Like all young reporters - brilliant or hopelessly incompetent - I dreamed of the glamorous life of the foreign correspondent: prowling Vienna in a Burberry trench coat, speaking a dozen languages to dangerous women, narrowly escaping Sardinian bandits - the usual stuff that newspaper dreams are made of.
Once Iraq became a hot bed for kidnapping, reporters had to use every kind of trick they could manage to avoid it. This included chase cars, security men for more prosperous agencies and networks, and GPS signals on satellite phones that could pinpoint the journalist's locations.
What's happening to movie critics is no different from what has been meted out to book, dance, theater, and fine-arts reviewers and reporters in the cultural deforestation that has driven refugees into the diffuse clatter of the Internet and Twitter, where some adapt and thrive - such as Roger Ebert - while others disappear without a twinkle.
In the '50s and '60s, journalism wasn't a profession. It wasn't something you went to college for - it was really more of a trade. You had a lot of guys who came up working in newspapers at the copy desk, or delivery boys, and then they would somehow become reporters afterward and learn on the job.
I like BuzzFeed, and I understand the pressure that online reporters are under. But I think everyone agrees that, despite all the awesome kitten gifs, they're still obligated to be skeptical of government officials and ask the right questions.
People thought I was cocky because I didn't talk much. When I first turned pro, reporters asked me who was going to win. I'd say, 'I am' because it was the easier than giving some long, drawn-out answer.
There have been as many investigative reporters on this newspaper working on Clinton's many problems as I can remember there were working on Watergate.
Journalists who are devoted to strictly factual reporting take particular pleasure from satirical news outlets that have the liberty to laugh and even mock the hypocrisy that reporters and editors must simply observe without comment.
Many people have their reputations as reporters and analysts because they are on television, batting around conventional wisdom. A lot of these people have never reported a story.
The Bush administration works closely with a network of rapid response digital brownshirts who work to pressure reporters and their editors for 'undermining support for our troops.'