It's not a good thing to be friends with people you're covering. There's just no point in doing it. It's tempting, but they're not going to consider you their friend anyway. They just know that you're somebody that can do something for them.

So no one should rely on television either for their knowledge of music or for news. There's just more going on. It's an adjunct to the written word, which I think is still the most important thing.

So, yeah, I think it had a major effect. I think in franchising younger people, it was just an idea that's never been trotted out before, but it makes perfectly good sense.

Well, news is anything that's interesting, that relates to what's happening in the world, what's happening in areas of the culture that would be of interest to your audience.

You find the most important thing that really grabs you, and put it right up top. Don't bury the lead. Put it at the top. Best thing to do. Never go wrong that way. It's an immutable law of journalism. It just always works.

So you shouldn't really flatter yourself that they want to be your buddy. They don't. Generally. They want you for some reason or other, and you just have to fend that off all the time.

Rewriting is a large part of the whole job. And get rid of stuff that's not working. Just pare it down until it's a beautiful thing you can hand in, probably late, to your editor.

And the most important thing you can do is learn to edit yourself. And then go back and rewrite.

And you can't really cover people critically that you're friends with.

I don't find music being less important than, like, politics.

I know what the structure of the language is.

I spent time in, like, criminal courts, and covering murder trials for papers.

I think television often has dismissed younger people. They figure, well, they're not really watching news, that's not our audience.

I was in college for two years, and just hated it in the '60s.

If you ask questions that interest you, you'll get answers that interest your audience.

It's gonna be short if it's news; put it at the top. Style's not an issue, just make it news.

Some of the most important stories don't lend themselves to television treatment.

Television's not going read stories to you.

Television's very dependent on images. That's not what news is.

Unless you're doing a feature piece, which is going to be longer, and you have more time to get into stuff.