Buddy the Cat, and Other Columns

Those of us who help make newspapers spend a lot of our time observing what the rest of you are doing. We're like spies, or voyeurs. And, best of all, we get paid for it.

As a newspaper editor, I try to make sure that, when we report those observations as "news", we are as objec- tive and unbiased as we can be. When you read a news story, you should expect a clear and concise description of what happened, without the writer's opinions and biases seeping in.

But all of this objectiv- ity and unbiasedness doesn't mean that we writers don't have opinions and biases. After all, spies are people to...