Comment by simonw
21 hours ago
This is a style of reporting called "narrative journalism": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narrative_journalism
It's not to everyone's taste (I often find it frustrating, like how confident is the reporter that the characters felt the way they are describing at various points in the story), but it has a long history, especially in US media.
I have a suspicion that it's less common in the UK and Europe.
I’ve learned to skip several paragraphs of writing once I recognize the pattern. These types of articles turn into long essays where the writer is trying to create a work of art more so than convey important information.
It’s called telling a story. That’s one of the most important part of investigative journalism
It’s also the important warning illustrated by the Gell-Mann amnesia effect: journalists are not experts in the fields they report on so the stories they tell about them are often grossly incorrect and misconstrued but you need some expertise or experience in the field to sort the bullshit from the facts.
Crafting a narrative out of a handful of facts about a domain you don’t fully understand is a perfect recipe for bullshit.