Objectivity is a difficult ideal to uphold, as it requires reporters to get outside their subjectivity. That doesn’t mean it is worth junking. It just means training and self-discipline. Read more
Has the country learned little about Jonestown except for its mass-murdering cult leader? The public deserves — yes, deserves — stories in which the monster that was Jim Jones is put in the context of other lead players. Read more
Difficult though it may be, local- and regional papers need more team-oriented investigative journalists like the late Robert Greene, author of the book that inspired the 2013 film “American Hustle.” Read more
A mere two days after my post on factual errors appeared, in my day job I made an error of a different kind. I used a simple catchall phrase to describe a Washington-based interest group. In fact, the organization had a slightly more elevated function, which made my error akin to describing the Supreme Court as a body of federal judges. Read more
While editors advise reporters to double-check quotes and statistics, I recommend going one step beyond. Follow the techniques and rituals of a professional fact-checker. Read more
Interviewing high-level government officials is a skill that can be cultivated like shooting a basketball or grilling a hamburger. It doesn’t require being a suck-up, an insider, or a seducer. If a former paperboy like me can learn, most people can. Read more
The work ritual I developed in college and graduate school was more than an efficient time-management strategy. It was a battle plan. I was at war against the two-headed Hydra monster of distraction and social isolation, the twin foes that confront many students and knowledge workers. My ritual enabled me to fight the beast on even terms. Read more
Over the weekend, while at a campground in Virginia Beach, a funny thing happened to me. Composing a text to one of my daughters, I recognized that describing my trip as “fun” or “cool” was generic and lazy. As I was in the South, I entertained the idea of employing one of the region’s well-known similes and metaphors. Read more
For years, writers have pledged to avoid Twitter, the addictive micro-blogging service du jour. If only more of them had succeeded. Better if they learn a lesson the ancient Greeks and Romans taught and I have followed. To get rid of a habit, you should add a new one. Read more
The word “rhetoric” has a messed-up etymology. It represents the opposite of its original meaning. Aristotle defined the word as “effective writing or speaking”; think Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Yet rhetoric connotes sophistry or “empty” and “phony” words. How can our words reflect true rhetoric rather than sophistry? In a word, sincerity. Read more
