I agree. I love reading articles like this because it forces me to question what I think is the right perspective rather than just digest whatever perspective the author is feeding me.

I don't know why more journalists don't write like this. Is it just that people prefer being told what the right and wrong opinion to have is? Or is it simply because most journalists care more about reporting their opinion than trying to fairly represent both sides of the story in question? I guess it could be argued some opinions are so clearly wrong that they don't deserve the benefit of the doubt, but even then there is often a lot more nuance than is typically reported.

> Or is it simply because most journalists care more about reporting their opinion

I mean... this piece actually has much more opinion in it than "journalism" is "supposed" to, doesn't it? It's an opinion piece, not a piece of journalism, although he does a bit of research for it.

So I find it a bit confusing to ask for "more journalists" to write like this, while also saying you think most journalists care more about reporting their opinion than OP... OP actually centers it's opinion pretty directly, no? Mostly I think this piece is doing something that is not what journalism is even expected to do at all.

But to be sure the distinction between "journalism" and "opinion" is pretty confusing and blurry these days (because opinion rather than journalism both gets more clicks and is cheaper!). I'm not sure the solution to problems with journalism lies in asking journalists to write journalism more like an opinion piece, even a very well-written opinion piece!

See that's the thing, I think we've painted journalism as existing on some imaginary spectrum of "just the facts ma'am" which is good, and "editorializing with an agenda" which is bad.

But by far my favorite pieces of journalism are dripping with opinion and character and full of bias. The X factor that makes the result, to me way less biased than most journalism, is that they are introspective of their own biases, display empathy toward everyone involved, argue in good faith for everyone involved, and draws their own conclusion from the results of their imaginary argument with their crew of alter-egos.

It takes something special (and a lot of practice) to argue for someone you disagree with in such a way that that someone would say you did a good job.

I'd like to claim a difference between reporting your opinion and convincing people of your opinion. All the Pope has to do is to report his opinion, and people are interested in it as such. A lot of big newspaper opinion writers do the same, because a certain class just wants to know what their media outlet thinks, rather than why they think it, which can be skimmed or skipped. A good journalist, IMO, makes the premises of their arguments clear, and then makes the best case for the opposition (which often involves trying to weaken one's own premises.) Then, finally, explains why the best versions of the opposition arguments are probably wrong. This, even if it fails to convince, never fails to educate.

what "problems with journalism" are you referring to? All journalism is opinion; even if they just dumped raw datasets in a newspaper, that would have its own biases.

If you ask me, the main issues with modern journalism are the poor command of written English and a lack of depth/context. Neither of those seem to apply here.