"An investigation may take six months. A quick interview, profile, a day"
About this Quote
Then comes the snap: “A quick interview, profile, a day.” The rhythm tightens, the nouns get glossier, the work sounds easier to sell. Sawyer isn’t dismissing those forms; she’s naming their seduction. A profile can be incisive, an interview can move culture, but they can also become performance journalism: access traded for softness, narrative for rigor, immediacy for depth. The subtext is that modern media often rewards the second tempo while borrowing the credibility of the first.
Context matters. Sawyer’s career straddles the era when network news promised authority and the era when attention economics turned “content” into an assembly line. Her phrasing mirrors a newsroom reality: investigations are expensive, legally risky, and hard to schedule; interviews are fast, promotable, and built for tonight’s broadcast.
It works because it reframes the real scarcity. Not information, not even expertise: time. And the ethical question is implied, not preached. What kind of journalism are we funding, and what kind are we merely consuming?
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Sawyer, Diane. (2026, January 17). An investigation may take six months. A quick interview, profile, a day. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/an-investigation-may-take-six-months-a-quick-56673/
Chicago Style
Sawyer, Diane. "An investigation may take six months. A quick interview, profile, a day." FixQuotes. January 17, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/an-investigation-may-take-six-months-a-quick-56673/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"An investigation may take six months. A quick interview, profile, a day." FixQuotes, 17 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/an-investigation-may-take-six-months-a-quick-56673/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.



