Jessica Savitch Quotes

Shootouts are not gunfights of honor, they're gang wars and racial riots.

The most important event I covered was the Panama Canal debate, which dragged on for months.

For every two minutes of glamour, there are eight hours of hard work.

Anyone who writes an autobiographical work at the age of 34 is, at best, presumptuous. It occurred to me that it was time to set the record straight.

Never refuse an assignment except when there is a conflict of interest, a potential of danger to you or your family, or you hold a strongly biased attitude about the subject under focus.

Television news is a delicate balance of serving public good and private gain.

It had not occurred to me that marriage requires the same effort as a career. And unlike a career, marriage requires a joint effort.

No matter how many goals you have achieved, you must set your sights on a higher one.

Mistakes are not always the result of someone's ineptitude.

I don't exactly know what it means to be ready. A cake when the oven timer goes off? Am I fully baked, or only half-baked?

Newscasters cannot call attention to themselves by being too attractive or too unattractive.

I have had a lifelong phobia of snakes.

The bad news is that 50 people died in a hotel fire; the good news is that we got exclusive footage.

You can easily die racing to cover a bank robbery as you can in a war zone.

Texas was defined by its larger-than-life characters, particularly politicians.

How valuable NBC Magazine was in my career is questionable.

In the beginning, my mother humored me when I told her I wanted to be a reporter.

My current goal is to place a moratorium on goals.

My most lucrative job in college was a stint as the regional Dodge Girl.

Every time I am in danger of believing the glamour of my own press, some incident inevitably brings me back to earth.

When for so long you can't get a job for reasons that seem specious, you you finally do have it, you are constantly afraid of losing it.

I worked half my life to be an overnight success, and still it took me by surprise.

News events cannot be controlled, nor can newscasts be mapped out like entertainment shows.

Our free enterprise system of disseminating information is collectively referred to as The Media. But there is no collective.

I hadn't realized until I covered the police beat just how seedy crime is.

What is the value of sticking a microphone in a man's face right after he has learned of his wife's death?

Walking into a room filled with people you don't know but who know you brings out your worst vulnerabilities.

One reason I left local news was that I was tired of the constant musical chairs among news directors.

A press card does not provide you with an invisible shield. You're flesh and blood.

Some news managers have been slow to grasp that good television news is always substance over form.

Women were seldom given quality assignments or adequate air time.

When I first anchored in 1970, I had never seen a woman anchor a news show.

The better the coverage, the more discriminating the viewer.

The minute viewers callin or write about your looks, they were not listening to what you were saying.

The news anchor is exactly that - an anchor, a center, a focus.

In every interview I have ever read or seen or taken part in, the final question in our future-oriented society is always, What next?

It is my belief that one's salary is between an individual and the IRS.

The code of the road is, if there is anything to eat, eat; if there is a place to sit, sit; if there is a restroom, go.

Although I was entirely relaxed on camera, if I had to stand up and say something to an assembled group of people, I was rendered all but inarticulate.

By far my most perilous assignment was covering a tank car explosion.

The relationship between talent — a term loosely applied to those who work on-air — and management is uneasy, at best.

In real life, events seem much less dramatic.

Many senators have developed a canny sense of what will play best for the audience.

I very much wanted to be accepted by my peers, to be considered a serious journalist.

Being a novelty had its advantages.

The idea of stardom was difficult to grasp. It was like being schizophrenic; there was her, the woman on television, and the real me.

The latest wrinkle is on wrinkles. There is a widespread belief that women can't grow old in television news.

Men still control the news, both on and off camera.

A fact of modern life is that it takes women longer to get ready than men.

In interviews I gave early on in my career, I was quoted as saying it was possible to have it all: a dynamic job, marriage, and children. In some respects, I was a social adolescent.