The important questions are how long they stay mad, and whether you can survive until they get over it. And here, at last, is the point. Objectivity is the thing that will bring you the readers who will make you indispensable to your advertisers, and keep your advertisers no matter how mad they get. So objectivity is not some abstract good to which honorable journalists aspire. Virtue may be its own reward, but journalists are not particularly known for their virtue .
Objectivity is important because it's what readers demand.
Maybe that sounds old-fashioned and a bit wistful. But I can report that, in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, it worked twenty-six years ago and it still seems to be working today. Advocacy is poison to a free press. Not because there is any shortage of good causes, or that they don't deserve their advocates. It's just not what newspapers are for.