The key, I think, is to remember the wisdom of the Enlightenment: “Style is the image of character.” The American news media was incredibly uncomfortable with the idea of a writer’s voice – and had been ideologically committed to impersonality in writing. The result, at its worst, was prose so bland it made reading an unpleasant experience; even in better examples, it pretended to a god’s eye view of the world which often sounded false; people we’re ready to read other people, not robo-prose. The technology started a revolution in content. All revolutions settle down after a while and adapt.
