What?
There's a difference between a news story and feature writing.
The first is, indeed, "just the facts" if it is written properly and well. A feature story, on the other hand, is a word picture of what the journalist sees, a portrait in prose of people or events or subjects that encompass more than the who-what-when-where of breaking news.
Jill Carroll, in the article highlighted on this thread, was writing a feature story, not news.