She really liked cows

One job of the journalist is to provide background and contextual information that the public can use in making decisions like whom to vote for in an election. Here's an excellent example of such background writing, from the New York Times. The paper had reporters dig into Sarah Palin's record as an elected person in Alaska. Among other things, they discovered that Palin had a habit of naming old school friends to powerful government jobs. One person Palin hired was a high school pal who got to be Alaska's secretary of agriculture, partly because as a kid she really liked cows.