One of the great pressures we're facing in journalism now is it's a lot cheaper to hire thumb suckers and pundits and have talk shows on the air than actually have bureaus and reporters
Interpretation
The quote highlights the shift in journalism towards cheaper commentary rather than investigative reporting.
Walter Isaacson underscores a troubling trend in contemporary journalism where the emphasis has shifted from in-depth reporting and analysis by skilled journalists to the hiring of commentators and pundits. This change reflects a prioritization of cost over quality in news reporting, leading to a potential decline in the depth and accuracy of information being delivered to the public.
In practice
During a conference on media ethics, this quote can be used to discuss the importance of investigative journalism.
I visited Jobs for the last time in his Palo Alto, Calif., home. He had moved to a downstairs bedroom because he was too weak to go up and down stairs. He was curled up in some pain, but his mind was still sharp and his humor vibrant
I've always had an abundance of material about the subjects of my biographies.
Polite and velvety leaders, who take care to avoid bruising others, are generally not as effective at forcing change.
for Steve, less is always more, simpler is always better. Therefore, if you can build a glass box with fewer elements, it’s better, it’s simpler, and it’s at the forefront of technology. That’s where Steve likes to be, in both his products and his stores.
What are the five products you want to focus on? Get rid of the rest, because they’re dragging you down. They’re turning you into Microsoft. They’re causing you to turn out products that are adequate but not great.
When there are multiple versions of a story, you really have three ways to go. You can pick the most sensational version. You can try to balance things in your gut to get to what you think is the honest truth. Or you can err on the side of kindness.
no subject of study is more important than reading…all other intellectual powers depend on it.
I just love learning. I think learning is how you live. The verb of my life is learning.
Emphasizing effort gives a child a variable that they can control. They come to see themselves as in control of their success. Emphasizing natural intelligence takes it out of the child's control, and it provides no good recipe for responding to a failure.
Prescriptive grammar has spread linguistic insecurity like a plague among English speakers for centuries, numbs us to the aesthetic richness of non-standard speech, and distracts us from attending to genuine issues of linguistic style in writing.
But by accident, not by cunning calculation, books, because of their weight and texture, and because of their sweetly token resistance to manipulation, involve our hands and eyes, and then our minds and souls, in a spiritual adventure I would be very sorry for my grandchildren not to know about.
Public libraries are the sole community centers left in America. The degree to which a branch of the local library is connected to the larger culture is a reflection of the degree to which the community itself is connected to the larger culture.
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