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Quotes & Attribution

As a journalist, you are a channel through which people with something important or evocative to say can speak to those interested in finding out what they think. When used judiciously, quotes can liven up a story and add a slice of life. Through a person’s words, a writer can craft memorable characters and give readers deeper insights into and understanding of a person or topic.

Take this article on a now-defunct New York City-based startup entering the home delivery market. Few topics could be more boring, but when the reporter found out the CEO made occasional deliveries on a motorscooter to find out what customers thought of the service, he knew he had his hook.

One night he hitched a ride on the back of the scooter:

Joseph Park is a chief executive in a hurry. Careening through Manhattan traffic on a red motor scooter, Park, 27, is on a mission to learn what customers think of Kozmo.com, his Web-based delivery service for junk food and videos. He revs over potholes, passes taxis and buses and points at a Blockbuster video store.

“I’m going to put them out of business,” he purrs. “Amazon, too.”

Park is purring because his company is fast becoming synonymous with home delivery in a city that insists on it. On his website, New Yorkers addicted to rapid-fire convenience click on Oreos, popcorn, Twizzlers and soft drinks -- not to mention videos, DVDs, books and magazines -- and have it all dropped at their door within an hour, at grocery-store prices. The most recent addition to his munchies menu: Krispy Kreme doughnuts.

“I bet we feed half the potheads in New York,” he says.

(Source: Forbes)

C’mon, admit it. You’d read on after a quote like that, even a business story about a small-time entrepreneur working in a drab industry.

That underscores the power of quotes. A charismatic subject who “gives good quote” can be a writer’s best friend. Mark Leibovich crams quote after delicious quote in this hilarious 2015 New York Times Magazine profile of TV and radio icon Larry King, an octogenarian fixated on dying:

When you grow older, routines become important, King told me. Even to someone as emphatically nonreligious as he is, they can lend a measure of sanctity: the morning bagel quorum King leads with his old friends at the Original Brooklyn Water Bagel Co. near his home in Beverly Hills; his daily hairstyling appointment at the Joseph Martin Salon (near the bagel place); his bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios with blueberries; his pills, parceled out by dosage (Lipitor, Plavix, fish oil, multivitamin tablets and human growth hormone). ‘‘I like the stability,’’ King said. ‘‘Don’t give me a surprise birthday party.’’

Shawn King, his seventh wife, told me that Larry talks so much about his demise that he started to upset their teenage sons, and she had to tell him to knock it off. ‘‘He kept saying, ‘Listen, I’m not going to be around much longer, boys,’’’ Shawn said. ‘‘‘Whatever you do, don’t let your mother put me in a home.’’’ Recently, Larry and Shawn met with some insurance and lawyer types to go over their family trust. They were talking about his will and who got what and the tax ramifications. ‘‘After about 20 minutes, I said, ‘Wait a minute,’’’ Larry told me. ‘‘I won’t be here when this happens. I won’t exist. Everything in that conversation had nothing to do with me.’’

We met at the Palm last March. I took an immediate liking to King, beyond the camp novelty of the encounter itself. (It’s a bit unsettling to sit in the flesh with someone whose image so wholly resides in a pixelated nether-dust.) We started talking a lot on the phone after that -- a kind of “Tuesdays With Morrie” tradition, only with Larry.

King was thrilled for my interest. ‘‘I’m being followed by The New York Times,’’ he told everyone when I was nearby. ‘‘I must be somebody again. Go figure.’’

(Source: New York Times Magazine)

Note: Larry King passed away in 2021.

Here’s an example of a quote from a friend of the main subject that perfectly captures his combative personality:

[Jason] Calacanis’s archrival, Gawker Media tycoon Nick Denton, once described him as “brash,” “ballsy,” “publicity-hungry,” and “the Web's answer to Donald Trump,” all in the same paragraph. Calacanis prefers to think of himself as honest, authentic -- and there's truth to that. He may dish it out, but he’s admirably thick-skinned, a necessity in the Hobbesian world of blogs, with its nasty, brutish, and short commentary. Calacanis is indeed transparent, but not only in the sense that his motives are clear (they are: He wants to get rich enough to buy the New York Knicks), but because he doesn’t hide what he thinks. As perennial pal Douglas Rushkoff, author of Get Back in the Box: Innovation From the Inside Out, puts it: “Jason would never stab you in the back. He might stab you in the face, though.”

(Source: Fast Company)

OK, one more. Few businessmen/politicians are more polarizing than Donald Trump. In 2004, more than a decade before Trump jumped into the political fray, Dan Roth published in Fortune a “The Trophy Life,” a marvelous, quote-laden profile of the real estate magnet:

Donald Trump is not a great promoter. He has explained that to me a number of times already. “See, I don’t view myself as a good promoter,” he said during a five-hour flight from New York to Los Angeles on his private 727. “People say I’m a great promoter. People say I’m the greatest promoter that there is. Anywhere.”

So when we meet the next morning in the lobby of the Beverly Hills Hotel, it’s a relief to see that he's working through his promotional problems: On his head is a red baseball cap bearing the coat of arms Trump created for himself (a hand clutching an arrow, resting on a knight's helmet, which is perched over three leaping lions) and, emblazoned in gold, TRUMP INTERNATIONAL, the name of his Florida golf course. His yellow Tommy Hilfiger sweatshirt also sports the insignia, as does the white golf shirt underneath. Only his khakis are logo-free, along with his golf cleats -- which he will wear all day without actually golfing.

What Donald Trump is great at, Donald Trump tells me, is building buildings, inside and out. And today he’s focusing on the minute details of the inside, climbing into a limo for a trip to the factory of J.P. Weaver Co., which makes, he says, “the most incredible moldings you'll ever see.” Trump is adding a 17,000-square-foot ballroom to his Palm Beach private club, Mar-a-Lago, a 128-room mansion built in 1927 from Dorian stone imported from Italy and containing 36,000 Spanish tiles dating back to the 15th century. And as soon as he walks into the company’s showroom, designed to resemble a room at Versailles, he has seen enough.

“This is exactly what I'm looking for,” he says to owner Lenna Tyler-Kast, his plastic cleats clicking along the hand-laid cherry floor. The room is a riot of celadon moldings -- flowers in urns, flowers on their own, curlicues, leaves, tasseled ropes, ribbons. “Not the ceiling, by the way,” Trump warns. “The ceiling no, the walls yes. I also think the mirrors should have this.” He fingers a delicate strip of molding that splits a mirror into a grid. “The moldings are very important in the mirror.” A few minutes later, as Tyler-Kast handles other business, Trump marvels at what he’s seen. “Unbelievable,” he says in a low whisper. “Can you imagine if I can pull that off in a huge room?” As soon as she comes back, though, the famously pursed lips return. “What's your price? I hope that you’ll give me a discount. No. 1, because I’m Trump.”

In a few minutes of talking, Trump sprinkles in enough superlatives to make the Guinness Book of World Records read like a list of deeds and transfers. “I build the best buildings in the best locations,” he says. His girlfriend is the “most efficient person I’ve ever met.” (Though Trump soon after notes that he himself is “very efficient.” In fact, he’s the “most efficient human being.”) The 18th hole of his golf course outside Los Angeles, rebuilt after it slid into the Pacific Ocean, is now the “safest place in California if there’s an earthquake. Literally.” When Fortune wrote an article recently about the booming stocks of housing companies, he called to remind me that he is the “ultimate homebuilder.” “I don’t think of myself that way,” he says. “But really, I guess I am.”

Sometimes Trump's boasts even turn out to be loosely truth-based. Trump, for instance, called me in mid-March to announce that following negotiations with NBC, he was “officially the highest-paid person on television.” A top executive at NBC would only say, “Consider your source.”

(Source: Fortune)

All of these examples have quotable characters, but even in articles populated by less scintillating people, the same rules apply. You quote for the following reasons:

To stop yourself from misreporting what your subjects said.
To show the ideas they presented.
To show the emotion and/or character of your subjects.

Some tips:

It is usually a bad idea (although not always) to begin a story with a quote. A reader won’t know who said it, nor understand its context.
Never make up a quote. This means you should take accurate notes or record all your interviews. Fabricating a quote destroys a writer’s credibility and is a fireable offense in journalism.
Don’t clean up quotes, except for speaking tics like “um,” “er,” “ya know,” etc. If a quote is not as good as it needs to be, either go back to the source and see if you can get her to say it better (without prodding) or paraphrase the portion that isn’t clear.
Depending on the type of story, your first quote should come somewhere near the third or fourth paragraph in the story.
Too many quotes can kill a great story. Cherry pick your best ones.
No explanatory quotes, which means the subject tells you how something is done. They’re boring.
Avoid ellipses, those series of dots (...) that indicate the intentional omission of words and parentheses. Instead, paraphrase judiciously: “I can’t stand ‘method’ actors who scare the crap out of everybody on the set,” she said. “They act all crazy... then wonder why no one loves them.” Instead write it: “I can’t stand ‘method’ actors who scare the crap out of everybody on the set,” she said. “They act all crazy” and “wonder why no one loves them.” Not: “I can’t stand ‘method’ actors who scare the crap out of everybody on the set,” she said. “They act all crazy [and] wonder why no one loves them,” although that is acceptable.

Logically, it follows that you should never use an RDQ -- a really dull quote. If a person can’t say it better than you can write it, don’t quote him, or find a better quote. Because when words appear between two quote marks the expectation is they will be jump off the page (or screen).

OK, a couple more pieces of advice. Limit the length of your quotes to two, three sentences tops in a standard news article (not a longform feature story or book). Any longer and they become burdensome to a reader. Head to The New York Times website or skim stories on Google News and you’ll see most what I mean.

For instance, this quote by Hasan Kurt, the owner of a licensed German taxi company, in a New York Times article on Uber attempting to poach drivers to join its fleet: “It’s not part of the German culture to do something like” what Uber did, said the bespectacled 45-year-old over a cup of tea last month during a break in his busy holiday schedule. “We don’t like it, the government doesn’t like it, and our customers don’t like it.”

Or this Wall Street Journal article on New York Governor Andrew Cuomo issuing an executive order to remove homeless people from streets when temperatures dip to or below 32 degrees: “The state will not leave anyone on the street, homeless people on the streets, in freezing weather,” Mr. Cuomo said in a radio interview with WCBS 880 on Sunday, comparing the order to a state New Year’s resolution. “We will make sure that they are sheltered and they are safe.”

In this last example, note that the Journal attributed where it got the quote. When a quote appears in a story, the assumption is the writer got the quote on her own. If she didn’t, she must state who did.

Attribution

Simply put, attribution is stating who told you something. Attribution is important, because as a journalist, you’re almost like a channel for other people’s thoughts and feelings. You’re reporting what other people have said or felt, so it’s important to give credit where credit is due.

Quoting someone properly is a form of attribution. But what do you do if you’re not quoting?

Always attribute someone’s opinion. Opinions aren’t facts. For instance, in this made-up example: "I think a lot of students need to learn about how to balance a budget instead of learning about the Civil War," Tara Goodfellow, the school district’s superintendent, said. "Schools need to empower kids with the tools they’ll need to survive in the world today. What’s a 200-year old war going to teach them?”

Always attribute statistics or research. These typically “belong” to a person, agency or organization. For example, if Equifax, the credit reporting bureau, released results from its poll on household debt, you would attribute the results to Equifax.

But don’t attribute facts that are undeniable, that everyone knows -- things like the earth is round or Hurricane Sandy was a destructive storm. If you witness an event yourself such as a court sentencing hearing, you wouldn’t need to attribute that either.

The general rule: When in doubt, attribute.

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