People everywhere confuse what they read in newspapers with news.

A. J. Liebling (1904 - 1963)

To read a newspaper is to refrain from reading something worthwhile. The first discipline of education must therefore be to refuse resolutely¹ to feed the mind with canned chatter².

Aleister Crowley (1875 - 1947)

Trying to be a first-rate reporter on the average American newspaper is like trying to play Bach's 'St. Matthew's Passion' on a ukulele.

Bagdikian's Observation

Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock.

Ben Hecht (1893 - 1964)

Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice; journalism³ what will be read once.

Cyril Connolly (1903 - 1974), Enemies of Promise (1938)

USA Today has come out with a new survey - apparently⁴, three out of every four people make up 75% of the population.

David Letterman (1947 - )

Editor: a person employed by a newspaper, whose business it is to separate the wheat from the chaff⁵, and to see that the chaff is printed.

Elbert Hubbard (1856 - 1915)

Rock journalism is people who can't write interviewing people who can't talk for people who can't read.

Frank Zappa (1940 - 1993), quoted in Linda Botts, "Loose Talk" (1980)

Journalism largely consists of saying 'Lord Jones is Dead' to people who never knew that Lord Jones was alive.

G. K. Chesterton (1874 - 1936)

Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half.

Gore⁶ Vidal (1925 - )

All successful newspapers are ceaselessly querulous and bellicose⁷. They never defend anyone or anything if they can help it; if the job is forced on them, they tackle it by denouncing someone or something else.

H. L. Mencken (1880 - 1956)

A newspaper consists of just the same number of words, whether there be any news in it or not.

Henry Fielding (1707 - 1754)

It's amazing that the amount of news that happens in the world every day always just exactly fits the newspaper.

Jerry Seinfeld (1954 - )

Rage is the only quality which has kept me, or anybody I have ever studied, writing columns for newspapers.

Jimmy Breslin

You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don't know what was in the newspapers that morning... a place where you can simply experience and bring forth⁸ what you are and what you might be.

Joseph Campbell (1904 - 1987)

Once a newspaper touches a story, the facts are lost forever, even to the protagonists⁹.

Norman Mailer (1923 - 2007), "Esquire", June 1960

But what is the difference between literature and journalism?

...Journalism is unreadable and literature is not read. That is all.

Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900), The Critic as Artist, 1891

Every journalist has a novel in him, which is an excellent place for it.

Russel Lynes

Newspapermen learn to call a murderer 'an alleged¹⁰ murderer' and the King of England 'the alleged King of England' to avoid libel suits.

Stephen Leacock (1869 - 1944)

Advertisements... contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.

Thomas Jefferson (1743 - 1826), Letter to Nathaniel Macon, January 12, 1819

I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month, and I feel myself infinitely¹¹ the happier for it.

Thomas Jefferson (1743 - 1826)

I read no newspaper now but Ritchie's, and in that chiefly the advertisements, for they contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.

Thomas Jefferson (1743 - 1826), Letter to Nathaniel Macon, January 12, 1819

The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.

Thomas Jefferson (1743 - 1826)