"There's no sin in repeating the truth if the truth still hasn't penetrated."

I only heard him say this once. But it explains a lot about why the magazine read the way it did. It's a vitally important dictum because editors and journalists, even the crusading kind, are often overly-attracted to what is new and novel, abandoning subjects or lines of argument because they've "been done," not realizing that 99 percent of the public will not have heard about them. There's a reason politicians have to repeat the same lines in speech after speech--it bores the traveling press core but is fresh to 99 percent of the audience. If, as a journalist, you want your work to actually change the country, you have to find new and interesting ways of getting your point across.

"You always gotta try to say something good about the bad guys and bad about the good guys." So for instance Trump is exposing how rich guys usually want something concrete for the money they give politicians. And Lincoln suspended habeas corpus.

"Gregg, this 30,000-word piece about particle accelerators is all well and good, but you haven't mentioned Amtrak subsidies to West Virginia."