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Professional practice

Journalists & editors

Questioning, verification, correction, sources, attention, power, and what journalism systematically misses.

12 questions, 142 answers on the record, from 130 members. Every question is asked in FLAPSS wording — nobody answers as anybody else.

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Worth reading

What bad recommendations do people in your field repeat too often?

Robert S. Langer

Biomedical engineer; Institute Professor at MIT

Recorded · Academy of Achievement · 2012

I didn’t realize that scientists were like that, and that people were like that. I would have thought — and I like to hope — that I encourage people rather than discourage people.
Steve Jobs

Co-founder and chief executive of Apple; co-founder of NeXT; chief executive of Pixar

Recorded · Business Week · 1998

No. We have a lot of customers, and we have a lot of research into our installed base. We also watch industry trends pretty carefully.
Rahul Dravid

India Test and one-day international cricketer, 1996–2012; later India head coach

Recorded · ESPNcricinfo · 2011

Let us not be so satisfied with the present, with deals and finances in hand that we get blindsided.
Read all 32 →

Every question in this questionnaire

  1. What kind of question most often opens a truthful answer rather than a rehearsed one? —
  2. How do you decide that a claim is sufficiently verified to publish? —
  3. When you put your name on something, how thoroughly should you have checked it first — and when have you signed off without checking enough? —
  4. What should a journalist do when a published account is materially wrong? —
  5. How do you protect a source without letting anonymity protect a weak claim? —
  6. Whose work do you read even when you disagree with them? 26
  7. When did you last change your mind about something important? 28
  8. What are you best at that nobody watching would notice? 26
  9. Which important reality does the news cycle systematically make harder to see? —
  10. What bad recommendations do people in your field repeat too often? 32
  11. What are you unwilling to optimise? 30
  12. How should the way you question a powerful person differ from the way you question somebody with little power? —

Who has answered

Members with enough answers in this questionnaire to be worth arriving at — listed A–Z, not ranked by count.

  • Barack Obama

    44th President of the United States, 2009–2017; United States Senator from Illinois 2005–2008

    2 answers United States b. 1961

  • Chris Hoy

    British track cyclist, 1994–2013

    2 answers United Kingdom b. 1976

  • David Vélez

    Co-founder and chief executive of Nubank

    2 answers Colombia

  • Edmund Hillary

    Mountaineer and explorer; first ascent of Everest, 1953

    2 answers New Zealand 1919–2008

  • Magnus Carlsen

    Norwegian chess grandmaster; World Chess Champion 2013–2023

    2 answers Norway b. 1990

  • Steve Jobs

    Co-founder and chief executive of Apple; co-founder of NeXT; chief executive of Pixar

    3 answers United States 1955–2011

  • Terence Tao

    Mathematician; Fields Medallist, 2006

    2 answers Australia / United States

  • Tom Stoppard

    Playwright and screenwriter

    2 answers United Kingdom 1937–2025

  • Warren Buffett

    Chairman and chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway, 1970–2025

    2 answers United States b. 1930

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