Not to be missed: Ron Rosenbaum's excellent piece on Slate calling for the revival of the write-around:
If more magazines and magazine editors were unafraid to do a write-around, the balance of power might shift a bit.
Powerful figures who now think they can avoid thoroughgoing scrutiny by journalists just by withholding their participation might become a little concerned that magazines might then decide to hire more energetic and investigative-minded reporters (the sociopaths of doom) to look more deeply into their record than those who lazily settle for unexamined explanations and equivocations in person. And a write-around would of course inform the reader that the subject is afraid of facing a nonsycophantic reporter, may indeed have something to hide, questions he or she doesn't want raised.
I'm not saying journalism is war, but it's often a struggle between those with power who want to avoid or control scrutiny and those who feel scrutiny of the powerful is a public service.
The write-around, he argues, is journalism's best defense against the "blackmail of access." If public figures knew we were going to write about them with or without their participation, they'd be a lot more inclined to participate, and we wouldn't have to rely on their consent to write about them. So true – how often we forget that for as much as we need powerful figures to write about, they need us to write about them. And you know what? I'd venture that a solid write-around that actually reveals some unknown truth about the public figure would sell a lot more magazines than another puff piece where the subject drones on about him or herself. Doesn't seem like a very radical idea, at all really.
--Kate Sheppard
