I remember a windy spring day when I stood on a Helsinki street corner with a journalist colleague, a friend. He said a good reporter will never use the word 'I' in a piece. I was of the same opinion.      During the years of political consciousness-raising, a couple of decades ago, we championed the cause of 'objective reporting', and the most primitive of norms was of course the fact that objectivity cannot include viewing things from the perspective of the first person.      Neither can it form part of the reporting of news today. In Finland, England, America, Germany or France, no radio or television newsreader will preface his reports by remarking, 'I believe'. If and when a particular intention is concealed in a piece of news, it is hidden more discreetly. The faith in complete 'objectivity' has disappeared, as is generally the case with childhood beliefs. Whether they wish to or not, however, newsreaders and anchors still represent, for the general public, the 'truth', as is revealed by their popularity.      Broadly objective news reportage attempts to tell us what happens in the world, but the deluge of news would drown us beneath it were it not for the experts and commentators who attempt to sketch the meaning of events and their historical and future implications: editorial and op-ed writers, columnists, writers of letters to the editor. Even at the risk of error, they must dare go on record as saying: I believe such-and-such to be the case. After that windy-day encounter, it took a long time before I dared write my pieces from the point of view of myself, so deep was my respect for the objective explanation of the world. It remains deep; the ideal of diverse news reporting has not disappeared. The limits of the freedom of speech are evident all over the world ­ the persecution of journalists and writers, the stopping of the mouths of dissidents remind us daily that free speech is far from universally accepted.      The essay and the article are impressive-sounding forms, but in fact they, too, include variation, with different emphases and voices. The column sounds lighter, but it can nevertheless address socially important matters. There are often personal voices and furies in letters to the editor, whether the question is of late-running trains or of badly behaved young people.      Writings that hover between the serious and the light, the general and the personal, are for the reader islands in the torrent of news, where one may pause to examine phenomena. Wonderment, astonishment and curiosity are the signs of good columns, whether the subject be philosophy, music, travel or everyday life. Imagination and fact are interleaved. The writer Hannu Raittila (who received the prestigious Finlandia Prize in 2001 for his novel Canal Grande) remarks, in the introduction to his collection of columns, Rahat vai kolmipyörä ('The money or the tricycle'), that 'the writer should not cease being an artist just because he is writing for a newspaper.      'The art of the column is the art of condensation and translation. An ideal column begins with so amazing a premise that the reader feels like an air traveller experiencing intense turbulence. After that, the successful column turns its premise around and subverts itself...      'A writer is in no sense an oracle or a guru. If he has to be some archetypal cultural figure, then perhaps a jester... The writer also sometimes wishes to be a priest. The sermon, too, is a traditional genre of prose-writing.'      In addition to writing by Raittila, this issue of Books from Finland includes a selection of new prose which is not 'fiction'. Or: let the reader decide. In the foreword to her book, Pianon palkeilta orkesterin koskettimille ('From the stage of the piano to the keyboard of the orchestra') the musical journalist Minna Lindgren claims: 'I have no imagination. Everything I write is based on reliable sources. I do not invent anything myself.' The philosopher Tuomas Nevanlinna, on the other hand, links his book Surullinen tapiiri ('The melancholy tapir') to an extensive survey of literature, as 'the reader unaccustomed to the academic mill may suffer from the erroneous belief that we invent ideas ourselves.' The subjective writer has the right to reveal him or herself as a snob, ordinary, enthusiastic, cross, tender, astonished, delighted, misunderstood, dissident. He or she writes 'I', and although the text may not be immortal, it may set a thought moving in the reader's head. Kristina Carlson Editor-in-Chief     Top of page