Everything is accessible to everyone all the time, and I think there are wondrous things to treasure with what the Internet has made available to journalists. But I think it's also had some effects that are less pleasant. It has chipped away at a sense of privacy and secrecy.
In fact, I spent 25 years as a reporter, swearing I would never become an editor. Sitting at a desk, watching other people go out and find the story, and then fussing with other people's words - I just didn't get the appeal of that.
I make a joke that I'm the Internet curmudgeon, but 'wary' is a good way to put it.
People crave trustworthy information about the world we live in. Some people want it because it is essential to the way they make a living. Some want it because they regard being well-informed as a condition of good citizenship. Some want it because they want something to exchange over dinner tables and water coolers.
The queen of aggregation is, of course, Arianna Huffington, who has discovered that if you take celebrity gossip, adorable kitten videos, posts from unpaid bloggers and news reports from other publications, array them on your Web site and add a left-wing soundtrack, millions of people will come.
There is a long history of newspapers being doomed. They were doomed by radio. They were doomed by television. They were probably doomed by the telegraph way back when.
The most obvious drawback of social media is that they are aggressive distractions.
Whether or not Twitter makes you stupid, it certainly makes some smart people sound stupid.
I'm a Capricorn, actually.
Every technology, including the printing press, comes at some price.
My dad was an engineer, and he became the CEO of Chevron. His was an engineer's mind-set: Everything's kind of a problem; how do you approach the problem?
Choosing my favorite moment in journalism would be like picking a favorite among my children. I can't pick one favorite.
There's no question that sources sometimes have interests aside from the truth when they talk to reporters. That's why reporters have to very aggressively report against their own theses and against their initial information.
My feeling about the Internet or anything else is that the more it tends to become a cult, the more I want to call it into question.
Beating up on the so-called elite media has a nice populist ring to it.
Liberation movements - operating surreptitiously and conspiratorially - thrive on discipline and suspicion, and punish deviation or dissent.
Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, has on several occasions talked about transparency as an absolute principle. I don't personally believe that.
I don't think that there is absolute freedom of the press. We operate under laws - against libel, for instance. The idea that there is some absolute press freedom is kind of a myth.
There's a lot of stuff they don't teach you in the mythical editors' school. They don't teach you that you're going to have to spend a lot of your life in crisis management.
I think there's been a decline in the public's access to what's being done with their tax dollars, what's being done in their name. I hope that that will be repaired.
