Quotes about the biz....

"Same crap, different shovel," A co-worker on making the shift from sports to news and difference between the two.

 

My personal favorite Bob Knight quote:

"All of us learn to write in the second grade. Most of us go on to better things."

 

"Today's news is tomorrow's gerbil cage liner." Attributed to many. Inside and outside of the biz. Remember it if you're feeling really self-important, remember it if your story or section was crap on a given day.

 

As a breed, writers are pathetic creatures. Lazy praise or criticism is easily ignored, but give us someone who understands what we're trying to do, who sees why we place that description there or that quote there; give us a boss who knows it's not just about meeting deadline and word count, and we'll live and die on their insights, kicking like a belly-scratched dog at one good word. -- S.L. Price, Far Afield

 

"The tape recorder killed sportswriting." -- Gay Talese

 

I've always been fond of this little chestnut by Franklin P. Adams:
Journalism's a shrew and scold, I like her
She makes you sick, she makes you old, I like her
She's daily trouble, stress and strife
She's love and hate and death and life
She ain't no lady, she's my wife.
I like her.

 

Another one from S.L. Price, if only because his memoir is so damn good.

"The dirty secret of journalism is that the best writing has almost nothing to do with objectivity. The reporter must be fair, talk to everyone, notice everything. But then the writer must take over, decide his point and marshal the material. It's a gamble, because Keats was right: 'Beauty is truth, truth beauty -- That is all/Ye know on earth and all ye need to know.' When a writer nails a subject, it wields power no matter what the words. When he doesn't, no amount of beautiful language can save him."

 

Steve Rushin replied, in "Road Swing,"

"Most of us at that same stage stop calling ourselves 'Bobby' and throwing furniture, but I see his point."

See also my sig line.

 

Today's news is tomorrow's fish and chips paper.--Joe Jackson.

 

Richard Hoffer was writing about Mickey Mantle here, but I've always thought it applied to writers and risk-takers. I've always loved the alliteration in this paragraph.

"Anything can happen to anybody in this country, so long as they're daring in their defeats and outsized in victory. Failure is forgiven of the big swingers, in whom even foolishness is flamboyant. Do you remember Mantle in Pittsburgh in the 1960 Series, twice whiffing in Game 1 and then, the next day, crushing two? Generations of men still do. The world will always belong to those who swing from the heels."

 

Maybe you have to be a certain age to appreciate this. For Christmas some time ago, my wife did a needlepoint for me. I have the piece framed and on my wall where I see it every day. Here 'tis:

"I'd rather be
a sports columnist
than President."
-- David Eisenhower,
mid-Watergate, 1973


(I've forgotten where I read that. Maybe in the Philly Inquirer when the Trickster's son-in-law actually wrote a column for a while.)

 

Same reason Arnold Palmer was so beloved.