(Bloomberg View) -- Over the holidays the Washington Postinterrupted the good cheer to bring us “a preview of a U.S. withoutpensions.”

Peter Whoriskey tells the story of 998 people who lost pension benefits when McDonnell Douglas closeda plant in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1994.

It’s a story that features bankruptcies, lost homes andlong-deferred retirements. It’s compelling, it’s sad, andit’s not a useful guide to the future of American retirement.

It is part of a journalistic genre that laments the decline ofthe traditional defined-benefit pension and the rise ofdefined-contribution plans such as 401(k)s.

If you want to write an article in that genre, there are fourrules that appear to be obligatory.

First, gloss over how rare defined-benefit pensions really were.Even at the mid-1970s peak of defined-benefit plans, fewer than 40percent of private-sector workers had them.

Today, decades after the shift to 401(k)s began, 61 percent ofprivate-sector workers are participating in a retirement plan. Thepercentage of all workers vested in any kind of retirement plan hasrisen from 24 in 1979 to 43 in 2012.

Second, ignore the advantages that 401(k)s have over the olddefined-benefit plans -- even when the risks and flaws of thelatter are staring you in the face.

Referring to the McDonnell Douglas workers, Whoriskey writes,“Because their pension benefits accrued most quickly nearretirement age, the pensions they receive are only a small fractionof what they would have had they worked until fulleligibility.”

In defined-benefit plans, benefits typically depend both onyears worked and final salary. If you lose your job in your 40s,that structure works against you. The connection the Post fails tomake is that these workers might well have been better off if theshift toward 401(k)s had happened decades earlier.

Third, rely on misleading numbers that suggest we are in a“retirement crisis.” Almost half of families have nodefined-contribution retirement accounts, the Post says. That’strue, but we’re still making the transition away fromdefined-benefit accounts.

Count all retirement plans, defined-benefit anddefined-contribution, and nearly three-quarters of near-retireeshave them.

Fourth, never look at data on how retirees are doing overall andhow their condition has changed over time, no matter how relevantthis information would seem to be to your overall story.

The median senior household of 2013 had an income one-thirdhigher than the median senior household of 1989, even afteradjusting for inflation.

Breaking these rules shouldn’t lead you to conclude that ourretirement system is perfect. Some people ought to be saving more,and some policies need to be changed.

Too many workers, particularly low-income workers, do not haveaccess to 401(k) plans; it might make sense to let them save moneyin the Thrift Savings Program for federal employees, as SenatorMarco Rubio has proposed.

Social Security should be reformed so that it does less tosuppress saving and more to protect the elderly from poverty. Aguaranteed minimum benefit above the poverty level could be morethan paid for by reducing the growth of benefits for high-earners,and lowering payroll taxes on older employees can encourage longerworking lives.

These are changes that would build on, rather than attempt toreverse, the last few decades of developments in the Americanretirement system.

Those developments, especially the rise of the 401(k), havelargely been for the better. Thanks to them, the future ofretirement is not going to look like the old age of those McDonnellDouglas workers.

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