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The things journalists should pay attention to are the issues the political leadership agrees on, rather than to their supposed antagonisms.

Political reporters no longer get to decide what's news. The days when a minister gave briefings to a dozen lobby correspondents, and thereby dictated the next day's headlines, are over. Now, a thousand bloggers decide for themselves what is interesting. If enough of them are tickled then, bingo, you're news.

The fact is, most journalists I know are not particularly political. They move around a lot.

The fact is that in a way, journalists become a kind of default in the system when you don't have substantive two-party back-and-forth inside of the government.

I realise that, strutting around in power corridors for political coverage, a journalist becomes half a politician.

As opposed to journalists, politicians cannot make do with questions. They must also offer answers.

To go from politics to news, at least the subject matter is the same, even if the view is different.

A journalist covering politics, most of us are aware of the necessity to try to be sure we're unbiased in our reporting. That's one of the fundamentals of good journalism.

Politicians are trying to attract people to issues.

In the United States, the mainstream news outlets like to portray themselves as observers, content to let events play out without interference. But in Britain, where crusading journalistic campaigns are part of the tradition, it is far more acceptable for reporters to become active participants, with a specific outcome in mind.