I don’t understand objectivity. The idea that a journalist can or should discard their opinions in their reporting is both impossible and unhelpful. It’s the job of journalists to learn everything they can about their subjects, and learning more about anything inevitably causes someone to form an opinion.

Nowhere is the idea of objectivity more hopeless or useless than in sports journalism. I’d been looking for an excuse to start a dialogue on this issue for some time, and I finally found one last weekend when the Missourian ran this column by Ben Frederickson, one of its sports reporters, about how he is no longer a Missouri Tigers basketball fan because he is now a dispassionate basketball reporter.

Hmm.

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