If journalism is good, it is controversial, by its nature.
But what is the difference between literature and journalism?/ ...Journalism is unreadable and literature is not read. That is all.
Before this century shall run out journalism will be the whole press. Mankind will write their book day by day, hour by hour, page by page. Thought will spread abroad with the rapidity of light; instantly conceived, instantly written, instantly understood at the extremities of the earth; it will spread from Pole to Pole, suddenly burning with the fervor of soul which made it burst forth; it will be the reign of the human mind in all its plenitude; it will not have time to ripen, to accumulate in the form of a book; the book will arrive too late; the only book possible from day to day is a newspaper.--_Lamartine._
I realize that the MX missile is none of our concern. I realize that the whole point of living in a democracy is that we pay professional congresspersons to concern themselves with things like the MX missile so we can be free to concern ourselves with getting hold of the plumber. But from time to time, I feel I must address major public issues such as this, because in a free and open society, where the very future of the world hinges on decisions made by our elected leaders, you never win large cash
nose-picking.
-- Dave Barry, "At Last, the Ultimate Deterrent Against
Political Fallout"
After two or three weeks of this madness, you begin to feel As One with the man who said, "No news is good news." In twenty-eight papers, only the rarest kind of luck will turn up more than two or three articles of any interest... but even then the interest items are usually buried deep around paragraph 16 on the jump (or "Cont. on ...") page... The Post will have a story about Muskie making a speech in Iowa. The Star will say the same thing, and the Journal will say nothing at all. But the Times might have enough room on the jump page to include a line or so that says something like: "When he finished his speech, Muskie burst into tears and seized his campaign manager by the side of the neck. They grappled briefly, but the struggle was kicked apart by an oriental woman who seemed to be in control." Now that's good journalism. Totally objective; very active and straight to the point. -- Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing '72"
"Its failings notwithstanding, there is much to be said in favor of journalism in that by giving us the opinion of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community." -- Oscar Wilde
Its failings notwithstanding, there is much to be said in favor of journalism</p> in that by giving us the opinion of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community. -- Oscar Wilde
The only qualities for real success in journalism are ratlike cunning, a plausible manner and a little literary ability. The capacity to steal other people's ideas and phrases ... is also invaluable. -- Nicolas Tomalin, "Stop the Press, I Want to Get On"
Most rock journalism is people who can't write interviewing people who can't talk for people who can't read. -- Frank Zappa
Politics makes strange bedfellows, and journalism makes strange politics. -- Amy Gorin
-- Matthew Arnold
One world, one mankind cannot exist in the face of six, four or even two scales of values: We shall be torn apart by this disparity of rhythm, this disparity of vibrations.… Our 20th Century has proved to be more cruel than preceding centuries, and the first fifty years have not erased all its horrors; our world is rent asunder by those same old cave-age emotions of greed, envy, lack of control, mutual hostility which have picked up in passing respectable pseudonyms like class struggle, radical conflict, struggle of the masses, trade-union disputes. The primeval refusal to accept a compromise has been turned into a theoretical principle and is considered the virtue of orthodoxy. It demands millions of sacrifices in ceaseless civil wars, it drums into our souls that there is no such thing as unchanging, universal concepts of goodness and justice, that they are all fluctuating and inconstant.… Violence, less and less embarrassed by the limits imposed by centuries of lawfulness, is brazenly and victoriously striding across the whole world, unconcerned that its infertility has been demonstrated and proved many times in history. What is more, it is not simply crude power that triumphs abroad, but its exultant justification. The world is being inundated by the brazen conviction that power can do anything, justice nothing.… The young, at an age when they have not yet any experience other than sexual, when they do not yet have years of personal suffering and personal understanding behind them, are jubilantly repeating our depraved Russian blunders of the 19th Century, under the impression that they are discovering something new. They acclaim the latest wretched degradation on the part of the Chinese Red Guards as a joyous example. In shallow lack of understanding of the age-old essence of mankind, in the naive confidence of inexperienced hearts they cry: Let us drive away those cruel, greedy oppressors, governments, and the new ones (we), having just laid aside grenades and rifles, will be just and understanding. Far from it.… But of those who have lived more and understand, those who could oppose these young—many do not dare oppose, they even suck up, anything not to appear conservative. Another Russian phenomenon of the 19th Century which Dostoyevsky called slavery to progressive quirks.… The timid civilized world has found nothing with which to oppose the onslaught of a sudden revival of barefaced barbarity, other than concessions and smiles.… The price of cowardice will only be evil. We shall reap courage and victory only when we dare to make sacrifices. [ The Wall Street Journal , September 6, 1972, p. 14.]
Zeitungsschreiber: ein Mensch, der seinen Beruf verfehlt hat=--A journalist, a man who has mistaken his calling.
When you make your mark in the world, watch out for guys with erasers.
The freest government, if it could exist, would not be long acceptable, if the tendency of the laws were to create a rapid accumulation of property in a few hands, and to render the great mass of the population dependent and penniless. In such a case, the popular power must break in upon the rights of property, or else the influence of property must limit and control the exercise of popular power.…In the nature of things, those who have not property, and seeing their neighbours possess much more than they think them to need, cannot be favorable to laws made for the protection of property. When this class becomes numerous, it grows clamorous. It looks on property as its prey and plunder, and is naturally ready, at all times, for violence and revolution. It would seem, then, to be the part of political wisdom to found government on property; and to establish such distribution of property, by the laws which regulate its transmission and alienation, as to interest the great majority of society in the protection of the government. This is, I imagine, the true theory and the actual practice of our republican institutions. [Address to the Massachusetts Convention, 1820. Journal of Debates and Proceedings in the Convention of Delegates Chosen to Revise the Constitution of Massachusetts . Boston, 1853, pp. 304-317.]
Central bank functions and operations are widely misunderstood, not only by the public in general but also by many financial and economic professionals. The Federal Reserve system operates in such a way that it makes no contribution whatever to the spread of ownership of productive assets among the population. Indeed, its policies have tended to concentrate economic power by restricting credit to those with an existing asset base and by maintaining an interest rate structure designed to reward speculation and discourage productive entrepreneurship. [“Fed Should Share the Wealth,” The Journal of Commerce , May 15, 1989.] Bailey, Dr. Norman A. The problem with monetary economists is that they don’t understand money. [1988.]
Novels are the journal or record of manners; and the new importance of these books derives from the fact that the novelist begins to penetrate the surface, and treat this part of life more worthily.
How is the world ruled and how do wars start? Diplomats tell lies to journalists and then believe what they read.
It makes a great difference to the force of any sentence whether there be a man behind it or no. In the learned journal, in the influential newspaper, I discern no form; only some irresponsible shadow; oftener some moneyed corporation, or some dangler, who hopes, in the mask and robes of his paragraph, to pass for somebody.
There is the general belief that the corporation income tax is a tax on the “rich” and on the “fat cats.” But with pension funds owning 30% of American large business—and soon to own 50%—the corporation income tax, in effect, eases the load on those in top income brackets and penalizes the beneficiaries of pension funds. [ The Wall Street Journal, September 16, 1975.]
The protection of private property does more than promote market efficiency; it enhances the level of human freedom in the most intimate and personal parts of our lives. [“Rule of Law,” The Wall Street Journal July 27, 1994, p. A11.]
When we invoke the soul we move from the realm of information to the more vital realm of wisdom, the attainment of which is the only true value of learning. [ The Wall Street Journal , May 25, 1975.]
The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities. We need men who can dream of things that never were. Kelso, Louis O. [From “Karl Marx: The Almost Capitalist,” American Bar Association Journal , March 1957.]: Error No. 2: Marx’s Failure to Understand the Political Significance of Property. Before examining Marx’s second critical error, it may be helpful to take note of what the concept “property” means in law and economics. It is an aggregate of the rights, powers and privileges, recognized by the laws of the nation, which an individual may possess with respect to various objects. Property is not the object owned, but the sum total of the “rights” which an individual may “own” in such an object. These in general include the rights of (1) possessing, (2) excluding others, (3) disposing or transferring, (4) using, (5) enjoying the fruits, profits, product or increase, and (6) of destroying or injuring, if the owner so desires. In a civilized society, these rights are only as effective as the laws which provide for their enforcement. The English common law, adopted into the fabric of American law, recognizes that the rights of property are subject to the limitations that (1) things owned may not be so used as to injure others or the property of others, and (2) that they may not be used in ways contrary to the general welfare of the people as a whole. From this definition of private property, a purely functional and practical understanding of the nature of property becomes clear. Property in everyday life, is the right of control. Property in Land. With respect to property in land, we need merely note that the acquisition of an original title to land from a sovereign is a political act, and not the result of operations of the economy. If the original distribution of land unduly favors any group or type or persons, it is a political defect and not a defect in the operation of the economy as such. A capitalistic economy assumes and recognizes the private ownership of land. It may, as under the federal and state mining laws and federal homestead acts, encourage private ownership of land by facilitating private purchasing of mining, timber, agricultural, residential or recreational lands. Property in Capital. In a capitalistic economy, private ownership in all other articles of wealth is equal in importance to property in land. From the standpoint of the distributive aspects of a capitalistic economy, property in capital–the tools, machinery, equipment, plants, power systems, railroads, trucks, tractors, factories, financial working capital and the like–is of special significance. This is true because of the growing dependence of production upon capital instruments. Of the three components of production land is the passive1 source of almost all material things except those which come from the air and the sea, while labor and capital are the active factors of production. Labor and capital produce the goods and services of the economy, using raw materials obtained, for the most part, from land. Just as private property in land includes the right to all rents, the proceeds of sale of minerals and other elements or substances contained in land, private property in capital includes the right to the wealth produced by capital. The value added to iron ore by the capital instruments of a steel mill becomes the property of the owners of the steel mill. So in the case of all other capital instruments. Property in Labor. What is the relationship of the worker to the value which he creates through his work? It has been said that no one has ever questioned the right of a worker to the fruits of his labor. Actually, as was long ago recognized by John Locke and Jean Jacques Rousseau, the right of the worker to the value he creates is nothing more than the particular type of private property applicable to labor. Each worker, they said, has a right of private property in his capacity to produce wealth through his labor and in the value which he creates.
Meanwhile, what about the workers in those state monopolies that are being put up for sale? I am reminded of a technique for employee ownership that has worked well for many U.S. companies. It goes by various names, but the best known is “Employee Stock Ownership Program,” or ESOP. [Address at the Gdansk Shipyard in Poland, quoted in the Wall Street Journal , September 17, 1990.]
With all respect to Mr. Jefferson, I would put the pursuit of wisdom ahead of the pursuit of happiness. [ The Wall Street Journal, May 25, 1975.]
The James Ramey, U.A.W. representative, said the plan was unique and preliminary reports from the union legal department indicated it was legal and permissible under income tax laws….[p]”It has great possibilities,” said John Rogers of East Lansing, a two-year employee and chairman of the bargaining committee. “I think every employee will benefit by it more than the incentive pay program. It offers better prospects in a long term way.” [Response to the proposal to adopt ESOP at the Lundberg Screw Products Co., in an article published in The State Journal, Lansing, Michigan, February 2, 1975.]
Employee ownership has much to offer in strengthening our railroad system in the areas of labor-management relations, and of giving the employees the opportunity to participate in a more meaningful way in the fruits of the [free enterprise] system. [Letter to the Wall Street Journal , December 28, 1970.]
"What do you take me for, an idiot?"
Tout faiseur de journaux doit tribut au malin=--Every journalist owes tribute to the evil one.
Intermittent fasting was associated with more than a 40 percent reduction in heart disease risk in a study of 448 people published in the American Journal of Cardiology reporting that “most diseases, including cancer, diabetes and even neurodegenerative illnesses, are forestalled” by caloric reduction.
Wondrous indeed is the virtue of a true book. Not like a dead city of stones, yearly crumbling, yearly needing repair; more like a tilled field, but then a spiritual field; like a spiritual tree, let me rather say, it stands from year to year, and from age to age (we have books that already number some one hundred and fifty human ages); and yearly comes its new produce of leaves (commentaries, deductions, philosophical, political systems, or were it only sermons, pamphlets, journalistic essays), every one of which is talismanic and thaumaturgic, for it can persuade men.
(Professor of law emeritus at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles). Consider the Constitution. What we have here is a grim reminder that the liberties protected by the Bill of Rights are not neatly divisible into “property rights” and “personal liberties.” Even where the invasion is “only” of one’s property rights, it often implicates violation of other rights as well, even the right to life itself. Here is an object lesson that where one category of fundamental constitutional rights is not secure from governmental overreaching, neither are the others. All of which brings to mind the insight of the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, who observed in 1972 that “the dichotomy between personal liberties and property rights is a false one. Property does not have rights. People have rights. In fact, a fundamental interdependence exists between the personal right to liberty and the personal right in property. Neither could have meaning without the other.” And if that is not enough, reflect on the fact that there are no societies in the world where a high degree of personal and political liberty does not correlate strongly with economic liberty. There may well be a moral in that too. [“Rule of Law,” The Wall Street Journal, August 25, 1993, p. A9.]
We very much hope that as we get growth that we can reduce the burden of taxation, that we can reduce income tax and increase the amount of genuine free enterprise and business enterprise…. [T]his is going…toward the restoration of the personal responsibility, the independence, with every man a property owner, every man a capitalist. [Interview with The Wall Street Journal , March 31, 1983, p. 28.]
Morton could see what the FSA meant. He'd done his own research on the individuals Burrows had pointed the finger at. It was a loose collection, and he wondered if Burrows was clutching at straws trying to find a connection. Thirty individuals could be found who had made vastly more than their peers. Much of the work in the investigation had already been done by journalists astounded at the profits. Morton doubted he and WPC Stevenson would be able to dig anything more up, at least not without alerting them to the investigation, and he knew Burrows wanted to keep it hush-hush to avoid ruling out a sting.
[T]he generation now coming out of Western schools is unable to distinguish good from bad. Even those words are unacceptable. This results in impaired thinking ability. [ The Wall Street Journal , June 23, 1983.]
Dictatorships can be indeed defined as systems in which there is a prevalence of thinking in destructive rather than in ameliorative terms in dealing with social problems. The ease with which destruction of life is advocated for those considered either socially useless or socially disturbing instead of educational or ameliorative measures may be the first danger sign of loss of creative liberty in thinking, which is the hallmarks of democratic society. [“Medical Science Under Dictatorship,” New England Journal of Medicine , Vol. 241, No. 2, July 14, 1949, p. 47.]
Illustrious predecessors.
We hear a constant clamor for rights, rights, always rights, but so very little about responsibility. And we have forgotten God. The need now is for selflessness, for a spirit of sacrifice, for a willingness to put aside personal gains for the salvation of the whole Western world. [ The Wall Street Journal , June 23, 1983.]
There is no side of the human mind which physiological study leaves uncultivated. Connected by innumerable ties with abstract science, Physiology is yet in the most intimate relation with humanity; and by teaching us that law and order, and a definite scheme of development, regulate even the strangest and wildest manifestations of individual life, she prepares the student to look for a coal even amidst the erratic wanderings of mankind, and to believe that history offers something more than an entertaining chaos--a journal of a toilsome, tragi-comic march nowhither.
Morality is not an academic or professional discipline. It is, rather, the assumption and execution of responsibilities; as Aristotle said, it is part of the nature of things. [ Wall Street Journal , Letters to the Editor, February 23, 1976.]
The pace and intensity of technological advance are without historical precedent. The creation of new industries may not provide enough jobs fast enough to replace those lost as a result of technologically caused productivity increases. [Quoted in the Wall Street Journal, June 8, 1995.]
What is clear from [Louis O. Kelso’s ] description is that money is a “social good,” an artifact of civilization invented to facilitate economic transactions for the common good. Like any other human tool or technology, this societal tool can be used justly or unjustly. It can be used by those who control it to suppress the natural creativity of the many, or it can be used to achieve economic liberation and prosperity for all affected by the money economy. [“A New Look at Prices and Money: The Kelsonian Binary Model for Achieving Rapid Growth Without Inflation,” Journal of Socio-Economics , vol. 30, p. 495, 2001.]
In the course of the twenty-first century what may be called the “capital wage” could be added to [the labor wage and the social wage], so that middle-class Americans — not merely an affluent minority — might derive income from three sources rather than just two. “Are we still a Middle-Class Nation?”, New America Foundation, The Atlantic Journal , Jan. 20, 2004.
GORSAS, ANTOINE JOSEPH (1752-1793), French publicist and politician, was born at Limoges (Haute-Vienne) on the 24th of March 1752, the son of a shoemaker. He established himself as a private tutor in Paris, and presently set up a school for the army at Versailles, which was attended by commoners as well as nobles. In 1781 he was imprisoned for a short time in the Bicêtre on an accusation of corrupting the morals of his pupils, his real offence being the writing of satirical verse. These circumstances explain the violence of his anti-monarchical sentiment. At the opening of the states-general he began to publish the _Courrier de Versailles à Paris et de Paris à Versailles_, in which appeared on the 4th of October 1789 the account of the banquet of the royal bodyguard. Gorsas is said to have himself read it in public at the Palais Royal, and to have headed one of the columns that marched on Versailles. He then changed the name of his paper to the _Courrier des quatre-vingt-trois départements_, continuing his incendiary propaganda, which had no small share in provoking the popular insurrections of June and August 1792. During the September massacres he wrote in his paper that the prisons were the centre of an anti-national conspiracy and that the people exercised a just vengeance on the guilty. On the 10th of September 1792 he was elected to the Convention for the department of Seine-et-Oise, and on the 10th of January 1793 was elected one of its secretaries. He sat at first with the Mountain, but having been long associated with Roland and Brissot, his agreement with the Girondists became gradually more pronounced; during the trial of Louis XVI. he dissociated himself more and more from the principles of the Mountain, and he voted for the king's detention during the war and subsequent banishment. A violent attack on Marat in the _Courrier_ led to an armed raid on his printing establishment on the 9th of March 1793. The place was sacked, but Gorsas escaped the popular fury by flight. The facts being reported to the Convention, little sympathy was shown to Gorsas, and a resolution (which was evaded) was passed forbidding representatives to occupy themselves with journalism. On the 2nd of June he was ordered by the Convention to hold himself under arrest with other members of his party. He escaped to Normandy to join Buzot, and after the defeat of the Girondists at Pacy-sur-Eure he found shelter in Brittany. He was imprudent enough to return to Paris in the autumn, where he was arrested on the 6th of October and guillotined the next day. Entry: GORSAS