Throughout the history of the press in the United States, each era has defined its journalism. Since the 17th century this process has been driven by three powerful, sometimes conflicting forces. The first is the responsibility to inform our democracy which is implicit in the protection guaranteed the press in the first amendment. The second is the technology available to produce and distribute the work. The third is the economic organization of the technology.

In the latter half of the 20th century the equilibrium achieved among these three forces in the last half century allowed journalists to build an independent press that has been the envy of people the world over.

By applying the values of journalistic distance and detachment it has been a press which the poorest inmate on death row could look to for help as a last resort and one which could not be intimidated by the most powerful political figures on earth.

But the seismic shift in communications technology and the economic organization of that technology in recent years has generated a wave of change of tsunami proportions that has disrupted the equilibrium.

It still amazes me to think that when I became chief of the Washington bureau of the New York Times in 1979 we had no personal computers, no fax machines, no cellular phones, and the internet was an instrument of the cold war called arpanet used exclusively by the military-industrial-scientific community.

Less than 20 years later, those technological advances are part of an unparalleled revolution in communications which, as an agent of change, has had few equals in history.

Consider the impact on politics: the spread of ideals of human rights and open markets was a major catalyst of the sudden collapse of an empire which it took 70 years to build.

Consider the impact on economics: the movement of information at the speed of light has created a worldwide trading system in which billions of dollars are in constant movement around the world twenty-four hours a day. Creating a new world economic order in which currency traders and commodity markets can exert more influence on a nation's currency or economic policy than the national government.

It is these same instruments of change which have called into question the standards and values which steered and steadied the growth of a public interest journalism for the past half century.

Even before the death of Princess Diana the crisis in public confidence in journalism and of journalists in themselves it was painfully clear that what I call technomics--technology-driven economics--are busily creating a new journalism for this era largely because of two basic results of technomics:

First, the mixing of media. The digitalization of information which makes it irrelevant how you wish to communicate because all forms of communications--voice, pictures and print--are coded as the same collection of o's and 1's. And on the world wide web create new platforms which attract readers and advertisers into a multi-media environment.

Second, the resulting fragmentation of the means of production and the choices available to consumers means that anyone anywhere with a computer and modem is a potential competitor to traditional news organizations; anyone anywhere is a potential customer. As a result the internet is flooded with instant delivery of news, information, gossip, pornography, home shopping, live coverage of parliaments, chat rooms, movies, and classified advertisements, from everywhere to everywhere, from everyone to everyone, in any context or in no context, on demand of the consumer.

Appearing in this atmosphere where the boundaries between advertising and editorial are erased it is more difficult for journalists to distinguish themselves or what they do--and the value of what they do--from all the other voices pumping through the system.

Recent polls which show a public increasingly frustrated and alienated by "the news media" have made this point with depressing force. The "media," they say, is part of the problem. The "press," they say, more often hinders solutions to social problems. The reason for this loss of confidence in the press as an institution is that the public can no longer distinguish between a journalist attempting to produce a disinterested, balanced presentation from a Rush Limbaugh peddling a political line or from tabloid sleaze.

One result of the shift has been a new equilibrium between the technology and the economic organization of that technology in a multi-media ownership that creates a growing gulf between those who control the organizations and those who practice journalism in its newsrooms. Fierce economic competition has put pressures of institutional life and death on the economic performances of corporate managers many of whom are remote from and essentially unfamiliar with the historic role of the press in American life. Most often the reaction to competition has been to downsize, to close foreign bureaus, and to abandon unprofitable circulation or to seek ever larger audience with entertainment---appeals to emotions and celebrity worship. The marketplace's obligation to a narrow population of economic shareholders pulls business managers in one direction while news managers struggle to serve a larger public of stakeholders in the civic life of the community.

But journalists have also contributed to the current crisis. They have been slow to change habits of storytelling or to reexamine the notion of news for emerging new audiences. Their behavior, alone and in packs, and by the unseemly search of many of them for their own celebrity, has led the public to dismiss them as arrogant, superficial, elite, and out of touch.

Once owners and journalists alike could define themselves and the importance of what they do with simple reference to first amendment guarantees of freedom of the press. But the information revolution with its proliferation of channels of communications now forces both owners and journalists to consider where they choose to reside inside the first amendment. Do they choose simply to rest on their right to free expression, which means anything goes, or does what they do serve a broader public purpose?

This question is asked with greater urgency as the journalist's role and intrusion into daily affairs brings a new level of public unease and scrutiny. As the communications system holds out the promise of "what I want when I want it in the form I want it" the consumer is naturally asking of us all: what is so special about what you have to offer?

The urgency of this question has journalists looking at the product of their own work and asking the same questions of themselves. I'll cite only one of dozens of recent examples because it took place at this same podium a few weeks ago when the founding producer of the CBS News magazine program "60 minutes" Don Hewitt condemned most television shows as "little more than cesspools overflowing into our nation's living rooms."

Maybe I should also ask what are we to make of the irony that denunciations like this one come regularly from some of the most highly paid journalists whose position and importance inside the news organizations should give them some control over the product, other than cite that as an indication that the ethical compass of a lot of journalists need adjustment.

Similar concerns about the state of American journalism in the 1940's engendered an academic study of press behavior by the Hutchins Commission on Freedom of the Press. Its report, "a free and responsible press" embedded the concept that press freedom entailed press responsibility firmly into the lexicon of modern journalism.

A growing number of journalists believe today's challenge calls for a different kind of inquiry, one conducted by journalists themselves called together in public forums to examine, discuss and clarify the purpose, the values, and the standards of journalism for a new age of communications.

Two dozen of these journalists met on a weekend at Harvard a few weeks before Princess Diana's death to consider these dilemmas. They crafted a statement of their concern about American journalism which has now nearly 500 supporting signatures from publishers, editors, and reporters of all ages and all job descriptions in all areas of journalism.

Let me read the opening paragraphs of the statement:

"This is a critical moment for journalism in America. While the craft in many respects has never been better--consider the supply of information or the skill of reporters--there is a paradox to our communications age. Revolutionary changes in technology, in our economic structure and in our relationship with the public, are pulling journalism from its traditional moorings.

"As audiences fragment and our companies diversify, there is a growing debate within news organizations about our responsibilities as businesses versus our responsibilities as journalists. Many journalists feel a sense of lost purpose. There is even doubt about the meaning of news, doubt evident when serious journalistic organizations drift toward opinion, infotainment and sensation out of balance with news.

"Journalists share responsibility for the uncertainty. Our values and professional standards are often vaguely expressed and inconsistently honored. We have been slow to change habits in the presentation of news that may have lost their relevance. Change is necessary.

"Yet as we change we assert some core principles of journalism are enduring. They are those that make journalism a public service central to self government. They define our profession not as an act of communicating but as a set of responsibilities. Journalism can entertain, amuse and lift our spirits, but news organizations also must cover the matters vital to the well being of their increasingly diverse communities to foster the debate upon which democracy depends. The first amendment implies obligations as well as freedom.

"For much of our history, we believed we could let our work enunciate these principles and let our owners and managers articulate these responsibilities. Today, too often, the principles in our work are hard to discern or lost in the din, and our leaders feel constrained.

"Now we believe journalists must speak for themselves. We call on our colleagues to join as a community of professionals to clarify the purpose and principles that distinguish our profession from other forms of communication.

"Since the change we face is fundamental, it requires a response of the same magnitude. We need a focused examination of the demands on journalism of the 21st century...we propose to summon journalists to a period of reflection..."

The purpose of this period of introspection is not to draw up a list of rules but to provide a year of national discussion, debate and reflection by journalists with the public of the standards and practices of contemporary journalism; to clarify the values of a journalism in the public service; to discuss their status and role in civic life; and clarify their status and role inside their own organizations.

That process has begun. The first of what will be more than a dozen forums was held in Chicago on November 7th. The second will be held day after tomorrow at Columbia University in New York. Each forum focuses on a specific area of concern, ranging from technological change to scandal, crime and sensation to the public responsibility of journalism.

The inaugural forum in Chicago was designed to lay the groundwork for all succeeding forums by looking at the fundamental questions: what is a journalist? What is journalism?

Jack Fuller, the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Chicago Tribune company who began his career there as a newsroom clerk, put it this way:

"To me, the central purpose of journalism is to tell the truth so that people will have the information that they need to be sovereign."

And, he added, in order to do that in the media world of today, journalists themselves need to create a new rhetoric for journalism, a new way to use the tools of reporting and storytelling to reach people with the information in a competitive and complex media atmosphere.

The speakers in Chicago--who also came from local television, a national circulation service magazine, newspapers in print and newspapers on-line--agreed on the imperative that journalism retain its core value of truthfulness--a value that is not shared by entertainment--and a detachment--an emotional orientation--that uses tools such as verification and broad sampling that allow balance and fairness in the presentation of the journalist's work.

As important as this series of forums is, it is only a part of an unparalleled movement of self-examination by the press of its role and responsibility.

Just a recitation of the studies of the press funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts would constitute the most extensive and intense examination by journalists in history. Several of these are gathered under the umbrella of the Project of Excellence, which manages the concerned journalist's forums. Its initiatives also include:

• A two-year series of articles on the state of the American newspaper that will analyze how well newspapers in a number of individual communities are informing and serving their readers that is presided over by Gene Roberts the recently retired managing editor of The New York Times and will involve some of the best reporters in the country. These essays will be published in the American Journalism Review.
• It includes a local TV news project that will identify models of quality in local television news and attempt to design a basic model of quality local television news based on practices that combine market success and sound journalism that will be published in The Columbia Journalism Review.
• It includes a collection of practical essays written by the best reporters and editors in the country about best practices in journalism designed to serve as primers for new journalists.
• It includes the development of a packages of case studies of journalism practices and processes for use in journalism school education.
• There is the other Pew funded project on civic journalism directed by Ed Fouhy which encourages and underwrites experiments in new approaches to community-oriented journalism--a program which has created a wealth of experimentation and stimulated the liveliest debate about journalism practices in decades;
• and the foundation is looking into creation of a new program to encourage more international news reporting.

But the Pew projects are only the start. A quick list of other major projects would include:

• The investment of one million dollars by the McCormick Foundation in a three year project by the American Society of Newspaper Editors to study the problem of declining press credibility and to propose solutions.
• A multi-million dollar project by the Freedom Forum to improve fairness and to promote a better understanding between the media and the public that will include meeting with media executives, journalism educators and reporters across the country.
• The adoption and promotion of a detailed code of ethics by the society of professional journalists, which is being promoted through regional conferences and the creation of an ethics hotline open to reporters and editors across the country.
• Radio and television news directors, under the leadership of Barbara Cochran, have begun a major re-examination of the industry's code of ethics with workshops and discussions of ethical standards and practices around the country.
• The Kaiser Family Foundation has established fellowships and supports workshops to increase the technical knowledge and strengthen the reporting of social issues and health care issues.
• The Casey Foundation has established a study center and also funds workshops for reporters covering welfare and children's issues.
• Both the Ford Foundation and the Soros Foundation are actively looking into new programs to strengthen the public service responsibilities of the press in the United States.
• A rapidly expanding investment in fellowships and endowments for journalism education by the Knight Foundation, which has long been the most consistent source of funds for journalism education.

All of this is in addition to the richest mix of journalism reviews and newsletters, including a number of nationally circulated media watchdog publications such as Nieman Reports, which was founded in 1947 in response to the Hutchins Commission's recommendations, The Columbia Journalism Review, and the American Journalism Review that will be soon be joined by a new commercial magazine, Content, to be published in the spring by Steven Brill, the man who created Court TV, which will monitor the behavior of the press from the standpoint of the consumer's interest.

And all these projects are taking place alongside hundreds of real-life experiments being conducted by news organizations across the country searching for new approaches to journalism that serve the needs of a society immersed in a supersaturated media environment.

Maybe the most controversial of these is the effort to alter the framework of journalism being conducted by Mark H. Willes, Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer and Publisher of the Los Angeles Times.

Mr. Willes has concluded that the newsroom is closed culture that needs ventilation. He has moved with breathtaking speed and force to get the attention of investors on Wall Street--and of journalists everywhere--to his solution by closing down New York Newsday, the Evening Sun in Baltimore, and the national edition of the Los Angeles Times. With equal audacity he announced a goal of increasing the circulation of the Times by a half million daily sales.

He has introduced what he calls a streamlining of the newspaper by moving to erase the separation between the goals and values of the business, the editorial and the news divisions of the paper. He has done this, first, by giving business managers newsroom responsibilities and, second, by promoting a concept that the daily news report has a responsibility not just to report the news but to do so in a way that improves the performance of society.

Newspapers everywhere watch and wait to see the outcome of these and many other efforts at individual organizations and companies.

At bottom the question journalists are asking to be clarified in this process is this:

Where will the journalism of tomorrow reside inside the First Amendment? The amendment is, after all, designed to protect freedom of speech and opinion as well as of the press. Where does a journalist reside inside the amendment without denigrating the promise of the first amendment which allowed those who wrote it the accept the notion that an inaccurate report, a false opinion should be a right of free speech. How do journalists define themselves outside of that world but retain a very special niche inside the First Amendment?

I think the first forum sponsored by the Committee of Concerned Journalists in Chicago on November 7th began to answer that question by saying that a journalist can entertain and excite but, even then, a journalist must remain someone who must tell the truth, because the purpose of journalism is to provide the information necessary for a people to be sovereign.

As a firm believer in what William Faulkner said--that the past is not history: it isn't even past--let me read how this dedication to truth is described by Thucydides, the father of history as we know it, wrote in the 5th Century B.C.:

"With regard to my factual reporting of...events...I have made it a principle not to write down the first story that came my way, and not even to be guided by my own general impressions; either I was present myself at the events which I have described or else heard of them from eye-witnesses whose reports I have checked with as much thoroughness as possible. Not that even so the truth was easy to discover: different eye-witnesses gave different accounts of the same events, speaking out of partiality for one side of the other or else from imperfect memories...

"[and if these words of mine are judged useful by those who want to understand clearly the events which happened...my work is not a piece of writing designed to meet the taste of an immediate public, but was done to last forever."

Whatever your feelings are about the press it is, as Walter Lippmann once said, at the core of the way we come to know and understand our world. It is a system which attempts to make transparent--to all of society--the workings of the forces and the institutions and the people which wield power over their lives--to note the activities of citizens and organizations which catalyze public affairs.

This is to say nothing of its role monitoring the state of public life in all its myriad forms; its hopes and dreams and accomplishments.

Such a press institution is a pervasive and central factor in every phase of our lives as individuals, in the shape and nature of our communities, in the character of our governments.

The people who are involved in this historical wave of re-examination believe the contribution of a press in the interest of self government needs and deserves more thoughtful care and attention.

With them, I believe that care and attention will not come from owners those whose only yardstick is quarterly earnings;

It will not come from journalists whose highest aspiration is to be first with the most shocking or titillating scandal; it will not come from public officials whose understanding of the press is only as a tool to manipulate public opinion; that care and attention can come only from journalists deeply and passionately committed to a press which can make enlightened citizenship possible.

It will happen if and only if journalists become active, aggressive and vocal participants in the current struggle over the way the new technology and economic organization of the press is to shape the work of the newsroom.