Newsman doesn't regret his columns
Beacon Journal columnist Bob Dyer believes he made it into the New York Times' series on race a few years ago because he refuses to pull punches on the topic:
If your goal is honest journalism, I figured, you can't just trot out the preapproved phrases. You have to take a chance. You have to walk out on the wire and try to entice people to look.
· You have to take a chance [ via Romenesko ]

You can't write: "PRESIDENT FOUND MANIPULATING MEDIA"
Call it the law of political gravity: What goes down (an economy, a president’s stature) must go up. So why are we always shocked when it happens?
Michael Wolff says people who cover politics are literalists, while politicians are illusionists:
They are engaged in a perceptual act designed to wow the literalists. A further complicating factor is that we literalists know we are being manipulated. But there is no real way to make the act of manipulation the news.
· Reversal of Fortune [ courtesy of Russ ]