How the news is turning into one giant personal essay.
Once upon a time, journalists were taught to avoid injecting themselves into a story. The admonition in J-School was simple: “No one cares about you.” Reporters, in parental parlance, should not be seen nor heard. Instead, those telling the story were to become a rock of objectivity. Such rebukes, once strictly obeyed, have fallen by the wayside as print and digital news outlets summarily dump them overboard like tea in Boston Harbor circa 1773. Unlike that powerful pre-Revolutionary War act, this defiance has not brought forth a collective good – yet it spreads like wildfire.
Media outlets have abandoned the news article in favor of the personal essay. This practice has been trending for a while, but it has finally overtaken objective reporting. No longer is…
