3/ To Wesley’s anecdote about being a cub reporter, I did a workshop with a mid-sized newsroom a couple years back on how they covered “crime.” After they realized that what they meant by “crime” was street violence (and not white collar crime or corruption)...

...they realized that their “crime” stories usually only included quotes from the police or gov't officials and almost never from community members. Yes, the reporters are overworked and filing on deadline but it’s also an unspoken allegiance to power in newspaper culture.

All the reporters in the room were horrified. They honestly hadn't seen the bigger picture of their own process.

The answer cannot be that everything is subjective, that if you FEEL it, it's true. That's a path to demagoguery. "Free" societies have to be grounded in literal truth. I really share your concern there, Tom.

Surely the goal is for newspapers to re-align their allegiance away from the powerful and to the people in their communities. And surely the question is what needs to be place for that to happen?