As a sports writer, I covered many events that I was not a fan of personally. Collegiate gymnastics comes to mind. But as an avid sports fan, I had enough knowledge to write fairly and without showing my distaste for a sport that I covered. If I ever publicly admitted to not liking a sport, it would have likely been in a tone to admit pleasure once actually watching the sport in length ? for instance curling. What this writer did was to show the line of thought held by many in a newsroom that their columns are actually, somehow, important to the world at large.