Chuck Klosterman in the January issue of Esquire (subscription required until they archive it):
It seems that there's a lot of confusion about the word objective. Somehow, it has become common to assume that an objective person has no opinion about anything. That's not what the word means. Being objective means that you understand your own personal biases, and you compensate by intellectually separating yourself from your preexisting feelings. It's something you do; it's not something you are.
That resonates with me as someone who writes on a range of issues, from the personal to the professional, where I have a vested interest in one way or another. Honest bloggers (or stand-alone journalists, or citizen journalists, or members of the pajamas media, whatever term you find least idiotic) wear our biases on our sleeves, where they belong. We own up to our inherent subjectivity as human beings and recognize that objectivity is an ultimately unachievable goal--and that the pretense of objectivity can be a dangerous illusion. We still strive to get at the truth, but the low barriers to entry in this medium make it impossible to pretend that the mere ability to be "published" confers any authority whatsoever on our pronouncements. Our ideas have to stand on their own merits.
