Teacher's Pet

 

POINT TO PONDER

“I was taught that a reporter should use fewest words needed to tell a story so that there is room left for advertisement.”

                               -Quote from "Teacher's Pet" told to me by Mark Dennen

STORY LINE Memorable and Educational quotes from Teacher’s Pet (1958 movie starring Clark Gable and Doris Day

 

• James Gannon: [referring to Dr. Pine, Prof. Stone's boyfriend] So he's got more degrees than a thermometer, so he speaks seven languages, so he's read every book. So what? The important thing is he's had no experience. He didn't start at the bottom and work up. That's the only way you can learn.
• Erica Stone: As my father used to say, a reporter has to do a lot of sweating before he earns the right to perspire.
• James Gannon: How could you give up a real newspaper job for teaching? Erica Stone: Well, that's a very good question, Mr. Gallagher. Maybe for the same reason that occasionally a musician wants to be a conductor, he wants to hear a hundred people play music the way he hears it.
• Erica Stone: Newspapers can't compete in reporting what happened any more, but they can and should tell the public why it happened.

 

 

James Gannon: [providing an impromptu lesson to Barney] By the way, you heard about it, didn't you?

Barney Kovac: What?

James Gannon: Found him dead.

Barney Kovac: Who?

James Gannon: Boss.

Barney Kovac: No kidding. When?

James Gannon: Two minutes ago.

Barney Kovac: Where did they find him?

James Gannon: In his office.

Barney Kovac: What did happen?

James Gannon: Some dame shot him.

James Gannon: Some dame sho... Why?

James Gannon: Barney, you have just asked me six very important questions: who, what, where, when, how, and why. That's what every news story should answer.

 

 

Comments

[BH]

Now I want to see the whole movie!

Happy weekend!

[Gomez]

So news are the tools to get more advertisements? Intersting perspective. True Newspapers make money only when they sell adds not from newspaper itself.

[PC Chia]

Basic lessons in communication through a wonderful movie.
5W and 1H. Wish every one would follow this. LEAN communication.

[Mark Dennen]

I just love the part where Doris Day gives Clark Gable the fact sheet. He sits down as his typewriter, looks over the facts, takes a long drag on his cigarette, puts it down and then types out the entire story in about an minute (with no editing required, just like Mozart). She mocks him for writing the story so quickly and decides to read it out loud to the class to embarrass him, but the joke is on her. Be careful when teaching as class on painting as there may be a Rembrandt in the room.

[Shawn Munguia]

heres another one... if it bleeds, it leads... so i was taught in college about the news

[microCEO]

For additional thoughtful entertainment, here are a few famous quotations about the art and folly of journalism.

“Better a good journalist than a poor assassin.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“No honest journalist should be willing to describe himself or herself as 'embedded.' To say, 'I'm an embedded journalist' is to say, 'I'm a government Propagandist.”
― Noam Chomsky

“We journalists make it a point to know very little about an extremely wide variety of topics; this is how we stay objective.”
― Dave Barry

“In the very first month of Indian Opinion, I realized that the sole aim of journalism should be service. The newspaper press is a great power, but just as an unchained torrent of water submerges whole countrysides and devastates crops, even so an uncontrolled pen serves but to destroy. If the control is from without, it proves more poisonous than want of control. It can be profitable only when exercised from within. If this line of reasoning is correct, how many of the journals in the world would stand the test? But who would stop those that are useless? And who should be the judge? The useful and the useless must, like good and evil generally, go on together, and man must make his choice.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“I knew that a historian (or a journalist, or anyone telling a story) was forced to choose, out of an infinite number of facts, what to present, what to omit. And that decision inevitably would reflect, whether consciously or not, the interests of the historian.”
― Howard Zinn

“The newspaper journalists like to believe the worst; they can sell more papers that way, as one of them told me himself; for even upstanding and respectable people dearly love to read ill of others.”
― Margaret Atwood

“Once demagogy and falsehoods become routine, there isn’t much for the political journalist to do except handicap the race and report on the candidate’s mood.”
― George Packer

“It is the press, above all, which wages a positively fanatical and slanderous struggle, tearing down everything which can be regarded as a support of national independence, cultural elevation, and the economic independence of the nation.”
― Adolf Hitler

"As the man said, for every complex problem there’s a simple solution, and it’s wrong."
— Umberto Eco

[Madhuri]

Since November- we have a new rule for Dinner conversation in our house: No talk about what we heard/ read in the news that day.

[Cedar]

When I was growing up, these were called the SIX CONSEQUENCES: who, what, when, where, why, and how. The one was most difficult to answer: "why" and personal motivation may be confusing to discern.