Objectivity prize

By the sound of it, things out at the far end of New York Avenue NE have ranged of late from awful to dismal to genuinely wackoid, so let's all give the WashTimes rim a hand for doing some objectivity right.

Objectivity, you'll recall, isn't a function of how quickly you can get a reaction from the Moon Is Green Cheese camp to an assertion that the moon is actually an airless rock. In a nicer sense, it means (a) deciding in advance that some outcome is worth reporting, (b) agreeing on an appropriate metric for that outcome, (c) measuring it, and (d) reporting the results. And, though wailing and gnashing of teeth on the mezzanine* might have greeted it, there's the result at the top of the front page. This is a way of telling the Washington Times from the Fair 'n' Balanced Network. One hopes it remains so, at least every now and then.

* Disclosure-wise, Your Editor was a foreign-desk hand at the WaTms late in the Reagan years. Some (ahem) other visitors here have similar tales.