Now consider this actual news article by Michael D. Shear of the New York Times:

Having dodged political calamity with a victory on Tuesday night in his home state of Michigan, Mitt Romney quickly shifted his attention to Ohio on Wednesday morning as his chief rival vowed an aggressive, nationwide fight for the Republican nomination in the weeks ahead.



And a hypothetical alternative that passes the plausibility test:

After narrowly depriving his chief rival of victory in one state Tuesday and easily besting him in another, Mitt Romney took advantage of his formidable organization and war chest Wednesday by hitting the ground running in Ohio, one of several Super Tuesday states into which he'll pour resources. His chief rival, Rick Santorum, will continue to fight for the nomination in the weeks ahead, but his substantial organizational disadvantage in Ohio and relative dearth of funds will likely prevent him from mounting a nationwide fight for the Republican nomination.



My re-write isn't intended as a criticism of the perfectly adequate passage that Shear wrote, one that is even more nuanced in the context of his article. But if the journalist's latitude in interpretation and emphasis is this wide -- and it must be if campaign reporting is to go beyond the most basic facts -- why not part with the misleading trappings of "objectivity," be more upfront about the fact that judgments being offered, and grant newspaper political journalists the additional freedom they need if readers are to benefit from the totality of their judgment and experience?

I thought our own Molly Ball's coverage of the Michigan and Arizona races deftly combined facts, context, and subjective but smart analysis that didn't masquerade as anything more. The freedom to present that sort of coverage explains why I've gravitated toward journalists like Josh Green, Ryan Lizza, Dave Weigel, James Fallows, John Heilemann, Andrew Ferguson, John Dickerson, and assorted others.



Particularly when these journalists write at feature or book length (as when newspaper reporters do the same), the reader becomes aware that they are flesh and blood humans whose pieces are shaped by past events that they've witnessed, their unique network of sources, their backgrounds and life experiences -- all that and more shapes the final product. The process is least transparent in straight newspaper copy, though newspapers have implicitly conceded that they can't survive if their copy is held to the strictest "just the facts" standard.

With that concession made, why not go the rest of the way?



Flickr user Oneups

