Once a month I treat myself to the Sunday New York Times. The meal is too much, of course - I have leftovers for days - but the tastes and smells are inspiring.
Yesterday, Daniel Okrent, the Public Editor appointed after a Times' crisis - remember the lying reporter, arrogant editor, the credulity with which the Times bought Bush's blather on WMD? - wrote about the varieties of stories in the newspaper. He cited news analysis, columns, opinion, reviews, editorials and straight accounts. Okrent said he'd like to see more and better labels attached, but he sees these forms as the basis of "the newspaper of the future."
And what's that? It's where "writers' authority of voice and disitinctiveness of thought will distinguish great newspapers from the rat-a-tat of more conventionally iterative (and instant) forms of journalism," Okrent argues.
I told you the Times provided food for thought.
Before reading his ideas, I had come upon Winthrop Quigley's long Op-Ed feature in the Albuquerque Journal on the "health care industry."
If this kind of journalism is what Okrent is talking about, I want seconds.
Quigley is a Journal business reporter specializing in health care. He knows a lot abut the medical business and is dynamite at telling us what he knows in words we understand.
This piece, no exception, winds up with a reminder that health care is "more than science and economics." It is about "culture, society and values," too. Quigley goes on to suggest that we defer the debates on financ ing Medicare and Medicaid to first address questions like:
"What is the role of the elderly in our society? What is our collective responsibility for children? ..."
Makes sense to me, though i would add the query, what's the meaning of calling health care an industry? (It used to be a profession.)
Still, Quigley's voice requires attention and his thought is distinctive enough to
demand respect. Maybe Okrent is on to something.