On the other hand, I recall reading a book that made me angry because of the author’s noninvolvement. It wasn’t until I was halfway through the book that I realized that it was his very UNinvolvement that drew me in and resulted in my own involvement.

Maybe this is one of those instances that can’t be 100% black and white; perhaps there IS a grey area and in that area one reporter will operate in one manner and another in a totally different manner.

If I had to choose one or the other, I think I would prefer that a reporter be involved and show his involvement — whether it be sympathy, empathy, disgust, approbation, enjoyment — or just the ability to say “This is a bunch of baloney.”

Too much “objectivity” from the news media leads to too many public figures getting away with figurative and literal murder.

But there is at lease one caveat: Just as the Church talks about making decisions based on an “educated conscience,” I’d like to see journalists cover and report a story based on some knowledge of their subject. And that becomes evermore problematical with the prevalence of Journalism degrees as opposed to Liberal Arts degrees. They write as if they’re robots engaging in mechanical sex rather than human beings who are engaging in loving intercourse.
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I hope you agree this is a discussion worth having, because I’m genuinely interested in hearing why you feel a reporter’s emotional reaction to what he sees — at an execution or presumably on other assignments — is “a significant part of the story” that shouldn’t be suppressed.

I ask sincerely, Joel, because after dabbling in New Journalism at The Daily Orange (Syracuse U.), I largely came around (swallowed the Kool-Aid, if you prefer) to believing readers of straight news reports are better-served by copy that’s as free as objectively possible — never 100% — of writers’ emotions.

Naturally, most ‘objective’ journalism reflects the education, experiences, belief systems, prejudices and overall life experiences of the writer and editors. We’re not robots. (Just treated that way by management — there we agree.)

Could I cover a convention of faith healers or UFO believers without skepticism or snark? Not without extra effort, which is what I’d apply unless I were a columnist, blogger or editorial writer.

What about a more common example: A legislative hearing, court case or protest involving the abortion issue?

“Why should not the reporter’s emotional reaction be part of the story?” you ask in the context of executions. Why should they, I ask in that context and the other examples offered.

My basic question is: “If it turns out he DOES have emotions that he’s hiding,” why would Mike Graczyk be “suppressing a significant part of the story”?

I also oppose “state-sponsored killing” and sure would dislike Mike Graczyk’s beat. But more than 30 years of working in the news industry lead me to respect, rather than reject, the professionalism of someone who know “my job is to tell a story and tell what’s going on” without injecting personal emotions.

C’mon now, Joel – - You know he’s a wire guy, not a columnnist, blogger or op-ed writer.

You want he should try to slip in phrases such as “the agonizing process was difficult to watch” or “the barbarism began at 12:01 a.m.” or what exactly? As you acknowledge, any semi-awake bureau editor would delete that reflexively.

Do I think it’s easy for him to file, roll home and drift right off to undisturbed sleep? Likely not, I imagine.

Should he have asked long ago for a reprieve from this ghoulish assignment? I sure would have.

But I also think “this kind of media cant” about so-called objectivity (unachievable by anyone who creates POV, selects words and determines length, I agree) is NOT what should get you banging the keyboard about The Times’ piece.

Instead of feeling sorry for a 59-year-old AP lifer who sets aside personal feelings to write “antiseptically,” how ’bout a line of regret — in italics or not — about these reminders of Journalism 2009 in the same article:

“Of all the consequences of shrinking newsrooms, one of the oddest is this: Fewer journalists are available to watch people die.

“. . . ‘Our staff is half the size it was three years ago, and so it’s just much more difficult to send somebody,’ said Jim Witt, executive editor of The Fort Worth Star-Telegram.”

Focusing on pitfalls of emotion-stripped reporting in this era seems like commenting on the Titanic’s oddly patterned carpets.

But this essay is more about “calculated killing” than an injured industry, right?