News: A Bit Hard to Define

The question seems simple: What is news? But confronted with it, the important thing for a journalist to recognize is that you do not have a simple answer, one of those easy-to-remember slogans or a pithy and heartwarming motto embroidered on a sampler to hang next to your Pulitzer Prize. You could fall back on the "I know it when I see it" response.

True enough, but not very helpful to others seeking to understand us. Or perhaps try that shopworn bromide: News is what happens in the presence of an editor, and big news is what happens in the presence of an editor's spouse. Delivered right, this could draw a laugh and even offer a certain truth about the individual character of news judgment.

News, in the way we mean it as journalists, is not easy to define. It is, rather, the outcome of a practice we call journalism. We are and should be proud of that practice, most of the time. And more important for the purpose of answering the question, we should be honest and open about what that practice is and how it works. So instead of trying to define news, we should explain journalism.

This is not something journalists have much wanted to do or have been very good at. That's too bad. It also is no longer adequate. The blurring of news, entertainment, advertising, and marketing means that drawing lines is more important now than ever before. We must demystify journalism so Americans can distinguish it from other activities that are fully and properly protected by the First Amendment but are utterly different. They include Internet gossip, talk radio, and Crossfire. A colleague of mine was saying the other day that we have to decide whether we in the news business want to be seen as magicians or chefs. If magicians let others see how their tricks are performed--poof!--the magic is gone. But chefs take raw ingredients and through skill and experience blend them into something more. Sharing their secrets only increases respect for the work they do.

Many Americans think we are magicians, performing tricks at their expense. I think they are wrong. But we can't just say that. We have to explain what we do if we expect to keep (or win back) the trust and credibility we must have to keep both our profession and our democracy vibrant.

So what is journalism? Journalism is a way of watching the world, the events, the ideas, and the incidents that shape us. Journalists gather up this raw material and make it into news for presentation in their newspapers, their Web sites, their broadcasts, or their magazines. What most of us think of as "news" is actually this refined product, the world as presented to us by journalists. But why should we want their work? Can't we now get it straight (in both meanings of the word)? Doesn't the Internet give us the power to reach anywhere and learn anything for ourselves? Increasingly, people, particularly younger people, believe this. They do not want, and do not trust, the intermediary (that is, us, the journalists). The argument that in fact much of life is not available on the Internet is true but inadequate. We have to make the positive case that journalism serves a real purpose. What is that purpose? What is it, in other words, that makes news as presented by journalists worth having?

A journalist applies professional standards in gathering and presenting the news. That gives us some common basis for using that news--some ability to have faith in its accuracy, its fair-mindedness, its balance and thoroughness. A journalist leaves things out because they are scurrilous or unproven. A gossip doesn't. A journalist puts facts in that contradict each other. A polemicist doesn't. A preacher gives a moral lesson with the news. A journalist...