Yes, Jack, that's nice, but...

And as long as I'm doing Slate, Jack Shafer's self-conscious "10-days-late Valentine" to New York Times executive editor Bill Keller quite correctly compliments Keller for changing the worship me, you worms attitude of his predecessor:

I know this piece sounds like a 10-days-late Valentine, but I find Keller's openness (by traditional Times standards) so ...adorable.

But Shafer's piece only mentions in passing the elephant sitting in the living room when he quotes Keller as admitting:

"Traditionally, because our origins are urban, urban cultural liberals tend to come across [in coverage] as more three-dimensional than conservatives or suburban Republicans," Keller told the paper. "But we have made a concrete effort, for a while, to make sure we are doing the America stories as well as the urban stories."

Are you reporting the news, or sucking up to effete little urban pantywaists? Why has OBJECTIVITY been thrown out the window by the mainstream media? If you're not objective, but pretend to be, how do you distinguish yourself from al-Jazeera or the Korean Central News Agency of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea?

If you simply do honest journalism, you won't have to worry about balancing the slant of your stories. Bill, if you'll eschew advocacy journalism and interpretive reporting, and make sure that your reporters and editors are reporting the news without bias, you can ignore every blog and media critic who ever lived and it won't bother me a whit.