“Oh my God! – It’s the Black Panthers!… and they’re coming right into the house! My God! Will they be armed? Have they got guns? – of course they’re armed… It’s the Black Panthers!”
– Tom Wolfe, Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers

Wolfe’s imagined inner monologues were audacious, sometimes vicious, and absolutely impossible under today’s legal and editorial standards. But they did something bold: they made the writer visible. Not neutral. Not invisible. Present. Watching. Interpreting. For better or worse, you know exactly who’s talking to you.

That instinct – to name the narrator – has resurfaced in recent years. After decades of aspiring to wire-service neutrality, journalism has taken a swing back toward voice. Personal essays, newsletters, podcasts, narrative features: they all make space for the "I." But the tension hasn’t disappeared. It just shapeshifted.

Even in formats where voice is allowed, we’re still trained to restrain it. Don’t tip your hand too far. Don’t make it about you. Don’t show your doubt or your stake. And so even now, stories often emerge over-sanded and under-lived – polished just enough to lose the thing that might have made them felt.

Meanwhile, audiences are tuning out.

The Digital News Report 2025 puts it plainly: just 40% of people globally say they trust most news most of the time. In the U.S., trust is even lower – just 32%. And 58% of global respondents say they have trouble determining what’s true online. People are skeptical, overloaded, and drifting. But the most telling data point might be this: the top sources of misinformation, according to the public, aren’t anonymous trolls. They’re politicians and influencers. That’s a credibility crisis not just for power, but for the very idea of narrative authority.

So what happens when people don’t trust platforms, aren’t sure about institutions, and are actively wary of anyone who seems too confident? Where do they go?

Increasingly, to formats that feel human. Podcasts. Voice notes. Substack dispatches. YouTube explainers. Not necessarily because they’re more accurate – but because they’re more anchored. Because there’s a voice you can track. A frame you can see. A sense of who’s talking to you, and why.

Which brings us to three truths journalism needs to reckon with:

1. Voice Doesn’t Undermine Credibility—It Can Build It

New Journalism was transgressive not because it abandoned truth, but because it named the narrator. Wolfe, Didion, Baldwin, Talese – they didn’t pretend to be invisible. They walked into the story. They showed their posture, their doubts, their angle. You didn’t always agree with them, but you knew how they were seeing.

That kind of clarity – of voice, of perspective – isn’t the opposite of truth; it’s an invitation to read with discernment. To follow the story with a map of its making. Not here is the truth, but here’s how I got to it.

2. Fact-Checking ≠ Trust-Building

Of course facts matter. But they aren’t enough. Information on its own doesn’t breed trust – relationship does. And in an ecosystem where misinformation has mastered the aesthetics of truth – infographics, citations, confident language – it’s not the cleanest copy that wins, but the most coherent voice.

The journalism industry has, in many cases, become afraid of voice. Afraid of looking biased. Afraid of seeming too involved. But neutrality is a luxury of those who’ve never been on the wrong end of the story. Stripping the story of presence doesn’t make it more trustworthy. It just makes it easier to ignore.

3. Let the Narrative Breathe

Readers can feel when a story’s been sterilized. When the heat has been edited out. When a human presence was there and then erased. That doesn’t make the story more professional – it makes it less real.

Let the scaffolding show. Let the reader see where you stood. Let them hear the question you didn’t ask, the sound of your shoes on the gravel, the voice you almost missed. That doesn’t erode trust. It builds it.

Not by oversharing. Not by turning journalism into memoir. But by naming your lens. By refusing the fiction of omniscience. And by showing that truth, when done well, is earned – not handed down.

There’s no silver bullet for rebuilding public trust in media. But one thing is clear: disappearing the journalist hasn’t worked. Flattening voice hasn’t helped. And more polish won’t save us.

Trust grows when people know who is talking to them. Why they care. What it cost them to listen.

Let the frame show.

Let the story breathe.

Let the audience decide if they’ll meet you there.

— Daniela