Daily Inspiration Quote by Roone Arledge

A little money, Arledge implies, is a small price for owning the first reflex in a reporter's mind. The line sounds like a budget quibble, but its real subject is power: not just covering the news, but becoming the place the news goes to be made legible, important, and widely believed.

Arledge came out of sports, where exclusives and access deals are the whole game, and he carried that logic into television journalism. In the network era, "ABC before they go any place else" isn't about brand awareness in the abstract; it's about building a default pipeline of tips, interviews, and permissions. If sources call you first, you shape the narrative arc before competitors even show up. You choose the framing, the visuals, the questions that become the story's spine. That advantage compounds.

The subtext is managerial ruthlessness dressed up as pragmatism. "A few thousand dollars" is a rhetorical rounding error, deliberately minimizing the spend while maximizing its strategic effect. He's signaling to staff and accountants that the newsroom isn't a cost center; it's a competitive weapon. Pay for satellite time, book the flight, keep the crew ready, sweeten the relationship. The return isn't just ratings. It's credibility-as-market-share.

There's also a quiet confession here about modern news: access is purchased, not discovered. Arledge isn't romantic about journalism's purity; he's candid about its infrastructure. First call wins, and he's willing to buy the phone ringing.