Journalism School

There are parallels between journalism and clinical psychoanalysis. Both the journalist and the psychoanalyst are connoisseurs of the small, unregarded motions of life. Both pan the surface for the gold of insight. Journalism, with its mandate to notice small things, was always congenial to me. I might have also liked being an analyst. But I never would have gotten into medical school. I never went to journalism school, either. When I started doing journalism a degree from a journalism school wasn't considered necessary. In fact, it was considered a little tacky. [If journalism schools still exist, given the sorry state of the profession, one wonders what kind of people they attract, and what is being taught there.]

Janet Malcolm, Paris Review, Sprint 2011