A. J. Liebling

Abbott Joseph "Joe" Liebling (born October 18, 1904, in New York City; died December 28, 1963) was an American journalist who was closely associated with The New Yorker from 1935 until his death. Best known as a press critic, Liebling wrote the magazine's "Wayward Press" feature from 1945 on.

Sourced

• As a result of its generous stand [Robert Maynard Hutchins’ controversial policy of admitting students after their second year of high-school], the University of Chicago’s undergraduate college acts as the greatest magnet for neurotic juveniles since the Children’s Crusade, with Robert Maynard Hutchins…playing the role of Stephen the Shepherd Boy.
  • Chicago: The Second City (Knopf, 1952; University of Nebraska Press, 2004, ISBN 0-8032-8035-1), p. 110

• Inconsiderate to the last, Josef Stalin, a man who never had to meet a deadline, had the bad taste to die in installments.
  • The New Yorker, March 28, 1953, quoted in David Remnick, "Reporting It All: A.J. Liebling at 100", The New Yorker, March 29, 2004

• The subject [of Stalin's death] permitted a rare blend of invective and speculation—both Hearst papers, as I recall, ran cartoons of Stalin being rebuffed at the gates of Heaven, where Hearst had no correspondents—and I have seldom enjoyed a week of newspaper reading more.
  • ibid.

• People everywhere confuse what they read in newspapers with news.
  • The New Yorker, April 7, 1956

• Show me a poet, and I'll show you a shit.
  • The New Yorker, March 28, 1953, quoted in David Remnick, "Reporting It All: A.J. Liebling at 100", The New Yorker, March 29, 2004

• Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.
  • The New Yorker, May 14, 1960

Attributed

• News is like the tilefish which appears in great schools off the Atlantic Coast some years and then vanishes, no one knows whither or for how long. Newspapers might employ these periods searching for the breeding grounds of news, but they prefer to fill up with stories about Kurdled Kurds or Calvin Coolidge, until the banks close or a Hitler marches, when they are as surprised as their readers.

• The function of the press in society is to inform, but its role in society is to make money.