Failure liberates you

Those varied backgrounds enriched them as new journalist and enriched me as their professor/editor. New to the field, they brought a walk-through-fire work ethic and a willingness to fail, understanding that failure is the necessary precondition to success.

Failure liberates you; it liberates you from the fear of failure; it liberates you from the delusion you can somehow be flawless.

Samuel Freedman, Letters to a Young Journalist, p.140-141.

The building blocks of journalistic greatness

All too few journalism programs, especially at the undergraduate level, strive to build your cultural and historical literacy and to imbue you with intellectual curiosity. Yet those are the building blocks of journalistic greatness.

Samuel Freedman, Letters to a Young Journalist, p. 138

Fiction and Non-fiction's very separate contracts

The challenge is to accept fiction's influence, to study and apply its narrative means, without ever adopting its poetic license. Fiction and nonfiction, you see, establish very separate contracts with a reader. Nonfiction promises accuracy, to the greatest degree humanly possible, and in return has the power of actuality. No matter how implausible an event or an action, the nonfiction author can fairly to a reader, But that's what really happened. Fiction does not enjoy the escape catch of implausible fact.

Samuel Freedman, Letters to a Young Journalist, p. 128

What's in your library, man

A man's library should be composed of the following.

Sound Advice: Volume 1

Sound Advice