It is fitting that yesteryear's swashbuckling newspaper reporter has turned into today's solemn young sobersides nursing a glass of watered white wine after a day of toiling over computer databases in a smoke-free, noise-free newsroom.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the transformation of the journalism profession over time.
Russell Baker reflects on the significant changes in journalism, contrasting the adventurous and vibrant nature of past newspaper reporters with the subdued and restrained reality of modern journalists who work in quieter, more sterile environments. It underscores how technological advancements and cultural shifts have altered not only the nature of the work but perhaps also the spirit and excitement that once accompanied it.
In practice
In a speech about the evolution of media at a conference, one might say, 'As Russell Baker noted, the transition from swashbuckling reporters to serious professionals reflects the broader changes in our work environments today.'
So there he is at last. Man on the moon. The poor magnificent bungler! He can't even get to the office without undergoing the agonies of the damned, but give him a little metal, a few chemicals, some wire and twenty or thirty billion dollars and vroom! there he is, up on a rock a quarter of a million miles up in the sky.
The worst thing about the miracle of modern communications is the Pavlovian pressure it places upon everyone to communicate whenever a bell rings.
Voters inclined to loathe and fear elite Ivy League schools rarely make fine distinctions between Yale and Harvard. All they know is that both are full of rich, fancy, stuck-up and possibly dangerous intellectuals who never sit down to supper in their undershirt no matter how hot the weather gets.
When it comes to cars, only two varieties of people are possible - cowards and fools.
Rereading A.J. Liebling carries me happily back to an age when all good journalists knew they had plenty to be modest about, and were.
Television was the most revolutionary event of the century. Its importance was in a class with the discovery of gunpowder and the invention of the printing press, which changed the human condition for centuries afterward.
It is good to realize that falling apart is not such a bad thing. Indeed, it is as essential to evolutionary and psychological transformation as the cracking of outgrown shells.
Keep recognizing that reality is changing and that your ideas have to change. Don’t get stuck in old ideas.
There is no way you're going to have an event like 9/11 and expect things to remain the same. They killed 3,000 people in New York on that day, and if they could have they would've killed 300,000.
The women's movement was always going to work in two parts. With one part, we'd break open the doors that were closed to women, and with the other part, we'd walk through, transforming society for men and women. Turns out it was a lot easier to open the doors.
Nothing is going to change, unless someone does something soon
The natural cure for an ill-administration, in a popular or representative constitution, is a change of men.
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