Advocacy Reporting Making a Return

[Rose Siding]

Newspaper Finds New Attitude After Katrina
Advocacy reporting is making an auspicious return in New Orleans, some observers say.
.....
Four months after America's costliest disaster, Rose and his colleagues at the Times-Picayune have made their front porch the world's. They have become the definitive news outlet for myriad journalists trying to understand this city, and an essential read for its displaced and far-flung denizens.

Set against the cacophony of bickering local, state and federal officials, the 168-year-old newspaper's voice has been clearly heard.

The Times-Picayune exposed poorly constructed levees, picked apart obtuse FEMA policies, debunked overblown claims of evacuation center violence, and traveled as far as the Netherlands and Japan to show how other communities have coped with flooding and disaster.

The newspaper's success in the face of disaster raises a question: Are objectivity and dispassion in journalism overrated?

Some observers of New Orleans' daily newspaper say they are, and that the Times-Picayune's work in recent weeks evokes the best advocacy reporting of the Progressive Era a century ago, or even of the American Revolution....

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-picayune29dec29,1,5073044.story?coll=la-headlines-nation

[firefox]

1. What objectivity?

Are objectivity and dispassion in journalism overrated?

Everything is spin, lies, or diversion. It sounds to me like the Times-Picayune is being objective (but more than that, it is being relevant to its readers) and the LA Times, the whoring media outlet it is, just doesn't get it.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

2. I'm not sure advocacy and objectivity are absolutely mutually exclusive.

Can't an objective examination of the facts lead to an advocate position? Can't an advocate continue to objectively evaluate new facts in the process of refining his position?

[SoCalDem]

3. Newspapers are SUPPOSED to report about things of interest

to citizens of any given area. It is advocacy by design. Every bit of news has some effect on readers. With all the mergers and sell-offs in recent years papers have evolved into little more than a written version of fluff tv. It's no ownder that people notice when something changes...like reporting of real news and the ramifications of the news..

Should the Times-Picayune just continue reporting on the fluffy stuff when so many readers are suffering, and want to know why?