Deb Potter: "We've spent most of the day examining the meaning of competency for journalism, but if we can identify what competence means for journalism, we still must face two crucial questions, and they are -- by what means do we achieve it? And the other is how do we measure it? That is to say, how do we know when we have it?"

Gene Roberts, former managing editor of the New York Times, sees continuing education and training as an essential to journalistic competency:

"Competency has much to do with training and education of journalists... I dream of a newspaper training climate in which every reporter in America in his or her first two years in journalism would attend at least one week-long training session on a subject the reporter is now covering or soon will be covering. And I dream of it becoming routine for journalists to take short courses at each major step in their careers -- a new beat, a national or foreign or state hosting, becoming editor of a department, and so on.

"You might ask how could we possibly afford to do this? I would say how can we afford not doing it if we truly want competence? We've made real progress, but the distance remaining is far.

"I remember being assigned in Raleigh, North Carolina, in the late '50s to cover the State Utilities Commission. I wasn't just ill prepared, I was totally, abysmally, unprepared. I knew nothing, absolutely nothing, about utilities. Eventually I learned, but what about the readers who had to endure my stories during my long, painful process of self-education?

"Just last week the Knight Center in Specialized Journalism offered a short course in electric power. I would have killed for such a conference 40 years ago. We are getting there, but not fast enough, and not with a reach that is long enough, and not with enough coordination..."

Judy Woodruff, CNN Senior Anchor, has experienced an increasing need to be able to do research quickly and accurately as well as the instrumental role good managers play:

"Listening to [the earlier panel] and reading the ten competencies, the description of the sort of super journalists, the more I read, the more depressed I got because it was further and further away of what I know that I'm capable of doing, particularly when it got to technology...

"To be a competent journalist today -- I will ... add one other thing. You have to be a quick study... I thought I was pretty good at what I think Jay Rosen described, good at democracy. I thought I was pretty good at moderating large discussions, taking questions from a crowd of people until last week. The town hall meeting in Columbus where my colleague Bernie Shaw and I were there with the President's national security team. I think we both learned that no matter how smart you think you are, no matter how much you think you know about how to relate to people, there's always going to come a time when you are tested, and when your ignorance or your inability one way or another is shown. And as journalists, in particular, you've got to be flexible. You've got to be ready to roll with the punches, whatever the cliche is that you want to use. You've got to be able to get up on your feet, dust yourself off, and keep going. I think tenacity, to me, is one of the hallmarks of a good journalist.

"... I think there's got to be accountability for our work, and that testing is really what I'm talking about here. We are out there every day with our work product for our peers, for our bosses, for the public to see, and if they don't like what we're doing, we're going to hear about it. We should hear about it. If we don't hear about it then something's wrong. I think that more than anything else, accountability has got to be part of what we do...

"I think I am qualified today, but only because I've been at it for so long, well over 20 years, and also because I think I still bring some of the passion ... that was with me in the beginning, and in many ways I think I have it to a greater extent than I had then. But I will be very honest with you, and I'll tell you there are some days when that passion starts ebbing and wearing down because Washington in particular, it seems to me, is a place that tests one's passion... I think that reporters overall have got to keep that in mind. ...we've really got to love the notion that we're there to help explain to the public what's going on.

"...How do you achieve competence? And how do you measure it? I would certainly agree with everything Gene said about needing more training, more mid-career opportunities for journalists...

"We do need to go for more specialists. The world is far more complicated. We've got to have more people on our staffs, whether we're a national news organization or a small one to the extent we can afford it, people who understand the law, who understand business, who understand medicine, science, the environment, and on and on and on.

"Number two, we need more money for research in our own news organization... There's a story dumped in our lap and if you either don't know how to use the Internet yourself or you don't have somebody next to you, you can turn to for research assistance, you're helpless. You're only as good as the information that you can get. ... So we very much need the investment in more research. And also in management being willing to give us the time to work on a story. ...the CNN ethos, if you will, [is when] the story breaks and you've got to get it on the air immediately and even sooner. I don't think the audience expects you to have it perfect then, but within a number of hours you're supposed to get it closer to accurate and balanced than it was the first go-round.

"You need an active news management, actively involved, looking over the shoulders of reporters and editors and the assignment desk people, looking at them, asking them questions, probing, making sure they know they are being watched, if you will, and challenged, and having to defend what they do.

"We need more feedback. We need to be open to feedback from our audience, from our readers and our viewers, welcoming what they have to say because I think we're always better because of it.

"My final point would be that I think we need some better -- particularly in the case of television where ratings have become so dominant in the thinking of management, we need some insulation in the newsroom, better insulation from what's going on in the ratings and the sales world. I don't think the wall has completely come down, but it's certainly come down more than it was in my early days in this business. I'd like for those of us who are journalists and those of us who are in ownership and management to think creatively and aggressively about how we address that."

As a radio journalist,Bill Buzenberg former president of National Public Radio and currently senior news director at Minnesota Public Radio, focuses on writing and rewriting to make the story most valuable to his listeners. He also stressed the need for news organizations to be able to act independently of their larger corporate owners:

"Public radio has its struggles, but I think we also are not afraid to be serious, not afraid to be boring, not afraid to be brainy, and that has been a formula that's worked. It has created quite an audience in this country...

"Switching to the management side just a minute, I think competent news management is not quite as respected as it should be. It is hard work. It's never-ending. Everybody who's in it knows that. It's always a battle for resources and money and people. When you get good people, making them and keeping them happy is a big job.

"There's not a secret to this, but I think competent management has a few elements in it which include articulating the values that we share, stating them, setting high standards, and then enforcing those standards with daily critiques and daily feedback.

"Generating enthusiasm among journalists is very important, or harnessing that enthusiasm if they already have it. But letting and supporting, consistently supporting journalists to be the best that they can possibly be.

"Seeking what we would say would be the best audience, not the biggest audience. Going after an audience that wants to know something and needs that information, and recognizing that entertainment is not news. The audience certainly knows the difference and can tell when you have a credible news organization that's providing information, or whether you're going after entertainment to seek a larger audience.

"...It takes a very stiff spine for news management. I think this is something that was not on the pyramid. It has to do with independence of a news organization, that it can act independently of the larger corporation. And in the world of Disney and everything else, this is increasingly important. To get competent journalists a news organization must act independently, and I think that begins with the news management standing up and saying what they're about and basically honoring the values of journalism and not just honoring the values of the corporation, which again leads toward entertainment.

"...[My wife and I] had the privilege of editing the memoirs of Richard Salant. He was the President of CBS News during the '60s and '70s. ...Some would say he set a standard that all news management is still judged against, the Salant standard.

"The book is full of wonderful quotes, but I like one that I wanted to close with. Essentially that this business that we're in, "Yes, it can be ratings driven, but it is not just a business enterprise, it's a moral enterprise." I think we sometimes lose sight of that and that's where competence begins, when I think about the moral enterprise of journalism."

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