Basically, this is a first-hand account of a drowning. But since it's published in a major newspaper, it's told from the perspective of a journalist who pretends to have an out-of-body experience.

This bothers me.

I understand that if the reporter had told the account as an "I saw" story, the public might find it less credible.

What's wrong with us? What's wrong with our media?

It's a pretty standard convention for non-oped, non-feature news stories involving participation from the reporter, but as you point out, incredibly awkward.

As an editor I think I would have chosen to handle it differently, by getting another reporter to write it up, with first person quotes from the witness reporter, and a shared byline.

It doesn't really bother this commenter.

The phrasing - in particular, "this reporter" - has a clumsy, trashy-TV-news, feel to it. I'd much prefer 'I'.

I don't trust "I" in a newspaper. It's for the op-ed pages. We've been using "this reporter" or "this commenter" or "this stick-in-the-mud" for a long time, and it does a pretty nice job of preventing tasteless injections of personality into the news.

It's bad enough that the narrative has been destroyed by gimmicky, self-important writers. Do we have to get all post-journalist too?

This hullabaloo is clearly a result of the podcasting blogospheres of web 1.76rc3

Using "this reporter" instead of "I" took me immediately "out" of the story. I'd rather she had used "I".

A word of advice. If you see a body in the water resist the urge to pull it in. They can build up gases and pulling on an arm or leg can be like popping a gigantic zit.

This commenter is going to refrain from asking arse_hat how that fact came to his attention.

The convention doesn't bother me -- although this was an odd situation. Whether she should have been quoted by another reporter probably depends more on whether she was really traumatized by it to the extent that she couldn't report, but it appears she got names and quotes from a number of people after the body-pulling part that she played.

For a lot of younger journalists, that might be the equivalent of the Superbowl, compared to the plodding fact-grinding they often have to do. "Finally! Something interesting happened and I was there when it happened!"

This is a time-honored tradition when the reporter is a sole witness. But I agree with Taz -- the story should have been handled as she said.

The NEw Yorker does this sort of thing very subtly. You'll notice in a "Talk of the Town" piece, the writer will often refer to him or herself in the third person, as "a guest" or "a visitor." Writing in the first person is not OK with Talk of the Town.