First Take:  A theoretical word from Greek (meaning “without passage”), originally used to describe a figure of speech that expresses a state of being puzzled or perplexed. In classical Philosophy, the term often more broadly refers to a point in an argument that has reached an impasse.

         
Deeper: For long-form journalists, meanwhile, the term has a special relevance. Often, such an impasse reflects a state of doubt or skepticism that has emerged after developing alternate sides of an issue, as mainstream reporters are wont to do.

Moreover, in recent literary theory, especially in Deconstruction, the term actually suggests an active process, a seeking out of blind spots or contradictory implications that derive from the gaps between language and thought, rhetoric and logic, or between an intended meaning and what a written text actually suggests. In these ways, an aporia might be said to be the rhetorical analog, or philosophical underpinning, of the rituals behind what mainstream journalists refer to as the processes of objectivity itself.

Recommended sources:  William Finnegan, “Doubt,” The New Yorker, 31 Jan. 1994; the interview with Finnegan by editor Robert S. Boynton in The New New Journalism (2005); Christopher Norris, Derrida (1987).