A Quote by Barbara Kingsolver

No reporter worth his buttons will let the facts intrude on a good story.

Barbara Kingsolver

Quote Topics

Buttons Facts Good Good Story His Intrude Reporter Story Will Worth

Quote Author

Barbara Kingsolver
American - Novelist
Born: April 8, 1955

The reporter is the daily prisoner of clocked facts. On all working days, he is expected to do his best in one swift swipe at each story.

Jim Bishop

I think, though, that people will read into a reporter's story a bias that they want to see in a reporter.

Garrett Graff

[The scientist] believes passionately in facts, in measured facts. He believes there are no bad facts, that all facts are good facts, though they may be facts about bad things, and his intellectual satisfaction can come only from the acquisition of accurately known facts, from their organization into a body of knowledge, in which the inter-relationship of the measured facts is the dominant consideration.

Robert Watson-Watt

It is in your DNA to love a good story. You know, neat tales with heroes and villains and conflicts to resolve. A good story pushes our buttons, is exciting and memorable.

Barry Ritholtz

Let us, rather, gather facts, all the facts, regardless of aesthetic appeal or theoretical social worth, and spread those facts before us not as the soothsayer spreads the innards of a turkey but as a newspaper spreads its columns. Let us be journalists, then. And like all good journalists, we shall present our facts in an order that will satisfy the famous five W's: wow, whoopee, wahoo, why-not and whew.

Tom Robbins

The literary artist will ... portray what he knows, and little else. Imagination is built upon knowledge, and his dreams will rest upon his facts. He is worth to the world just about what he has learned from it, and no more.

Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward

Newspapers have been likened to steamships that move very slowly, in terms of their direction. And when a reporter is sent out on a story, if that reporter has his or her own personal standards and is given a certain amount of time, they're going to probably do as good a story yesterday or tomorrow as they did the day before yesterday when there was a different editor there. But an editor provides vision. An editor decides what's going to be on page one, what gets rewarded, who's given more time, who's given what beats. They set a direction.

Tom Rosenstiel

Facts are neutral until human beings add their own meaning to those facts. People make their decisions based on what the facts mean to them, not on the facts themselves. The meaning they add to facts depends on their current story … facts are not terribly useful to influencing others. People don’t need new facts—they need a new story.

Blake Mycoskie

I would never have been a good reporter because I am not accurate regarding facts.

George Akerlof

A writer need not devour a whole sheep in order to know what mutton tastes like, but he must at least eat a chop. Unless he gets his facts right, his imagination will lead him into all kinds of nonsense, and the facts he is most likely to get right are the facts of his own experience.

W. Somerset Maugham

I think if the content is good and the content is interesting, the at home viewer will watch it for as long as the story is interesting thus the responsibility for making the story interesting falls on the shoulders of the reporter or the producer. Then I'm disappointed that producers have felt that television can only be told in 59 second story bursts because we've become, it's become journalism based on MTV, video electronic editing and cutting.

Robin Leach

Never steal another reporter's story; never take the last of another reporter's ammo; never mess with another reporter's computer. Those are the rules, unless you work for a tabloid, where they replace "never" with "always".

Mira Grant

The true historian, therefore, seeking to compose a true picture of the thing acted, must collect facts and combine facts. Methods will differ, styles will differ. Nobody ever does anything like anybody else; but the end in view is generally the same, and the historian's end is truthful narration. Maxims he will have, if he is wise, never a one; and as for a moral, if he tell his story well, it will need none; if he tell it ill, it will deserve none.

Augustine Birrell

Cinema is a director's medium; it's his story and his vision. If it's a good story, people will connect to it.

Vicky Kaushal

Some directors can become concerned when it comes to music, because it's the end of the process and they're tired. They're worried that the music will intrude or waste something, that a composer will overwhelm the story.