Now it’s liberating, in a way, that newspapers have dissolved, because we can go back to writing inside baseball. Our readers love it. We love it. And there’s actually money to be made in it becuase it’s specialized information.

— Mary Jacoby, a former newspaper reporter and founder of Main Justice, a niche site that covers the U.S. Department of Justice, in an interview with the The Nieman Journalism Lab

It’s hardly surprising that Web journalists should be fast, competitive, ruthless, sensationalist — and willing to do most anything for the story. It will be messy — and fun!

— Nick Denton, founder of Gawker Media discussing his decision to pay $5,000 for a next-generation iPhone found in a California bar, which his blog turned into a national news story.

I think the thing that you look for in journalists is the same as I’ts always been. You look for a sense of curiosity, an appetite to understand about the world and a passion to communicate it. Now of course in order to be able to do those things in the future there’s a wider range of tools that people need to be able to master whether its video or its using various web software. But the absolute fundamentals are that you have got to be someone who wants to find out about the world and pass that along to other people.

— Peter Horrocks, head of the BBC’s multimedia newsroom in an interview posted by PBS MediaShift

But the real point is this:  not only will philanthropy alone not save journalism, it can’t likely support even the majority of our modest efforts.  We need to run our businesses like businesses, even if our goal is public service rather than profitability.

— John Thornton, founder of the Texas Tribune, discussing the future of nonprofit news

I don’t recall where I was when Buddy Holly died. But I’ll recall where I was when Michael Jackson died. I was on Twitter.

— Twitter user Captain Stevens (@toomarvelous)

The recommendation systems of Amazon and Netflix ably steer us to more of what we like. But tempting us to xenophily, luring us to stuff we don’t know and wouldn’t think we’d enjoy, is as yet a purely human skill. It’s the bread and butter of the daily newspaper.

— Harry R. Lewis, professor of computer science, Harvard University, and co-author of Blown to Bits: Your Life, Liberty, and Happiness After the Digital Explosion, opining in The Chronicle of Higher Education

A story is a story. We’re not squeamish about the means. And the paroxysms of the j-school ethicists add to the satisfaction.

— Gawker CEO Nick Denton, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal’s All Things Digital

There are no TV journalists anymore. There are video journalists.

— Charlie Tillinghast, an online video guru at MSNBC.com, discussing the effect of the company’s content distribution strategy

The value of a social network is defined not only by who’s on it, but by who’s excluded.

— Paul Saffo, a Silicon Valley analyst, in an interview with The Economist

(Journalism) is not business model; it is not a job; it is not a company; it is not an industry; it is not a form of media; it is not a distribution platform. Instead, journalism is an activity. It is a body of practices by which information and knowledge is gathered, processed, and conveyed. The practices are influenced by the form of media and distribution platform, of course, as well as by financial arrangements that support the journalism. But one should not equate the two.

— Robert Picard, Professor of Media Economics, Jönköping International Business School, Jönköping University, Sweden, writing in his blog, The Media Business