With more and more English-speaking people routinely reading newspapers from both sides of the Atlantic on the Internet and having to learn to parse information from the very different conventions of British and American journalism, the Columbia Journalism Review has an timely piece comparing the American and British journalistic attitudes toward “objectivity”. The story is an interview with WaPo ombudsman Michael Getler and Indy foreign editor Leonard Doyle. My scare quotes should tell you where I stand on this issue.

Another, not entirely unrelated story — this one about the readership of UK lads’ mags, appears in the Guardian:

So why are men’s magazines in Britain so largely devoted to a tittering schoolboy’s understanding of life and laughter? In America, where publications such as Esquire and GQ originated, men’s magazines weren’t scuzzy in the way ours are, and quite often they were venues for some of the country’s best and most expensive journalism. Playboy and Esquire, particularly, could produce, and have, anthologies of first-rate political and cultural journalism, and even this month, when the newish British lad mag Jack flags on its cover “A Speed Special Starring Fast Planes, Bikes and Women”, the much derided Playboy advertises a long piece by Gore Vidal on God and the state.

Three guesses which side I favour, this time.