Sir Harold Matthew Evans (born 28 June 1928) is a British-born journalist and writer who was editor of The Sunday Times from 1967 to 1981.
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.
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.
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.
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.
[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.
Throughout America's young history there has been a necessary tension between the individual and the group.
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!'
[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.
Attempting to get at truth means rejecting stereotypes and cliches.
The camera cannot lie, but it can be an accessory to untruth.
For 50 years my father worked for the railroad.
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.
When I first came to the United States in 1956 I fell in love with things - mainly the vitality and the freedoms.
I think America has a brilliant future.
In journalism it is simpler to sound off than it is to find out. It is more elegant to pontificate than it is to sweat.
Actions are always more complex and nuanced than they seem. We have to be willing to wrestle with paradox in pursuing understanding.
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.
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.
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.
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.