[alaskamiller]

Here's the issue about this:

Newspaper aren't meant to be editorial soapboxes. They, along with journalists, are meant to be just objective and factual. Having an editorial vision is a breach of journalistic integrity. So that said, a successful journalism venture of the future requires a balance of reporters, editors, and writers but anything too opinionated might make you (Fox News) or break you (when you reveal too much of your bias or it goes counter to what the popular opinion is).

Personally I really like Talking Points Memo model of collecting and analyzing news. They've been building quite a lean and fast organization to capitalize on all the future of news.

[evgen]

While I admire the principle you are suggesting, the history and current reality of the new distribution business suggests that this "try to be objective" phase was a short-lived experiment that has no future. Newspapers have always been editorial soapboxes, that is how they get attention in a crowded field. Attention leads to readers/subscribers and readers are the product. Now that we have some pretty good neurophysiology data on how people process new information and with most of the current research suggesting that "opinionated" news sources are going to be the winners based on how our brains work I can't see any reason why the current trends are going to change.

[Alex3917]

If you read any newspaper articles written from the turn of the last century they all read like today's op-eds. The idea that journalists shouldn't express their opinions was invented at the same time as the papers became supported by advertisements instead of readers. The only reason journalists use the phrase "journalistic integrity" is to distract you from the fact that this style of writing was invented so as not to offend advertisers, it has nothing to do with being ethical or balanced.

In a world where all the newspapers are owned by the same people who make nuclear weapons and prisons, the surest path to profitability is to support the status quo; the phrase 'journalistic integrity' is just a form of plausible deniability, propaganda to distract you from the truth.

[mseebach]

There are decisions and priorities in all reporting.

First, often there's no canonical truth. Was the Honduras "coup" a coup or a functional democracy? It's pretty hard to report on it without deciding. The more detail you include, the more you'll come out in favour of the democratic argument, the less, the more you make it sound like a coup (there's no point of including all the details of the parliament deliberating if the essence is that the military took over in a coup).

Second, there's deciding what news to report. There was some criticism of the media focusing much more on set-backs of US forces in Iraq, and only casually reporting progress - the media loosing interest in Iraq. How do you decide what to report from Iraq without letting your own opinion of the war influence you? I can't see how.

I also can't see how you can reliably report on complex political issues without having a deep passion for these issues - and I believe that no one can be deeply impassioned about e.g. the Iraq war without forming an opinion that will be at odds with at least some.

The solution: Quit pretending. Have an opinion. Care about what you write about, and let it show. Stop competing on "most fair" and "least biased", but on "best arguments".