Dear Gunnar,

There are two or three issues at play here. Most important, we are 
not talking about journalism, but emerging standards in scholarly and 
scientific writing.

But if we were talking about journalism, there would be two 
additional factors that come into play. First, even in signed 
articles, journalism is a corporate enterprise. Often, several 
contributors play a role in an article signed by one author -- nearly 
always editors, sometimes supporting staff, often fact checkers. 
Second, there is a difference between reporting accurately the voices 
of those one interviews and pretending that one's own voice and 
opinions are legitimately neutral.

In the US presidential election that posed Al Gore against George W. 
Bush, the reporters of the New York Times repeatedly focused their 
stories on Gore's personality, his slightly stiff mannerisms, or his 
choice of shirt colors while reporting Bush as an affable, 
straight-talking "uniter" at ease with himself and his message. Never 
once do I recall an article focusing on his choice of shirt color. 
These reporters -- known collectively as "The Spice Girls" -- seemed 
to report on the campaign in a neutral way, even though it was clear 
they were not neutral. Whether they were just having fun at Gore's 
expense or even thought the reporting to have something to do with 
the real Al Gore beneath the candidate, they set the tone for 
campaign reporting. It was one factor in an election where Gore would 
have won _without_ Florida if he had only picked up one additional 
electoral vote -- something that required only one state, large or 
small.

I don't believe that the appearance of legitimate neutrality serves a 
reasonable purpose. Sometimes it masks and disguises bias and 
careless reporting. When a reporter disguises his or her own voice 
with the appearance of neutrality in a visibly biased article, it may 
also be a sign that something else is going on.

After the final, post-election, post-inauguration Florida recount, I 
was astonished to see stories in which the headlines suggested that 
the recount showed nothing significant, while I careful reading of 
the stories showed numbers indicating what would have been a Gore 
victory.

As it is, we're talking about scholarship and science, so I won't go 
too far with this. What I do say is that the standards that occur in 
journalistic practice are often debatable. Therefore, I am glad that 
journalistic practice is irrelevant to this thread. It's journals 
that count here, not journalism.

Yours,

Ken


Gunnar Swanson wrote:

[1] (Quoting this author), [2] (Quoting Ken), [3] (Quoting me)

>writing "the author believes" is roundabout.
>  This makes the meaning hard to understand.

Then commenting in his own voice:

The reason the form is not uncommon in journalism is that reportorial 
writing attempts a legitimate form of neutrality and involves many 
sources. Injecting "I" in some instances would jerk the reader out of 
the third person narrative in a confusing manner since the reporter 
is, for the most part, not supposed to be in the foreground. If 
someone appears in a narrative more than once or twice, it's probably 
a good sign that something else is going on. As you said, this 
requires judgment, and the judgment usually depends on the specific 
circumstances.


-- 

Ken Friedman
Professor

Dean, Swinburne Design
Swinburne University of Technology
Melbourne, Australia

+61 3 92.14.68.69	Tlf Swinburne
+61 404 830 462	Mobile

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