When I was a little boy I used to borrow my father's hat, and make a press card to stick in the hat band. That was the way reporters were always portrayed in the movies.
Now that I look back on it, having retired from being a reporter, it was kind of romantic. It was a wonderful way to live one's life, just as I imagined it would be when I was 6 or 7.
TV critics, who traditionally hate television and make their living writing about it, often didn't like what I did on the air.
It's best to leap into something you know you love. You might change your mind later, but that is the privilege of youth.
Kids are always asked, What are you going to be when you grow up? I needed an answer. So instead of saying, a fireman, or a policeman, I said, a reporter.
My mother, at least twice, cancelled our family's subscription to the newspaper I was working on, because she was so mad about its treatment of my father.
I wasn't a very discriminating reader. I read just about everything that came along.
I'm not any kind of social reformer.
It was so much fun to have the freedom to wander America, with no assignments. For 25 or 30 years I never had an assignment. These were all stories I wanted to do myself.
I think all those people I did stories about measured their own success by the joy their work was giving them.
I saw how many people were poor and how many kids my age went to school hungry in the morning, which I don't think most of my contemporaries in racially segregated schools in the South thought very much about at the time.
I don't think one should ever come to my stage of life and have to look back and say, Gosh. I wish I hadn't spent all those years doing that job I was never really interested in.
I don't have any well-developed philosophy about journalism. Ultimately it is important in a society like this, so people can know about everything that goes wrong.
I could tell you which writer's rhythms I am imitating. It's not exactly plagiarism, it's falling in love with good language and trying to imitate it.
I can't say that I've changed anybody's life, ever, and that's the real work of the world, if you want a better society.
I can't remember a time when I didn't want to be a reporter. I don't know where I got the idea that it was a romantic calling.
For a while there, I was a stringer. The expression comes from the old habit of stringing together the column inches that you had written. They'd measure it and pay you 10 cents an inch for your printed copy.
I think I'd have done better if I had been a little more relaxed-if I had not pressed quite so hard, if I'd not lost quite so much sleep.
I don't think I had a reputation as a hard worker, but inside I was always being eaten up by the pressures.
I used to think that driving, sleepless, ambitious labor was what you needed to succeed.
