Part of his advice to a new crop of journalists was this:

"There is, I think, craft. I think you can keep learning, for those of you who are starting out. How do you do it?…Knowing where to look. Knowing how to build steam. Knowing how to sustain a narrative drive. How to keep a reader interested – this is a real challenge. Everybody's attention span is short. We are really competing. I mean, it used to be just television. Now it's 200 channels. It's four channels of Law and Order. There's 20 sports channels. And there's the Internet, there's the blog – every person is his or her own editor. First you have to get it right. You have to make it accurate. Then you have to learn how to dramatize it, to bring it alive, to find the people and the events that make it real. So you're not just a reporter, and you're not just a historian – not in the world we live in with all the competing forms of information. You are a playwright too. You've got to bring in the drama. Impress upon people why they need to know it…"