Herbert Bayard Swope Quotations

The secret of a successful newspaper is to take one story each day and bang the hell out of it. Give the public what it wants to have and part of what it ought to have whether it wants it or not.

I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure - which is: Try to please everybody.

Don't forget that the only two things people read in a story are the first and last sentences. Give them blood in the eye on the first one.

The first duty of a newspaper is to be accurate. If it be accurate, it follows that it is fair.

It occurred to me that nothing is more interesting than opinion when opinion is interesting, so I devised a method of cleaning off the page opposite the editorial, which became the most important in America and thereon I decided to print opinions, ignoring facts.

Formula for failure: Try to please everybody.