Quotes

On journalism today...

On technology, journalism, market competition and democracy...

On building a journalism career as a woman...

On vision and leadership...

On journalism today...

"Many people think that in order to be powerful, a journalist has to reach a huge audience. No, in order to be powerful, a journalist has to reach the audience that can make a difference to an issue. It can be one person." --Speech at West Bohemia University, Pilsen, Czech Republic, Nov. 2, 2000

"The watchdog that barks at everything loses its bite. The apparently endless flow of scandals and feeding frenzies has damaged, rather than enhanced, journalism's credibility." --Tabloids, Talk Radio and the Future of News

"The tabloid journalist may actually be turning off the most important consumer group -- people who want news as opposed to those simply looking for entertaining background noise." --Tabloids, Talk Radio and the Future of News

"Instead of protecting their turf, some of the nation's best news organizations seem to be squandering their credibility just when "brand-name" trustworthiness is most important to their survival." --Tabloids, Talk Radio and the Future of News

"What is lost when all the news arteries are clogged with muck is a flow of information to the public about what their government is actually doing from day to day -- as well as information about what real choices they have to shape the nation's future. Most news organizations simply are not trying hard enough to offer political news that is meaningful to people." --"Resource Journalism: A Model for New Media," delivered at M.I.T., May 8, 1998

"America's media-driven culture is saturated with entertainment, much of it violent. We've cleaned up the air, but toxified the airwaves." --"Resource Journalism: A Model for New Media"

"We need journalists, teachers and other leaders more than ever, to help us sort out dispassionately the real from the false, the meaningful and relevant from the merely amusing." --"Wired World, Wired Learning: The Serf Surfs" at City University of London, July 1, 1999

"Citizens need the press, as they need the police, to bear witness to the underside of American life; it would be a mistake to blame either for the crimes they uncover." --Tabloids, Talk Radio and the Future of News

On the proposal that comedian David Letterman will replace Ted Koppel's hard-hitting "Nightline" program:

"ABC's entertainment division is getting better access to the U.S. military (in Afghanistan) than its news division, in order to present the Pentagon's version of the war in a new ABC 'reality series.' Perhaps Letterman will sprinkle his jokes with dispatches from the front."

"If ABC abandons 'Nightline,' it will be a major loss to the search for useful information about the real challenges we now face as a nation. ABC executives will join all the others who shrug off their public obligations, saying the health of American democracy is "not my problem" while they pocket a bigger bonus. But the quality off America's public life IS their problem, because they have a franchise to run the public's airwaves, and because television is still our national source of information and our first line of attack in the battle for world opinion. If we treat America's news flow as if it's a national joke, how surprised should we be if our bashers get the last laugh?" --The Boston Globe, March 2, 2002.

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On technology, journalism, market competition and democracy...

"On the Internet, a more democratic relationship is created. The user is as important as the provider. The serf surfs the World Wide Web and has a new relationship to the elite world." --"Wired World, Wired Learning: The Serf Surfs"

"These new technologies are accelerating a shift of power away from traditional voices of authority in journalism and politics. Both institutions are uneasy, for good reason: their roles are being challenged by new competitors and their audiences are restless." --"Tabloids, Talk Radio and the Future of News"

"Quality news cannot be designed to win the channel-surfing contest. It must expect instead to be selected, as a special niche that loyal viewers visit for good reason… As the surf gets crowded, consumers will want to know where they can go for real news. They won't want to waste their time getting there." --"Tabloids, Talk Radio and the Future of News"

"This is the genius of journalism on the Internet -- these new technologies allow journalists to connect citizens not only to information, but to each other." --Speech at West Bohemia University, Pilsen, Czech Republic, Nov. 2, 2000

"Thanks to the Internet, people can second-guess journalists. It would be wise in such an environment to make both standards of quality and the processes of creating the news as transparent as possible." --"Tabloids, Talk Radio and the Future of News"

"It's the message, not the medium, that is the problem. If the content is wrong, it is wrong in all of its media forms. All the gorgeous streaming video and razzle-dazzle delivery systems won't make it any better for civic culture." --"Resource Journalism: A Model for New Media"

"Anti-government activists use the word 'public' as a pejorative, equating it with the word 'government.' The word 'public" actually means 'of the people.' It would be helpful to restore this core definition if we are to build digital public squares and honor democracy as a common responsibility and goal." --"Resource Journalism: A Model for New Media"

"A constant deadline is no deadline at all." --"Wired World, Wired Learning: The Serf Surfs"

"The lack of filters makes content on the Net seem more authentic. But this is largely an illusion." --"Wired World, Wired Learning: The Serf Surfs"

"In the Czech Republic, too, it is easier to draw an audience by mocking the antics of the politicians than by trying to cast a clarifying light… News is so sensationalized that Czechs joke you need a towel to mop up all the blood." --"Journalism and Citizenship," Nieman Reports, Summer 2000

"Perhaps someday the Czechs and the Americans will be prattle-fatigued and sell-shocked." --"Journalism and Citizenship"

"Work at perfecting the journalism that democracy deserves…[is] worthwhile because the stakes are high, not just in the United States, but out here on the edge, where democracy is just beginning, and both the citizens and the journalists need to see what they might be." --"Journalism and Citizenship"

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On building a journalism career as a woman...

"We had been told by our Harvard professors that we were the future leaders of the world. But when we graduated in 1968, it became clear that they were talking only to the men. Discrimination on the basis of race and sex was the norm in virtually every institution." --"Capturing Opportunities for Leadership," Hume chapter from Nancy Neuman, ed., True to Ourselves.

"As I searched for my first job, it seemed that the world didn't want to be saved -- at least not by me. The man at Associated Press said 'Forget it.' He couldn't hire a woman. 'You'll be attacked on the streets of Boston,' he said, adding that I also would be scooped by our chief rivals at United Press International at some point because I'd get a flat tire on the way to a story and not know how to change it… I learned how to change a tire and studied karate. I resolved to go back and break that AP man's desk in two after I changed his tires. But he retired before I got the chance." --"Capturing Opportunities for Leadership"

"I found myself trapped as a member of the White House press corps. The facts simply didn't seem to matter any more; the public cared more about myths and personalities. I didn't get my satisfaction from the political process, the way others seemed to. The results were too transient, or too hard to measure -- or if they were measured, too hard to live with." --Hume's 25th college reunion report, Radcliffe Class of 1968

"My regular work on 'Washington Week in Review' meant that people recognized me in airports, but something was eating away at me: the political system and the media had become disconnected from the daily realities that should have guided them. Unwilling to give up journalism entirely, but determined not to go on succeeding at all the wrong things, I came back to Harvard after the 1988 election." --25th reunion report

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On vision and leadership...

"This then, was the most important lesson of all, taught to me by a blind and paralyzed woman who was at the end of her life. The opportunities for leadership arrive without warning, and sometimes very close to home." --"Capturing Opportunities for Leadership"

"You can't force your solutions onto an unwilling world, as the terrorists tried to do. You can't solve it all by yourself. But anyone can make a difference if she responds to a genuine opportunity to help. The invitation could come any day, just when you least expect it, from a most unlikely source." --"Capturing Opportunities for Leadership"

"Don't let the past kill the future." --Hume's annual New Year's Eve resolution, 1990-2000

"The tricky part about having your dreams come true is having them mean what they were supposed to mean when you dreamed them in the first place." --25th reunion report

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