sikh was. Or knew how to find them, let alone Hindus, in Orange Country, California

The most common criticism many writers hear from editors is “show, don’t tell.” The dictum is often invoked reflexively, and it can seem opaque. But take it as a warning against frothy adjectives that fail to convey an experience to a reader. “It’s no use telling us that something was ‘mysterious’ or ‘loathsome’ or ‘awe-inspiring’ or ‘voluptuous,’ ” writes C. S. Lewis, echoing the editor’s standard lecture to the newsroom novice. “By direct description, by metaphor and simile, by secretly evoking powerful associations, by offering the right stimuli to our nerves (in the right degree and the right order), and by the very beat and vowel-melody and length and brevity of your sentences, you must bring it about that we, we readers, not you, exclaim ‘how mysterious!’ or ‘loathsome’ or whatever it is. Let me taste for myself, and you’ll have no need to tell me how I should react.

With falling revenue came a dwindling pool of journalists. In 2008, the number of newsroom employees across all channels in the U.S.— from print to television—was roughly 114,000. By 2020 that number had fallen 26%, to 85,000. If the number of American journalists served as a proxy measurement for our nation’s collective truth, the truth was in sharp decline.

trying to get their stories filed without getting stuck here on OT.” A few of Sarah’s coworkers glanced up from their screens as she guided Dez and Sully through the newsroom, a couple of the women offering gleeful waves. Dez imagined Sully was a regular topic of conversation amongst some of the staff around here these days. Sarah led them into a large room filled with shelves and cabinets, then through to a row of microfiche machines and a lone computer. Dez eyed the microfiche

And if they’re planning on gutting the newsroom, slashing the Globe, junior reporters won’t be high on the list. This whole thing, my dream job, the beginning of my career, could all be over before it’s even started.

Despite the many troubling facts exposed by “Dark Alliance,” the media campaign against the story effectively ended Webb’s career as a journalist. He resigned from The Mercury News in November 1997 and never again worked in a newsroom. In the years following, Webb worked as an investigator for the California State Legislature and published the occasional story as a freelancer. He was laid off from his job in 2004 and shortly after was found dead in his home with two gunshot wounds to the head. Coroners ruled Webb’s death a suicide, to the continued disbelief of many.

What gets headlines? Murder, mayhem, and madness—the cardinal M’s of the newsroom. That’s what terrifies the travel agents of the world. That’s what rates congressional hearings and crime commissions. And that’s what frightens off bozo Shriner conventions. It’s a damn shame, I grant you that. It’s a shame I simply couldn’t stand up at the next county commission meeting and ask our noble public servants to please stop destroying the planet. It’s a shame that the people who poisoned this paradise won’t just apologize and pack their U-Hauls and head back North to the smog and the blizzards. But it’s a proven fact they won’t leave until somebody lights a fire under ‘em.

It was a slow news day. The kind of day that made me wonder why I became a reporter -- an often dull, plodding profession. Adventure and stories of unknown worlds pleading to be written were waiting somewhere. I was thinking I'd rather be Out There -- Alaska, the Amazon, a cornfield in Nebraska. Anywhere. But not here, in the Sacramento Bee newsroom.

making calls, jotting notes as the chatter spilled over the glass walls of the small office tucked in a corner of the newsroom. Experienced

The prime minister was provoked by what he considered to be unfriendly or inept coverage, or both, over many months. He concluded that the editors had lost control of the newsroom. . .What was probably the last straw for him was coverage of Israeli president Chaim Herzog's visit. When the Foreign Ministry announced the visit, fury flared across the Causeway. The Malaysian prime minister, Dr Mahathir Mohamad, recalled his high commissioner to Singapore and demanded the visit be cancelled. For Singapore to do so after the visit was announced would inflict serious damage on its sovereignty. Demonstrations erupted in many parts of Malaysia, and at the Malaysian end of the Causeway more than 100 demonstrators tried to stop a Singapore-bound train. Singapore flags were burnt. There were threats to cut off the water supply from Johor. Malaysia saw the visit as an insult. It did not recognise Israel, and had expected Singapore to be sensitive to its feelings. Singapore, however, could not refuse the Israeli request for its head of state to make a stopover visit in Singapore, the tail end of his three-week tour of Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and the Philippines, the first visit to this part of the world by an Israeli leader. Singapore could hardly forget the crucial assistance Israel had provided the Singapore Armed Forces in the early days of independence, when other friendly countries like Egypt and India had declined to help. What angered Lee Kuan Yew was our coverage of the Malaysian reactions to the visit. He felt it was grossly inadequate. . .Coverage in the Malaysian English press was restrained, but in their Malay press, Singapore was condemned in inflammatory language, and accused of being Israel's Trojan horse in Southeast Asia. A threat to target Singapore Airlines was prominently reported. . .And by depriving Singaporeans of the full flavour of what the Malaysian Malay media was reporting, an opportunity was lost to educate them about the harsh reality of life in the region, with two large Muslim-majority neighbours.

Fast-forward to March 17, 2014, when the Los Angeles Times was the first news company to break a story about a nearby earthquake. Their edge? The article was written entirely by a robot—a computer program that scans streams of data, like that from the U.S. Geological Survey, and puts together short pieces faster than any newsroom chain of command could. This program earned the paper a few minutes of lead time at most, but today, those minutes are critical.

By the time Aubrey returned to the newsroom, her index finger was puffy and still splinter-filled. Instead of the hour she promised Malcolm, she’d been gone two, having left the house on Harper Street on a hunt for Alana Powell. Aubrey located the realtor at her home inspection on Halifax Drive. There she turned over the annuity, along with an unremarkable explanation about its discovery. Coming down the newsroom’s main corridor, Aubrey saw Malcolm in his office; he looked busy, not particularly engaged in looking for her. Levi was nowhere in sight. Good. Maybe he’d talked his way out of deputizing her as his sidekick on the Missy Flannigan case. Aubrey shuddered at the prospect and headed for her cubicle.

To assure him, Peter Lim decided that the newsroom adopt this approach: it was better to produce the best story than the first story. He had good reason. Finding scoops in a Singapore with many OB markers carried a real risk: the story was sometimes incomplete or, as in the case of the bus fare increase, premature. For completeness, you sometimes incomplete or, as in the case of the bus fare increase, premature. For completeness, you sometimes had to rely on official spokesmen. But once they knew you were on the story, they either prevailed on the editors to hold it until the time was right to release it, or gave it to every newspaper. The edict went against the grain. No journalist could resist the temptation to be first with the news.

one knew that better than Tom Reed. From far across the metro section he picked up on the emotion in the dispatchers’ voices. It was a skill he’d never lost even though it had been ages since he did a shift at the police radios, the most dreaded job in the newsroom. The noise irritated the burnouts who wanted them silenced, a blasphemy to diehards like Reed. Scanners were sacred. They alerted you to the first cries for help, pulling you into a story that would stop the heart of your city. Or break it. Reed sensed something was up. But he forced himself to shrug

newsroom walls, as if something in the history of Marietta—the copper boom, the copper bust, the near-escape from becoming a ghost town—could help her. “If you leave a void,” Angelina continued slowly, her enunciation crisp and formal, as always, “people will inevitably fill it with gossip. Every hour you don’t show

My favourite quotes, Part Two -- from Michael Connelly's "Harry Bosch" series The Black Box On Bosch’s first call to Henrik, the twin brother of Anneke - Henrik: "I am happy to talk now. Please, go ahead.” “Thank you. I, uh, first want to say as I said in my email that the investigation of your sister’s death is high priority. I am actively working on it. Though it was twenty years ago, I’m sure your sister’s death is something that hurts till this day. I’m sorry for your loss.” “Thank you, Detective. She was very beautiful and very excited about things. I miss her very much.” “I’m sure you do.” Over the years, Bosch had talked to many people who had lost loved ones to violence. There were too many to count but it never got any easier and his empathy never withered. The Burning Room 2 Grace was a young saxophonist with a powerful sound. She also sang. The song was “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” and she produced a sound from the horn that no human voice could ever touch. It was plaintive and sad but it came with an undeniable wave of underlying hope. It made Bosch think that there was still a chance for him, that he could still find whatever it was he was looking for, no matter how short his time was. ---------------- He grabbed his briefcase off his chair and walked toward the exit door. Before he got there, he heard someone clapping behind him. He turned back and saw it was Soto, standing by her desk. Soon Tim Marcia rose up from his cubicle and started to clap. Then Mitzi Roberts did the same and then the other detectives. Bosch put his back against the door, ready to push through. He nodded his thanks and held his fist up at chest level and shook it. He then went through the door and was gone. The Burning Room 3 “What do you want to know, Bosch?” Harry nodded. His instinct was right. The good ones all had that hollow space inside. The empty place where the fire always burns. For something. Call it justice. Call it the need to know. Call it the need to believe that those who are evil will not remain hidden in darkness forever. At the end of the day Rodriguez was a good cop and he wanted what Bosch wanted. He could not remain angry and mute if it might cost Orlando Merced his due. ------------ “I have waited twenty years for this phone call . . . and all this time I thought it would go away. I knew I would always be sad for my sister. But I thought the other would go away.” “What is the other, Henrik?” Though he knew the answer. “Anger . . . I am still angry, Detective Bosch.” Bosch nodded. He looked down at his desk, at the photos of all the victims under the glass top. Cases and faces. His eyes moved from the photo of Anneke Jespersen to some of the others. The ones he had not yet spoken for. “So am I, Henrik,” he said. “So am I.” Angle of Investigation 1972 They were heading south on Vermont through territory unfamiliar to him. It was only his second day with Eckersly and his second on the job. Now He knew that passion was a key element in any investigation. Passion was the fuel that kept his fire burning. So he purposely sought the personal connection or, short of that, the personal outrage in every case. It kept him locked in and focused. But it wasn’t the Laura syndrome. It wasn’t the same as falling in love with a dead woman. By no means was Bosch in love with June Wilkins. He was in love with the idea of reaching back across time and catching the man who had killed her. The Scarecrow At one time the newsroom was the best place in the world to work. A bustling place of camaraderie, competition, gossip, cynical wit and humor, it was at the crossroads of ideas and debate. It produced stories and pages that were vibrant and intelligent, that set the agenda for what was discussed and considered important in a city as diverse and exciting as Los Angeles.

don’t expect much to change anytime soon. These former gatekeepers of opinion live in a mind-numbing bubble in which they still think they set public attitudes. In the digital age, though, that is no longer the case. These types will keep chugging along until the writing is on the wall—or the pink slips have finally fully engulfed America’s newsrooms.

Stuyvesant Town also was a safe haven, yielding a community of loyal, lifelong friends. As kids, we would hang out at the playgrounds until it was too dark to see. Later, we shared the raptures and torments of adolescence in a wild 1960s New York City scene. With numerous temptations and very few limits, we hung together and guided one another through many storms. Maybe that’s why I have always found comfort in community. Whether in newsrooms, campaigns, or the White House, I have thrived in communal settings, finding emotional nourishment in the friendships and camaraderie of the team.

Years working at a newspaper. You learn to write fast and reasonably good and in a manner which does not require substantial editing. Or your editors and copyeditors stab you to death and hang your corpse in the newsroom as a warning to the other staff writers.

good journalist. I rattled off things that would make students keenly aware of newsroom labor models, the ad industry and publishing

With covert glances across the newsroom, Nick catalogs all the things he doesn’t like about Andy and stores them up like a misanthropic squirrel.

She’ll tell women who are working their way up the ladder, “Do not let a man tell you that you cannot do that.

It’s altogether too easy, she said, “to fail leading while female.

women who exhibit high self-esteem and high self-confidence are more likely to be seen as effective leaders.

In countless small ways, each of us has felt frustrated over the years, as if something was amiss,

leaders must be authentic to be believed and to be effective. Figuring out what works for you requires a high degree of self-awareness. Are you the kind of person who can confront a colleague in a meeting the way Paula Ellis did, or are you more comfortable talking about differences in private?

Almost all women leaders have stories about inappropriate sexual comments or actions—delivered by bosses, colleagues, sources, and, increasingly, internet trolls.

There isn’t a woman at CBS who wouldn’t have a comparable story or more. Did we do anything about it? No. Who was I going to report it to? These guys were my bosses, and there was no system in place to do anything about it. I just assumed it was part of the territory.