“Oddvar Bra, I love you!”

That's so refreshing.

A lifelong newspaper and magazine reader, in recent years I have winnowed back and back. Partly it is just lack of time. Part of it is fiscal prudence. At this point I am down to only two newspaper subscriptions, The New York Times and The Washington Post.

But even though the subscription's are still all paid up, the amount of time I spend reading them continues to shrink. Whole days go by without reading an article.

That problem is much more narrow. It seems like the news is increasingly overwhelmingly political. The political is overwhelmingly biased. The bias is frequently inconsistent with the known facts.

Even the departments in which I am more interested; international reporting, science reporting, economics, business, travel, book reviews, etc., are heavily infused with political opinion. If you want news fast, accurate, and independent, The New York Times and The Washington Post are no longer where you go to get that. The quality keeps falling, the value proposition keeps getting weaker and the renewal of subscription relies more and more on force of habit.

Some part of this is easily understandable. News collecting is expensive. Concentrating your reporters in a small handful of the most expensive cities in the US exacerbates the expense problem. Relying on credentials for your selection process, journalism degrees from elite universities, rather than recruiting people who simply write well further increases costs and reduces quality (the Ben Rhodes Syndrome.) Tolerating overwhelming partisan bias does as well. Firing most your fact-checkers and editors has a noticeable impact as well. Building divisive ideological arguments based on false information doesn't help.

Much of that is understandable but regrettable. I miss the Sunday mornings after church lazily leafing through the paper, certain to find nuggets of well written reporting on topics and things about which you know little and might even care less. Things that are not in themselves critical but which provide an epistemic weave and cognitive tickle. Things that make you smile with pleasure. I miss that reporting.

But today, I came across an example of exactly that type of reporting which I so miss. It is in the New York Times; Where Were You When Oddvar Bra Broke His Pole? by David Segal. There is no hint of partisan snideness. The facts jell with what I know. The writing is good. There are insights and new perspectives. It is the type of piece which can support several different lines of thinking.

It is worth a read. The scene is set:

VANG, Norway — It seems an unlikely event to be emblazoned in a nation’s collective memory. But if you’re from Norway, and you’re over 50, you almost certainly have a vivid recollection of this:

A man named Oddvar Bra is skiing the final segment of the men’s 4x10-kilometer cross-country relay at the 1982 world championships in Oslo. Surging up a hill, he passes and sideswipes the only person ahead of him, Alexander Savyalov of the Soviet Union.

Immediately, Bra realizes that the impact has had a terrible consequence. His right pole has snapped in two.

“Let him get a pole, man!” shouts the sportscaster for what is then Norway’s only national TV station.

As if on cue, someone in the crowd bolts into view and hands off a pole. His equilibrium restored, Bra battles Savyalov in a sprint to the finish line.

Let’s recap. A guy breaks a ski pole and keeps racing. Not exactly the moon landing, is it? And to be clear, this isn’t a come-from-behind story. Bra was actually leading after he broke his pole, because contact had knocked Savyalov to his knees.

Also, Bra didn’t win, at least not outright. After staring at an image of the finish for about an hour, the judges decided that he and Savyalov had tied for first.

Seems a minor item but Segal makes it a great read. And, apparently for Norwegians, this is still an energetic and culturally institutional topic of conversation. Segal makes the point that there are multiple levels to understand this story, with differing interpretations, depending on the perspective. Excellent.

I loved this vignette. Oddvar Bra is the Norwegian skier at the heart of the entire story.

“To be a folk hero in Norway, you need to grow up on a farm and you need a country accent,” said Thor Gotaas, who is writing a biography of Bra and who studied Norse mythology as a student. “Norwegians don’t trust people from the city. They like people who have struggled, people who have suffered.”

Humbleness is a plus. The nicest thing you can say about a Norwegian hero, Gotaas explained, is “He’s like everybody else.”

It helped that Bra insisted on racing on Norwegian-made skis, even if they were not ideal for the conditions. This made him seem the opposite of the money-crazed braggarts who soon populated the sport.

“He’s a man of the people,” said Per Jon Faldalen, another Oslo airport interviewee. “He’s not thinking about sponsorships. He had won the heart of each and every Norwegian.”

This was most obvious two days before that fateful 4x10 relay at the ‘82 world championships. Bra had finally nabbed his first world title, in the 15-kilometer race. The nation’s best known radio broadcaster was so overwhelmed with emotion that after he called the race’s final seconds he shouted, “Oddvar Bra, I love you!” Then he bolted from his broadcaster’s booth, for the first and only time in his career, and embraced Bra with tears streaming down his face.

Let's have more of this type of reporting.