Confessions of a Subversive Journalist

Bill Steigerwald, of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, is retiring from day-to-day newspaper journalism. He'll still be writing in other venues, and he's planning on writing a memior (with a catchy title), but you'll love his last column for the paper:

As a reporter, I've tried my best to be accurate, fair and truthful. I've always been aware of the difference between news and opinion, between balance and bias, and between being a government watchdog and a government lapdog. And I have always known that every journalist and every editor I have ever worked with was helplessly subjective in their politics and in their definition of what news and bias were and were not.

Trust me, big-city daily newspapers don't go out of their way to achieve ideological diversity. About 90 percent of my work mates over the years were either avowed liberal Democrats or didn't know it. Reagan Republicans were virtually nonexistent. Until I got to the Trib, I was always the staff's lonely libertarian.

Read the whole thing at the link.