Despite time, journalism's basics remain constant

Nancy 2: What nerve! I'm not you! You're me twenty years ago!

Nancy 1: What?! You have a lot of nerve saying I'm going to look like THAT in twenty years!

- From Firesign Theatre's "Nick Danger Third Eye"

Ah, Time.

Thankfully, I don't yet have to worry about how this "Letter to Readers" compares to itself two decades ago, but this week does mark the column's 10th anniversary and, as seems natural, the timing has made me more than usually reflective about the journalism I set out to help explain in July 1999. Yet, as I consider things, I'm struck by how little has changed.

That may surprise you to hear. When I began this column, the Daily Herald, like most newspapers, was just beginning to play around with the Internet. The economy and our industry were thriving. We were excited about the prospects of a new century. Not everything has gone as swimmingly as we expected.

Yet, the soul of our business - the "great journalism" I spoke of in that first column - remains largely unmoved. How we deliver that journalism is undergoing a remarkable metamorphosis. What we deliver, information that excites people and helps them better understand themselves, their community and their world, is as vital as ever.

I described journalism back then as "a moving target - a constant work in progress" and it is that. Describing how and why we covered various subjects or events has always required me to look at things in the context of the moment. Yet, I've also found a strong consistency in the fundamental topics and ideas I've explored.

I once heard Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, who has authored hundreds of rock and roll songs, say that he'd really written only a few, possibly only one. All the others, he suggested, were just variations.

That seems true also of writing about journalism. Something new and different is happening every day that bears reporting, but when everything else is stripped away a handful of important, enduring themes remain:

• It's important to care about the people we write about;

• It's important to strive for objectivity in reporting news;

• Collecting and reporting news requires incredibly dedicated people;

• Information is power and it deserves to be shared;

• Journalism's highest aim is to help people know and govern themselves better so they can make their communities and their lives better;

• Sometimes, you have to say you're sorry

I'm sure there have been many more themes among the hundreds of columns I've written in this weekly conversation with you. But these strike me as the ones that are most important and perhaps most common, and, I've often thought, even they boil down to one single idea: That great journalism is a two-way responsibility. It requires us to listen to you and you to consider thoughtfully, understandingly and often critically what you hear from us.

Ten years ago, I set out with an admittedly audacious aim of trying to pull back the veil that separates you and us. Much has changed in that time, but I hope that as you've peeked along with me on the other side of that curtain, you've found that our relationship, yours and ours, is not all that different. Like Firesign's intrepid Betty Jo Bialowski (whom everyone knew as Nancy), we may find our packaging all but unrecognizable in another 10 years - but our heart and soul, our pursuit of the fundamentals of "great journalism," will remain unchanged.