I often talk about journalists or journalism as if it were a monolith, and of course it isn't. There is divergence of views, but there is also conventional wisdom, and access journalism and the economics, all of which drive journalism to a sameness. An example, in the mid 90s the conventional wisdom was that there was no new Mac software. You'd see it reported everywhere. It wasn't true. It just made it impossible to launch new software, so eventually it became self-fullfilling. #
Nowadays in political writing the rut they've fallen into is making the news a theatrical play about the personalities at the top, and overlooks the real import of politiics, what it means for the people who are governed. Not just in the aggregate, but as individuals. Journalism if it ever had the ability to tell that story seems to have lost it. #
The forces that drive journalism to the same place, may also be there for software. After all, I'm working in JavaScript now. Why? Because so many other people are, there are many incentives to use the same language everyone else does. (And of course I'm taking license with the term "everyone" -- of course other languages are also very popular.)#
The sameness of political writing makes the outstanding writers stand out even more. Jon Chait is consistently original, thoughtful and thought-provoking at New York Mag. I can't remember reading a piece of his that I didn't feel was both worth passing on and right on the money. #