> By and large, talented reporters scrambled to match stories with what internally was often called “the narrative.” We were occasionally asked to map a narrative for our various beats a year in advance, square the plan with editors, then generate stories that fit the pre-designated line.
Reality usually had a way of intervening. But I knew one senior reporter who would play solitaire on his computer in the mornings, waiting for his editors to come through with marching orders. Once, in the Los Angeles bureau, I listened to a visiting National staff reporter tell a contact, more or less: “My editor needs someone to say such-and-such, could you say that?”<p>I'm shocked this is the case, though I've felt this has been the case. I don't know how one "speaks truth to power" when talking about narratives. It gives the NYT a very Game of Thrones feel, but more like the South Park version with reporting like this in mind.<p>Secondarily, as the author points out, people are looking for place to punch. This the author sets up a dichotomy of "up" for people more powerful and "down" for people less powerful.<p>The problem with power is that it's very perspective based. The author lays out some criteria but even that doesn't seem enough. If you have a Silicon Valley SWE who has saved up $5M and done nothing political, but has a popular blog talking about software and investing, are you entitled to fix them and frame them as you wish?<p>Personally, I have gravitated away from the idea of "punching" because as the author later alludes, punching implies a use of perspective which can change. Your punch cannot though, once send is hit, that is it.<p>> the hunter, logger, and geologist will walk through the same patch of wilderness and see an entirely different forest, for each eye is trained to notice something different. The more abstract the things observed the greater individual variance there will be. For intangible social processes like market exchange, mass movements, and elections, our understanding is all model, no matter.<p>I really liked this perspective, it was very thought provoking. It's always perplexed me why people can witness the same things and derive such different perspectives. It doesn't put those perspectives at less competition with each other, but it does make them more understandable.