The Great Gatsby

"Now a practical tip. You get freelance work if your work is good, if you’re easy to get along with, and if you’re on deadline. Actually you don’t need all three. Just two."

Neil Gaiman

"Our salvation depends upon our printing the news."

Fairchild Publications motto

"[We live in a] world of ever-increasing and ever-complicated influences. A topsy-turvy world ajumble with color TV, chattering computers, Pill-popping promiscuity, and a world that Grandma would not only fail to recognize but would probably drop dead in. Given all those high-octane influences competing for our attention, it is strange indeed to stumble upon a newspaper with a highly selective nation-wide circulation of only 85,000 that packs any sort of wallop other than when it hits the bottom of the trash bin wrapped snugly around the day’s garbage. Women’s Wear Daily is no general release movie, no prime-time television program, no household word. Yet it is, to many, as sexy as the Pill and just as necessary. To others it is not so much the paper around the garbage— as the garbage itself. But to be fair, even those detractors admit they cannot do without their daily dose of WWD, for to most, WWD is like a dangerous drug: mild at first, but steadily more demanding. (Who could believe a newspaper that forces readers to wade through a forest of zipper ads, personnel changes in Texas department stores, and death notices for upstanding but obscure Jewish garment manufacturers could be anything, especially addictive?) Once hooked, a daily fix is necessary. It becomes a ritual rivaling the Salute to the Flag and bedtime prayers."

Katie Kelly, The Wonderful World of Women’s Wear Daily (1972)

(Source: leoncrawl)

My first page one (albeit lower half) story in a U.S. newspaper. Can’t complain.

"You have to be there. You have to see the people. Even if you don’t think you’re getting that much, you’re getting a lot more than you realize."

Gay Talese

"Another early fantasy of mine about New York came from reading Esquire. I pictured the editors going out dressed in black tie with beautiful women on their arms. They would walk into ‘21’ and into the corridor of glamour and power of New York. Much later, when I actually went to work at Esquire, I realized the world it created in its pages had come out of the imagination of its original editor, Arnold Gingrich. I wanted to become part of that world, too. I wanted to be a New York editor."

Clay Felker

(Source: New York Magazine)

Met Gay Talese at his New York townhouse yesterday.

"[His rejection letters] were so complimentary that they usually had to be read twice to discover whether he was making a nomination for the Pulitzer Prize or expressing regret."

Dickson Hartwell (on Frank Crowninshield)

"He understood the basic rule of reporting: always go. He went to places that were inaccessible and dangerous and miserable — not as a daredevil or adrenaline junkie, not recklessly, often reluctantly, always with the most meticulous and careful planning — but he knew you had to be there. You had to see it. It’s nice that people call him a poet, but poets can write around the holes in a story. Anthony was first and foremost a witness — an incomparable, reliable witness."

Bill Keller (on Anthony Shadid)

(Source: The New York Times)

"Comment is free, but facts are sacred."

CP Scott