What is Good Journalism?

Pramit Singh

Founder, Bighow.com

World’s Best Tool For Local Journalism

Give Voice

A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself.

- Arthur Miller

Truth over everything else

Sometimes good journalism is bad public relations.

- Steve Capus

Assume Nothing

If the newspapers of a country are filled with good news, the jails of that country will be

filled with good people.

- Daniel Moynihan

Ask and you shall…

There aren't any embarrassing questions - only embarrassing answers.

- Carl Rowan

Doubt is Good

Journalists aren't supposed to praise things.

It's a violation of work rules almost as serious as buying drinks with our own money or absolving

the CIA of something.

- P.J. O'Rourke

Incite Conversation

The secret of successful journalism is to make your readers so angry they will write

half your paper for you.

- C.E.M. Joad

Go after the unusual

When a dog bites a man that is not news, but when a man bites a dog that is news.

- Charles Anderson Dana

Make sense out of nonsense

In the real world, the right thing never happens in the right place and the right

time. It is the job of journalists and historians to make it appear that it has.

- Mark Twain

You are doing it for the world

When I’m Reporting, I am a Citizen of the World.

- Bob Franken , CNN

It will never be enough

Remember, son, many a good story has been ruined by over-verification.

- James Gordon Bennett

Show, don’t tell

A news story should be like a mini skirt on a pretty woman. Long enough to cover the

subject but short enough to be interesting.

- Anonymous, linked to a Texas newspaper editor

Provide context

[In Katrina, CNN] learned from Jon Stewart how to use simple juxtaposition to make a point, ... Clip of a federal official explaining how no one anticipated the strength of

the storm.

Clip from the Weather Channel proving plenty of people did.

- Jay Rosen

Verify, Verify

If Your Mother Says She Loves You,

Check It Out

- CJR

Be Original, Be Yourself

A journal should be neither an echo nor a pander.

- George William Curtis

Get it right

In journalism, there has always been a tension between getting it first and getting

it right.

- Ellen Goodman

Work up the people

The press should be not only a collective propagandist and a collective agitator, but

also a collective organizer of the masses.

- Nikolai Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Use your power wisely

Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.

- Napoleon Bonaparte

Be Passionate

Being a reporter is as much a diagnosis as a job description.

- Anna Quindlen

Prioritize

I always turn to the sports section first. The sports section records people's accomplishments; the

front page nothing but man's failures.

- Earl Warren, quoted in Sports Illustrated, 22 July 1968

Focus on why and how

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

Less noise, more signal

Comment is free, but facts are sacred.

- C.P. Scott, in the Manchester Guardian