While people are quick to praise the wisdom of the crowd, being an old-school journalist, I look at the wisdom of the crowd and know it can quickly turn into a mob mentality.

One of the great things about being a writer/journalist is that my boss loves me to go out and do features on being someone else. I did a feature on Kate Middleton, where I went to an incredible fancy state home in the countryside, put on a wedding dress and posed for engagement pictures with a fake Prince William.

Everyone with a cell phone thinks they're a photographer. Everyone with a laptop thinks they're a journalist. But they have no training, and they have no idea of what we keep to in terms of standards, as in what's far out and what's reality. And they have no dedication to truth.

Any journalist worth his or her salt wouldn't trust me.

It's in the DNA of Scientology that they don't trust journalists.

Strange bonds of trust and self-deception tend to grow between journalists and their subjects.

The desire to become a journalist came really because I very much like living abroad, and like to travel, and wanted to be paid for it.

Of all possible subjects, travel is the most difficult for an artist, as it is the easiest for a journalist.

If you want to rip the heart out of a democracy, you go after the facts. That's what modern authoritarians do. You lie. All the time. Then, you say it's your opponents and the journalists who lie.

In my first company, Seer Technologies, where I was chief technology officer, we shied away from the media. We watched every word and were guarded in front of journalists.

Today we all are enjoying the fruits of the digital era. Millions of sources of information coming at us at lightning fast speed. That technology has also democratized the gathering and dissemination of news, allowing for 'citizen journalists' to make their mark, even usurping the role of mainstream news organizations at times.

Mitch Glazer and I went to high school together, and his mother was my English teacher for two years. She was my favorite teacher, and I followed Mitch's career as a journalist, so we've kind of kept in touch over the years.

Those who peacefully gather to express sympathy for the family of Michael Brown must have their rights respected at all times. And journalists must not be harassed or prevented from covering a story that needs to be told.

It's a little bit in the genes because my brother is a journalist and my father was a sports writer.

Broadcasts from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange have propelled once-obscure financial journalists such as Maria Bartiromo to celebrity status and made CNBC to investors what ESPN is to sports fans.

The smarter the journalists are, the better off society is. For to a degree, people read the press to inform themselves - and the better the teacher, the better the student body.

While journalists cannot right every wrong, champion every cause or fix every problem, they can - through the written word - lift someone's burden for a day, make some elderly woman on a bus smile or let them know they are noticed by someone.

It is inexcusable for scientists to torture animals; let them make their experiments on journalists and politicians.

Budget cuts are a sad reality in most newsrooms, and I am concerned that they reduce the collective muscle of journalists who are doing the expensive, and often dangerous, work of on-the-ground reporting.

Here in the United States, our profession is much maligned, people simply don't trust or like journalists anymore and that's sad.

We're all bloggers and punks and rebels with cameras. There is absolutely no respect for career journalists anymore.

With legitimate journalists I've always had a great time - I've never gone out of my way to court the press. That's probably cost me some money, but I've always had the respect of my peers.

Sometimes negative news does come out, but it is often exaggerated and manipulated to spread scandal. Journalists sometimes risk becoming ill from coprophilia and thus fomenting coprophagia: which is a sin that taints all men and women, that is, the tendency to focus on the negative rather than the positive aspects.

It could be that all awful dictators are frustrated artists - Mao with his poetry and Mussolini with his monuments. Stalin was once a journalistic hack, and I can personally testify to how frustrated they are. Pol Pot left a very edgy photo collection behind. And Osama seems quite interested in video.