Note to Readers

On the virtue of distance.

Hope you all had a long rest over the holiday. I did, and had time to think about a few things.

In a way that would be difficult to explain to modern audiences, it was once considered a virtue for journalists to not care about the subjects they covered. Or, better to say, there was a professional obligation to care more about getting things right than about political outcomes. An air of dispassionate distance started out as a commercial strategy (the apolitical framework helped sell ads), but evolved over time into an ethos that allowed journalists to focus better on facts, much as doctors who don’t personalize examinations can more easily diagnose problems. Reporters expressed idealism by being difficult to all and personally inaccessible. Some worked decades without sharing private views, discipline that would be hard to imagine now.

If anyone ever bothers to look back, they’ll be amazed by the speed of the change away from that model. A layer of old-school reporters was quietly excised when Donald Trump arrived, and the few voices who spoke in defense of the dispassionate-distance ethos were pilloried (I’m thinking of former New York Times public editor Liz Spayd) as we charged into a new world of moral clarity and narrative. I believed that model was flawed and thought I knew how to answer it, but was never an expert in the Just-The-Facts style like, say, my old man.

I’m beginning to think more of that is needed. More phone calls and primary sources, fewer opinions, plus a sincere promise to use the fact-based ethos to offend as many people as is humanly possible before I depart this vale of tears. Racket readers have been generous in subscribing and I haven’t done enough to return the favor by investing in more dependable ways to skewer targets. In the expectation of a lot of meaningful on-street activity we’ll hope to continue supporting Activism, Uncensored and pushing out timelines, but I’m going back under the hood in search of other ways to cover this unique era, only this time dispensing with any pretense to politeness. Nobody deserves it.

I ask for your indulgence during what I hope will be a brief retooling period.