Rafat Ali, paidContent.org founder, on where he got his journalistic chops:

One of the things I tell people is that at Inside.com, how I learned to report was actually from watching you [FishbowlNY contributor Greg Lindsay] and [now-New York Times media reporter] David Carr conduct interviews on the phone. In school, they never teach you how to do phone interviews — they never teach you about interviews in the first place. One of the things I learned from David Carr — I overheard him because he was generally loud, especially at the old Inside.com building where I sat across from him — was how to ask the hard questions.

By the way: Ali's guilty pleasure? "Carpenters." We're hoping he means the band.