Gambling can turn into a dangerous two-way street when you least expect it. Weird things happen suddenly, and your life can go all to pieces.
Hunter S. ThompsonRead
I don't think that my kind of journalism has ever been universally popular. It's lonely out here.
Interpretation
Hunter S. Thompson reflects on the isolation felt in his unique approach to journalism.
In this quote, Hunter S. Thompson expresses the idea that his distinctive style of journalism, which often diverges from mainstream conventions, has not garnered widespread acclaim. He acknowledges this lack of universal appeal by stating that it can feel isolating to be on the fringes of a field that can sometimes be dominated by more traditional narratives. His sentiment highlights the challenges faced by those who choose to pursue originality and authenticity over popularity.
In practice
In a discussion about journalistic integrity at a media conference.
Gambling can turn into a dangerous two-way street when you least expect it. Weird things happen suddenly, and your life can go all to pieces.
As things stand now, I am going to be a writer. I'm not sure that I'm going to be a good one or even a self-supporting one, but until the dark thumb of fate presses me to the dust and says 'you are nothing', I will be a writer.
Fiction is a bridge to the truth that journalism can't reach.
There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge.
Objective journalism is one of the main reasons that American politics has been allowed to be so corrupt for so long.
When you write for a living and you can't do anything else, you know that sooner or later that the deadline is going to come screaming down on you like a goddamn banshee. There's no avoiding it...So one day you just don't appear at the El Adobe bar anymore; you shut the door, paint the windows black, rent an electric typewriter and become the monster you always were - the writer.
We have to compete in a universe of 200 networks, so we have to carve out our own niche, and to me, that niche is just basic shoe-leather journalism with some good journalists at the helm you can trust as presenters.
My inclination, as an old-school, classically trained journalist, is not to go with a story unless I have it hard. It's not good enough to say something based on rumors that were flying around.
We journalists are a bit like vultures, feasting on war, scandal and disaster. Turn on the news, and you see Syrian refugees, Volkswagen corruption, dysfunctional government. Yet that reflects a selection bias in how we report the news: We cover planes that crash, not planes that take off.
People really in the meat grinder of the front lines are not, for the most part, insured or salaried network correspondents. They're young freelancers. They're kind of a cheap date for the news industry.
When I was trained as a journalist, as a race-relations reporter in Nashville covering the end of the civil-rights movement, we were strictly forbidden to use the first-person pronoun. There was kind of an electric charge around it. To come out from hiding and use the word 'I' carried a lot of fright for me.
The difference between Rappler and other newsgroups in the Philippines is that journalists control Rappler both editorially and commercially. We make decisions that are bad for business but protect the public sphere.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.