Ever dreamed of being a journalist but unsure where to start in an age where anyone can publish, algorithms shape visibility, and AI can generate copy in seconds? The question now isn't just how to break in, but what journalism is, and what makes writing feel vital and true.
In a new series, writer Roe McDermott explores the human elements AI can't replicate: voice, craft, instinct, and the slow process of discovering what you think - qualities that still make writing matter.
In this instalment, Roe explores the emotional register, and how feeling can sharpen fact.
There's a particular kind of journalism voice that still gets rewarded in a lot of newsrooms: calm, clipped, unbothered. The tone implies: I am above this, I am not in it, I am simply observing. It’s the voice of the person who never raises their heart rate, even when the story should raise yours. And it’s often treated as a marker of professionalism - a sign that the writer is "serious," "credible," "balanced."
But here’s the thing: emotion is not the enemy of truth. Unacknowledged emotion is.
We’re told, over and over, that good journalism is objective and therefore emotionally neutral. That the cleanest story is one that has been scrubbed of the writer’s reactions - no anger, no grief, no tenderness, no fear, no wonder. Just the facts, as if facts arrive in the world neatly labelled and self-explanatory. As if your choices about what to include, what to ignore, which quote leads, which metaphor you reach for, which history you foreground, aren’t already shaped by feeling.
But emotion is not the opposite of rigour. It’s one of the engines of it, and when wielded carefully and consciously, is importance and affecting.
Because what is attention, if not a kind of care? What is investigative persistence, if not a refusal to let something go? What is the instinct to ask one more question if not a form of discomfort - an itch, a sense that something doesn’t add up? So much of reporting is driven by affect: outrage at injustice, curiosity about a strange detail, tenderness toward a source, dread at what might be true, awe at what humans build and destroy. The difference between a piece that lands and a piece that drifts isn’t the presence or absence of emotion - it’s whether the emotion is handled consciously, ethically, and with craft.
Detachment is not a moral position. It's a style choice.
When a writer pretends to be emotionless, the emotion doesn’t disappear, it just goes underground. It leaks out as cynicism, as condescension, as forced symmetry, as an overreliance on "both sides," as the kind of tonal flatness that makes atrocity read like weather. The writer may sound "neutral"-but neutrality is not the same as honesty. Again, for the cheap seats in the back; neutrality is not the same as honesty. Often it’s just a mask for the emotions that are deemed acceptable: superiority, boredom, distance, detachment, superiority, boredom.
Consider a news report on a police shooting or a shotting by ICE agents in the U.S. The article sticks closely to official statements. It notes that an officer "felt threatened," that an investigation is "ongoing," that "community members gathered" afterward. The tone is measured, restrained, careful. Nothing in the language sounds emotional. This is often praised as neutrality.
But look at what that tone does. By privileging institutional language and avoiding any expression of fear, rage, or grief, the story implicitly adopts the emotional stance of authority: calm, control, distance from consequence. The terror of the person who was shot, the devastation of their family, the anger of the community - all real, all factual - are treated as secondary or potentially contaminating. The writer hasn’t eliminated emotion; they’ve selected which emotions are allowed on the page.
Watch: Journalism in the age of AI with Nicholas Thompson, CEO of The Atlantic
This is why neutrality is not the same as honesty. An honest account would acknowledge that this event is experienced very differently depending on where you stand, and that those emotional realities shape the meaning of the facts. A "neutral" tone, by contrast, often disguises alignment with power as professionalism, letting detachment and institutional calm pass as objectivity while marking grief and anger as bias.
And detachment is not a moral position. It’s a style choice. Because emotion is part of meaning, it’s how human beings make sense of consequence. Facts tell us what happened, while emotion helps us perceive what the happening cost. It signals stake and tells the reader what to hold onto.
This doesn’t mean journalism should become a diary. It doesn’t mean we replace verification with vibes. It means we stop treating the writer’s emotional response as inherently contaminating - and start treating it as information that can be interrogated.
What am I feeling as I report this?
Why am I feeling it?
What does it make me notice?
What does it make me avoid?
Where might it be distorting my judgement - and where might it be sharpening it?
A journalist who can answer those questions is often more reliable than a journalist who pretends they have no interior life. Because the first is doing the work of self-awareness; the second is asking the reader to trust a performance.
Watch: The Collapse of the Information Environment? Safeguarding Freedom and Democracy in the Age of AI
There's also a broader cultural lie at work here: the idea that logic is clean and emotion is messy; that reason is authoritative and feeling is indulgent. That lie is gendered. Western culture has long coded "rationality" as masculine, and therefore steady, controlled, credible. Meanwhile, emotion is coded as feminine, and therefore volatile, exaggerated, suspect. And because journalism is built inside culture, it inherits that hierarchy. It rewards the voice that sounds "reasonable," which often means a voice that sounds male (or male-adjacent): detached, confident, unflinching, unhurried. Meanwhile, voices that carry anger, grief, fear, or urgency - particularly when they come from women, queer people, disabled people, people of colour, and other marginalised communities - are dismissed as "biased," "hysterical," "unprofessional," "too personal." This is not just aesthetic preference; it’s power. It decides whose experiences count as knowledge, and whose pain is treated as a problem of tone.
And tone policing is one of the most effective ways to shut down truth.
If a community is harmed, it is rarely harmed politely. People in pain do not always speak in a way that flatters the people who are comfortable. Demanding calmness from the harmed, refusing to report on their emotions, or letting them speak emotionally in news broadcasting is often a demand that they make their suffering palatable. It is a way of shifting the conversation from what is happening to how you are allowed to talk about it. It turns the language of "civility" into a tool for maintaining the status quo. It asks the reader to empathise with the feelings of the powerful before acknowledging the reality of the powerless.
This is one of the reasons emotional register matters so much in journalism right now, especially with AI looming in the background.
Large language models can produce a competent imitation of neutrality: smooth, even, moderately concerned. They can do the tone of "balanced," the voice of "objective," the cadence of "responsible." (Remember that most LLMs are designed, programmed and owned by men and male-led teams.) But that tone is often a form of anaesthesia. It dulls, it avoids, it rounds off sharp edges. It takes the heat out of stories that should burn, and it takes the real, felt, experienced harm by individuals out of stories, replacing it with the detached language of institutions.
Emotion runs through all of my work, but it shows up differently depending on what I’m writing. In my advice columns, the dominant register is tenderness and empathy - a deliberate choice, because people write in when they’re vulnerable, and care is part of the work. In my opinion writing, particularly on gender inequality, the emotion is often anger, outrage, and hope: a focused, clarifying anger that sharpens the argument and signals the stakes, and an imagining of how we could build something better. When I review films, I pay close attention to the waves of feeling a work produces in me - discomfort, joy, grief, exhilaration - because those responses are evidence of how the film is operating, not distractions from analysis. In reported features, emotion often enters through other people: the fear and exhaustion of those caught in the housing crisis, the quiet grief and isolation of family estrangement, the ache and uncertainty of infertility. My role there isn’t to centre my own feelings, but to make room for theirs - to show how structural issues are lived in bodies and relationships, not just debated in policy language.
The goal isn’t to flood the page with feeling. The goal is precision: to know what emotion is present in the story, what emotion is present in you, and how to use craft to make that emotion clarify rather than obscure.
Done well, emotion doesn’t make journalism less trustworthy; it makes the story and the emotions behind it legible, it makes the story clear, and the human impact obvious.
It tells the reader: this happened, and it mattered. It mattered enough to change someone. Maybe it should change you too.
Exercise: Using Emotion Without Losing Precision
1: Name the Feeling
Choose a story you’re working on or thinking about. In one sentence, answer:What is the dominant emotion in this story?(Be specific: not "sad," but "the panic of realising there’s no backup plan.")
2: Locate It
Write two short lists:
What I know: key facts, observations, quotes.
What I feel: your emotional response and what it makes you want to emphasise or avoid.
Notice where feeling sharpens your attention - and where it might distort it.
3: Write With It
Write 150-200 words about the story, allowing emotion to be present as information, not decoration. Anchor every feeling to something concrete: a detail, a moment, a consequence.
4: Check the Balance
Underline one sentence where emotion clarifies the stakes.Underline one sentence where you might be hiding behind neutrality.
That tension is the work.
Next Week: Responding to Art: Beyond the Thumbs Up
Read more from our Get Creative section here
