Latest Harold Evans Quotes from Interviews

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• [The web] is going to end up being a tremendous advantage, providing we can work out the financial structure. I think we’ll see newspapers survive, being printed at home... Or you’ll have a local print shop, so that rather than waiting for the newspapers to arrive by truck, which is 30 percent at least of a newspaper’s cost, you’ll go in and push a button, and it will take your dollar bills without anyone having to be there. And it will print the newspaper for you while you wait. It will take seven minutes. There’s a terrific future for print in my view and it gives me great heart.

  Harold Evans

  Home, Heart, Thinking

  "Harold Evans Sees Bright Future for Print-on-Demand Newspapers". Interview with Mark Glaser, mediashift.org. October 29, 2009.

• We always talk about how everyone is unifocal. You can't possibly be interested in jazz and Beethoven. Of course you can. You can't both be reading a newspaper and be online. Of course you can. We shouldn't be obsessed with a gun to your head, 'You either read a newspaper or die!'

  Harold Evans

  Reading, Gun, Jazz

  "Harold Evans Sees Bright Future for Print-on-Demand Newspapers". Interview with Mark Glaser, mediashift.org. October 29, 2009.

• If Rupert Murdoch wants to charge for content online, he will succeed in so far, but no further than what he provides that is unique and can't be found anywhere. It doesn't seem to me that if he wants to charge it will be a blow to universal freedom and liberty of mankind.

  Harold Evans

  Unique, Blow, Liberty

  "Harold Evans Sees Bright Future for Print-on-Demand Newspapers". Interview by Mark Glaser, mediashift.org. October 29, 2009.

• It's a fascinating time, I think. I do believe that with all the qualifications I've said - [such as] the uncertain accuracy of the web - nonetheless the access to speeches, documents is unparalleled with the ease of gathering information. If I had had that access when I was an editor or coming up, it would have made my life so much easier. As it was, everything took so much longer.

  Harold Evans

  Believe, Thinking, Editors

  "Harold Evans Sees Bright Future for Print-on-Demand Newspapers". Interview with Mark Glaser, mediashift.org. October 29, 2009.

• Television and radio are what I call sequential media; they're not simultaneous media. With simultaneous media, you can scan your eye down an electronic or print page and pick among six or seven stories you might like and want to read. With television and radio, you have to wait until the guy's finished talking about the balloon boy, which I don't have the slightest interest in, to find out that all hell's broken loose in Baghdad. Because they've chosen that day to start with the balloon boy.

  Harold Evans

  Eye, Boys, Media

  "Harold Evans Sees Bright Future for Print-on-Demand Newspapers". Interview by Mark Glaser, mediashift.org. October 29, 2009.

• If I want to spend the rest of my life reading one day's output of information, which is about what it would take, OK fine. But I personally prefer calibration from an aggregator or newspaper, where the No. 1 story is one they consider important, [and] they're usually right.

  Harold Evans

  Reading, Important, One Day

  "Harold Evans Sees Bright Future for Print-on-Demand Newspapers". Interview with Mark Glaser, mediashift.org. October 29, 2009.

• The 'gatekeepers' became a term of revile. But when you think about the flow of information, I personally value immensely the calibration a news organ, whether it's on the web or in print, brings to the floodwaters of information. I haven't the time to read all the dispatches of the Associated Press, for example. It's fantastic what they put out, it's extremely good, from all over the world. I like when someone acts as a filter.

  Harold Evans

  Thinking, News, World

  "Harold Evans Sees Bright Future for Print-on-Demand Newspapers". Interview by Mark Glaser, mediashift.org. October 29, 2009.

• What I'm driving at is let's not lose sight in our excitement of the democratization of the media that some things are bad, false and ugly - and no amount of electronic gloss will make them true, beautiful and accurate.

  Harold Evans

  Beautiful, Media, Sight

  "Harold Evans Sees Bright Future for Print-on-Demand Newspapers". Interview by Mark Glaser, mediashift.org. October 29, 2009.

• I think there's a lot of benefit in letting people vent. When I was on the Manchester Evening News, we got 500 letters a day, and part of my job as editor was to edit them. And I thought that was one of the best things in the newspaper, and it was instituted by an editor known as Big Tom, who said 'this is the voice of the people.' And he was quite right.

  Harold Evans

  Jobs, Thinking, Editors

  "Harold Evans Sees Bright Future for Print-on-Demand Newspapers". Interview with Mark Glaser, mediashift.org. October 29, 2009.

• The democratization of news is fine and splendid, but it's not reporting. It's based on a fragment of information picked up from television or the web, and people are sounding off about something that's not necessarily true.

  Harold Evans

  People, Information, News

  "Harold Evans Sees Bright Future for Print-on-Demand Newspapers". Interview with Mark Glaser, mediashift.org. October 29, 2009.

• Journalism is not easy. It's the first rough draft. I don't think you need to wait around until you have the definitive thing. You record what's there; don't delude yourself that this is the ultimate historical view.

  Harold Evans

  Thinking, Views, Waiting

  "Harold Evans Sees Bright Future for Print-on-Demand Newspapers". Interview by Mark Glaser, mediashift.org. October 29, 2009.

• When I was studying at Chicago and at Stanford University, where many many cases of two people observing the same event have a different take on what happened.

  Harold Evans

  Two, Stanford University, People

  "Harold Evans Sees Bright Future for Print-on-Demand Newspapers". Interview by Mark Glaser, mediashift.org. October 29, 2009.

• This impressed me when I was the editor of the Sunday Times [of London] - we had the "Bloody Sunday" killings of 13 unarmed civilians by British paratroopers. We interviewed 500 people for our report, and not one of them could give us a total picture of what was happening. It was like the Rashomon effect multiplied a million times. For a website or even a newspaper to be a collector of information flow is not the highest form of journalism.

  Harold Evans

  Sunday, Editors, Information Flow

  "Harold Evans Sees Bright Future for Print-on-Demand Newspapers". Interview with Mark Glaser, mediashift.org. October 29, 2009.

• I wrote about Bosnia at the time. Somebody looked out their window and saw gangsters coming down the street and doing ethnic cleansing. I said that was the thing that would happen in the future, someone phoning in what they were seeing on the scene. Whether it's the Huffington Post, the Daily Beast, Drudge Report or the BBC, all those reports, you have to assume there's a real person [who] has credibility.

  Harold Evans

  Real, Cleansing, Bosnia

  "Harold Evans Sees Bright Future for Print-on-Demand Newspapers". Interview with Mark Glaser, www.pbs.org. October 29, 2009.

• The credibility of a newspaper or news magazine is essential so you can check it for accuracy. I'm not saying it's not valuable. One can make a case for just running everything. Just run it! That's one of the advantages of the web, you can run everything - but you don't help the reader find out what's important.

  Harold Evans

  Running, Important, Essentials

  "Harold Evans Sees Bright Future for Print-on-Demand Newspapers". Interview with Mark Glaser, mediashift.org. October 29, 2009.

• Internet news cycles are by the minute, and any fool can take a headline from the Associated Press and send it out as news.

  Harold Evans

  News, Fool, Internet

  "Harold Evans Sees Bright Future for Print-on-Demand Newspapers". Interview by Mark Glaser, mediashift.org. October 29, 2009.

• I often see cases of Internet news where there's no reconciliation for what's gone before and what's newly arrived. That training for me - which was absolutely brutal and I was terrified - was so important, especially later in life when one was faced with conflicting stories and conflicting evidence.

  Harold Evans

  Later In Life, Training, Important

  "Harold Evans Sees Bright Future for Print-on-Demand Newspapers". Interview with Mark Glaser, mediashift.org. October 29, 2009.

• When came the invasion of privacy.That kind of thing turns the newspaper from a friendly organ - not necessarily appeasing everybody - into the enemy. It's one reason why newspapers have suffered circulation falls.

  Harold Evans

  Fall, Enemy, Friendly

  "Harold Evans Sees Bright Future for Print-on-Demand Newspapers". Interview with Mark Glaser, www.pbs.org. October 29, 2009.

• I had been at the newspaper for a few months. It wasn’t regarded as the paper, it was their paper. There was a sense of community because they reported, we reported, I reported the little things, the whist drives, the weddings, the funerals, the little speeches. In one sense it was the most boring copy in the world to anyone picking it up, but, on the other hand, it was crucial to the people who lived in those communities.

  Harold Evans

  Hands, People, Funeral

  "Harold Evans Sees Bright Future for Print-on-Demand Newspapers". Interview with Mark Glaser, mediashift.org. October 29, 2009.

• My wife [Tina Brown] co-founded the Daily Beast, so I have no hostility to the web or Internet. A number of print friends of mine regard it as the worst thing that's ever happened, but I don't.

  Harold Evans

  Numbers, Wife, Internet

  "Harold Evans Sees Bright Future for Print-on-Demand Newspapers". Interview with Mark Glaser, mediashift.org. October 29, 2009.

• I think a lot of newspapers have lost touch with that sense of community, which so impressed me as a teenager when I had to knock on people's doors.

  Harold Evans

  Teenager, Thinking, Doors

  "Harold Evans Sees Bright Future for Print-on-Demand Newspapers". Interview by Mark Glaser, mediashift.org. October 29, 2009.

• I love craftsmanship of any kind, a job well done either by my chiropractor or carpenter, and I am addicted to print, the type, the ink. But my basic passion is journalism and I can't live without being online.

  Harold Evans

  Jobs, Passion, Ink

  "Harold Evans: proud to be a publishing crusader". Interview with Zinta Lundborg, www.bendbulletin.com. March 7, 2010.

• [We need to] protect copyright at all costs. Don't do cheap deals with Google and these other cyber-monsters. Recognize that the creative artist has to be maintained.

  Harold Evans

  Artist, Creative, Google