In regular journalism, the writer is not allowed to use first person i.e., stay out of your story. And, the Snoopy on his doghouse writing it was a dark and stormy night is also frowned on as thats a subjective judgement. When you are striving for the unobtainable quality of objectivity you need to be accurate and balanced. This should lead to fairness. And, now the good news.

The form of Literary Journalism allows you to throw the book away and use literary conventions. John McPhee slightly altered the sequence of events in Travels Through Georgia, in order to smooth out the narrative. He placed the turtle episode earlier in the story than the event actually occurred. This was a bit of license allowed by the form. He also used wonderful description and rumination where he shared his anxiety about a poisonous snake dropping into the canoe with him and his companions. It gave the reader a sense of the city-boy-at-the-mercy-of-the-natural-environment angst he was experiencing, which greatly enhanced the effectiveness of his piece. This was made illustrative by his use of the literary conventions of description, capture of dialogue.

Its the use of these techniques that capture our interest in reading journals and natural history. The power of personal narrative and the authority of life experience are greatly enriching our literature.

A colleague at another university who has published several collections of Urban Legends notes, "Never let the truth stand in the way of a good story." While we certainly will work to maintain the accuracy demanded by the form, we can also learn the importance of a good narrative from that statement.