“First of all, voting is your civic duty. There’s a debate about whether or not a journalist should openly subscribe to a political ideology (let alone donate to a campaign), but that’s a debate between newsrooms and editors, and its conclusion should be clearly expressed to the readers. Second, don’t ever tell a journalist what to do. Journalists are strange and stubborn folk (and miserable drinking companions). We spend much of our time locked in our own minds trying not to screw up. Most of us are not paid enough to deal with a sea of faceless voices threatening to rape us, and/or our mothers, and/or our dead relatives, and/or our pets because some jackass on the other side of the country misquoted a city arborist. We’re all keenly aware that anytime one of us screws up in the slightest there’s a sea of assholes bellowing about media bias across the political spectrum. A good journalist is a civil servant. We do shit work, for shit pay, and constantly get shit on. We lay our lives on the line to bring you the information you need to make rational decisions. A good journalist has opinions because they’re human, but they should be hard to figure out.” – Dominic Gwinn, “The Smoke Eater” (March 3, 2020)