There are countless reasons to be frustrated by “the way journalists report on issues of great societal importance.” I’d start with space, depth, award-tailoring and infrequency.

But somehow, I never think of East German censorship when pondering the shortcomings of American journalism. Call me a Pollyanna.

And what I’m not frustrated by are a lack of crusading (whether against capital punishment or other issues of great societal importance), a lack of framing from the viewpoint of death row inmates or a lack of reporting on miscarriages of justice in capital cases and others.

After all, Detroit’s Metro Times is far, far from the only paper focusing repeatedly and prominently on Innocence Project and law school successes in reversing dubious convictions. Most reports run in major dailies, as a search of “wrongful convictions” shows.

There even are box scores occasionally:
“In the quarter century between restoration of the Illinois death penalty and Gov. George Ryan’s blanket clemency order in 2000, 298 men and women were sentenced to death in Illinois. Of those, 18 have been exonerated — a rate of 6 percent, the highest exoneration rate of the 38 states with death penalties on their books.”

You seem to wish newspapers were magazines, did more crusading and allowed advocacy in news columns. In short, you seem to want The New York Times to be Ramparts.

You might as well defend your favorite color, Joel.