I used to be a columnist for 'Golf Monthly' and have contributed articles for national newspapers based on the humour that is in abundance in the game, which is more than can be said of tennis.
Report, report, report. Dig, dig, dig. Think, think, think. Don't stop being a reporter because you've become a columnist.
When U.S.-based editors and columnists parachute into a news storm, it is often the stringers who keep us out of trouble, helping us glimpse the complexity behind the headlines.
The great 'New York Times' columnist Dave Anderson famously slept one year in a child's race-car bed. There he was, Pulitzer Prize and all, snoring as his feet dangled over the rear tires of Lightning McQueen.
Personal columnists are jackals and no jackal has been known to live on grass once he had learned about meat - no matter who killed the meat for him.
We know Roger Ebert loved the 'Sun-Times' and his career as a newspaper columnist. But ironically, it was his illness and losing his voice that caused him to explore another venue.
Do not be taken in by 'insiderisms.' Fledgling columnists, eager to impress readers with their grasp of journalistic jargon, are drawn to such arcane spellings as 'lede.' Where they lede, do not follow.
One of my lifelong hobbies has been to collect 'aptronyms' - the newspaper columnist Franklin P. Adams's term for people whose names were curiously appropriate to, or provided ironic comment on, their occupations.
I wanted to be a columnist so badly that I took a huge pay cut to leave Forbes, which wouldn't give me a column, and join Newsday, which wanted my column for its Sunday business section.
As anyone who has read 'Sports Illustrated's Steve Rushin knows, it's quite possible to write an unreadable column without being a TV pundit. But if you want to be a consistently good columnist, you can't be on television.
It's kind of hard to spend long hours trying to help people and then find out that the favorite game of the columnist is to sit back and second guess you and try to find something that you did wrong.
There's a nastiness out there that wants to harm me with words. These are my enemies - the ideologues, the populists, the columnists who don't like the fact that I take them on toe-to-toe. What I try to do is tell the truth. It's not the coin of the ...
A brick could be a columnist for the New York Times, and could even win a Nobel Prize. And why not? Is that any more absurd than both those things happening for Paul Krugman?
Don't commit to being a columnist unless you're willing to do it right. Report your behind off, so you have something original and useful to say. Say it in a way that will interest someone other than you, your family and your sources.
As the 2012 elections approach the finish line, the chatter among columnists and political reporters is about upcoming books that take readers inside the campaigns, cutting-edge efforts to micro-target voters on Internet social applications, the enor...
High-profile columnists should remember they are in a privileged position. Writing isn't a dreadfully specific skill - it's taught to millions via our schooling system. And opinions? Well, I've yet to meet people without opinions.
Everyone his own cinematographer. His own stream-of-consciousness e-mail poet. His own nightclub DJ. His own political columnist. His own biographer of his top-10 friends!
All coffee shops now have WiFi. Why bring a book when you could be wittily attacking some idiot columnist on Twitter, or responding to your date requests, or posting a picture of your foot? All of that is more gripping and immediate and social than b...
I look for strong people. I don't like people who'll say yes to everything I might bring up. I want people who can argue and disagree and have a point of view that's reflected in the magazine. My dad believed in the cult of personality. He brought gr...
Many of the writers who have inspired me most are outside the genre: Humorists like Robert Benchley and James Thurber, screenwriters like Ben Hecht and William Goldman, and journalists/columnists like H.L. Mencken, Mike Royko and Molly Ivins.
There is such a polarized discussion of economics among people like analysts, columnists, bloggers; often, they end up just saying that views other than their own should not even be discussed. I find that frustrating. There is no intellectual progres...
