xref: /haiku/data/system/data/fortunes/News

A help wanted add for a photo journalist asked the rhetorical question:

If you found yourself in a situation where you could either save a drowning man, or you could take a Pulitzer prize winning photograph of him drowning, what shutter speed and setting would you use?
		-- Paul Harvey
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A Hen Brooding Kittens
	A friend informs us that he saw at the Novato ranch, Marin county, a few days since, a hen actually brooding and otherwise caring for three kittens!  The gentleman upon whose premises this strange event is transpiring says the hen adopted the kittens when they were but a few days old, and that she has devoted them her undivided care for several weeks past.  The young felines are now of respectable size, but they nevertheless follow the hen at
her cluckings, and are regularly brooded at night beneath her wings.
		-- Sacramento Daily Union, July 2, 1861
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	A journalist, thrilled over his dinner, asked the chef for the recipe. Retorted the chef, "Sorry, we have the same policy as you journalists, we never reveal our sauce."
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A Mexican newspaper reports that bored Royal Air Force pilots stationed on the Falkland Islands have devised what they consider a marvelous new game.  Noting that the local penguins are fascinated by airplanes, the pilots search out a beach where the birds are gathered and fly slowly along it at the water's edge.  Perhaps ten thousand penguins turn their heads in unison watching the planes go by, and when the pilots turn around and fly back, the birds turn their heads in the opposite direction, like spectators at a slow-motion tennis match.  Then, the paper reports "The pilots fly out to sea and directly to the penguin colony and overfly it.  Heads go up, up, up, and ten thousand penguins fall over gently onto their backs.
		-- Audobon Society Magazine
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A New Way of Taking Pills
	A physician one night in Wisconsin being disturbed by a burglar, and having no ball or shot for his pistol, noiselessly loaded the weapon with small, hard pills, and gave the intruder a "prescription" which he thinks will go far towards curing the rascal of a very bad ailment.
		-- Nevada Morning Transcript, January 30, 1861
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A newspaper is a circulating library with high blood pressure.
		-- Arthure "Bugs" Baer
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A prominent broadcaster, on a big-game safari in Africa, was taken to a watering hole where the life of the jungle could be observed. As he looked down from his tree platform and described the scene into his tape recorder, he saw two gnus grazing peacefully. So preoccupied were they that they failed to observe the approach of a pride of lions led by two magnificent specimens, obviously the leaders. The lions charged, killed the gnus, and dragged them into the bushes where their feasting could not be seen.  A little while later the two kings of the jungle emerged and the radioman recorded on his tape: "Well, that's the end of the gnus and here, once again, are the head lions."
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"A raccoon tangled with a 23,000 volt line today.  The results blacked out 1400 homes and, of course, one raccoon."
		-- Steel City News
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A young girl once committed suicide because her mother refused her a new bonnet.  Coroner's verdict: "Death from excessive spunk."
		-- Sacramento Daily Union, September 13, 1860
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Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.
		-- Thomas Jefferson
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After two or three weeks of this madness, you begin to feel As One with the man who said, "No news is good news." In twenty-eight papers, only the rarest kind of luck will turn up more than two or three articles of any interest...  but even then the interest items are usually buried deep around paragraph 16 on the jump (or "Cont.  on ...") page...

The Post will have a story about Muskie making a speech in Iowa.  The Star will say the same thing, and the Journal will say nothing at all. But the Times might have enough room on the jump page to include a line or so that says something like: "When he finished his speech, Muskie burst into tears and seized his campaign manager by the side of the neck. They grappled briefly, but the struggle was kicked apart by an oriental woman who seemed to be in control."

Now that's good journalism.  Totally objective; very active and straight to the point.
		-- Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing '72"
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All newspaper editorial writers ever do is come down from the hills after the battle is over and shoot the wounded.
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An editor is one who separates the wheat from the chaff and prints the chaff.
		-- Adlai Stevenson
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"... And remember: if you don't like the news, go out and make some of your own."
        	-- "Scoop" Nisker, KFOG radio reporter Preposterous Words
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And that's the way it is...
		-- Walter Cronkite
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Earth Destroyed by Solar Flare -- film clips at eleven.
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Every journalist has a novel in him, which is an excellent place for it.
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Everything you read in newspapers is absolutely true, except for that rare story of which you happen to have first-hand knowledge.
		-- Erwin Knoll
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FLASH!
Intelligence of mankind decreasing.
Details at ... uh, when the little hand is on the ....
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... Had this been an actual emergency, we would have fled in terror, and you would not have been informed.
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I only know what I read in the papers.
		-- Will Rogers
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I read the newspaper avidly.  It is my one form of continuous fiction.
		-- Aneurin Bevan
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I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens who, reading newspapers, live and die in the belief that they have known something of what has been passing in their time.
		-- H. Truman
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If I were to walk on water, the press would say I'm only doing it because I can't swim.
		-- Bob Stanfield
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If you lose your temper at a newspaper columnist, he'll get rich,  or famous or both.
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In a medium in which a News Piece takes a minute and an "In-Depth" Piece takes two minutes, the Simple will drive out the Complex.
		-- Frank Mankiewicz
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Isn't it conceivable to you that an intelligent person could harbor
two opposing ideas in his mind?
		-- Adlai Stevenson, to reporters
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Its failings notwithstanding, there is much to be said in favor of journalism in that by giving us the opinion of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.
		-- Oscar Wilde
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Journalism is literature in a hurry.
		-- Matthew Arnold
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Journalism will kill you, but it will keep you alive while you're at it.
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Most rock journalism is people who can't write interviewing people who can't talk for people who can't read.
		-- Frank Zappa
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My father was a God-fearing man, but he never missed a copy of the New York Times, either.
		-- E.B. White
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Never offend people with style when you can offend them with substance.
		-- Sam Brown, "The Washington Post", January 26, 1977
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			*** NEWSFLASH ***

Russian tanks steamrolling through New Jersey!!!!  Details at eleven!
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"No self-respecting fish would want to be wrapped in that kind of paper."
		-- Mike Royko on the Chicago Sun-Times after it was taken over by Rupert Murdoch
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Of what you see in books, believe 75%.  Of newspapers, believe 50%.  And of TV news, believe 25% -- make that 5% if the anchorman wears a blazer.
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		Once Again From the Top

Correction notice in the Miami Herald: "Last Sunday, The Herald erroneously reported that original Dolphin Johnny Holmes had been an insurance salesman in Raleigh, North Carolina, that he had won the New York lottery in 1982 and lost the money in a land swindle, that he had been charged with vehicular homicide, but acquitted because his mother said she drove the car, and that he stated that the funniest thing he ever saw was Flipper spouting water on George Wilson.  Each of these items was erroneous material published inadvertently.  He was not an insurance salesman in Raleigh, did not win the lottery, neither he nor his mother was charged or involved in any way with vehicular homicide, and he made no comment about Flipper or George Wilson. The Herald regrets the errors."
		-- "The Progressive", March, 1987
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One of the signs of Napoleon's greatness is the fact that he once had a publisher shot.
		-- Siegfried Unseld
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People who are funny and smart and return phone calls get much better press than people who are just funny and smart.
		-- Howard Simons, "The Washington Post"
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Photographing a volcano is just about the most miserable thing you can do.
		-- Robert B. Goodman
	[Who has clearly never tried to use a PDP-10.  Ed.]
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	Reporters like Bill Greider from the Washington Post and Him Naughton of the New York Times, for instance, had to file long, detailed,
and relatively complex stories every day -- while my own deadlines fell every two weeks -- but neither of them ever seemed in a hurry about
getting their work done, and from time to time they would try to console me about the terrible pressure I always seemed to be laboring under.
	Any $100-an-hour psychiatrist could probably explain this problem to me, in thirteen or fourteen sessions, but I don't have time for that.
No doubt it has something to do with a deep-seated personality defect, or maybe a kink in whatever blood vessel leads into the pineal gland...  On
the other hand, it might be something as simple & basically perverse as whatever instinct it is that causes a jackrabbit to wait until the last
possible second to dart across the road in front of a speeding car.
		-- Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail"
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The advertisement is the most truthful part of a newspaper.
		-- Thomas Jefferson
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The American Dental Association announced today that most plaque tends to form on teeth around 4:00 PM in the afternoon.

Film at 11:00.
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The most important service rendered by the press is that of educating people to approach printed matter with distrust. 
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"The New York Times is read by the people who run the country.  The Washington Post is read by the people who think they run the country. The
National Enquirer is read by the people who think Elvis is alive and running the country ..."
		-- Robert J Woodhead
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The only qualities for real success in journalism are ratlike cunning, a plausible manner and a little literary ability.  The capacity to steal
other people's ideas and phrases ... is also invaluable.
		-- Nicolas Tomalin, "Stop the Press, I Want to Get On"
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The world really isn't any worse.  It's just that the news coverage is so much better.
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"Then you admit confirming not denying you ever said that?"
"NO! ... I mean Yes!  WHAT?"
"I'll put `maybe.'"
		-- Bloom County
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This is a test of the emergency broadcast system.  Had there been an actual emergency, then you would no longer be here.
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This is a test of the Emergency Broadcast System.  If this had been an actual emergency, do you really think we'd stick around to tell you?
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This life is a test.  It is only a test.  Had this been an actual life, you would have received further instructions as to what to do and where to go.
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Warning: Listening to WXRT on April Fools' Day is not recommended for those who are slightly disoriented the first few hours after waking up.
		-- Chicago Reader 4/22/83
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You know the great thing about TV?  If something important happens anywhere at all in the world, no matter what time of the day or night, you can always change the channel.
		-- Jim Ignatowski
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