The Los Angeles Times ran a correction last week that was 14 pages long, and everyone has a stake in it.

In a special supplement, the country's fourth-largest newspaper detailed how linking its business and news sides had compromised its professional values. The paper also issued new internal guidelines, drafted by the newsroom rather than the bosses.

What makes this important is that the pressures in L.A. are not those of a single newspaper, or even industry. They confront all occupations with a tether to a broader social purpose - law, medicine, politics and others. How they cope, especially when the web economy is changing the rules in America, is significant. To the degree society measures itself exclusively in terms of commerce, Democracy is reduced to Capitalism.

The situation in Los Angeles surfaced two months ago, when it was discovered that the paper had secretly shared ad revenues from its Sunday magazine with the subject of the stories, the town's new sports arena. What's more, the arena owners had sent shakedown letters to all its subcontractors insisting they buy ads.

The newsroom erupted in revolt, the publisher apologized, Times patriarch Otis Chandler denounced the deal, and finally, last week, the paper issued its public mea culpa.

The new internal rules make clear that various activities at the paper over the last year and a half are now forbidden. The publisher is now required to report outside business associations to the editor. "Decisions on coverage will be made solely by editors based on newsworthiness and value to readers." Any contact between business and news about coverage requires approval of the editor.

The guidelines may strike most news people as journalism 101. Yet it is increasingly likely that the top management of a news company would be ignorant of them. It is an open question whether these values will survive at all.

They do not currently govern the Internet, as we daily discover. Former surgeon general Dr. C. Everett Koop heads a health web site where the medical advice, the advertising and the promotions are often indistinguishable. CBS has formed a joint venture with the PGA of America that allows the golf tour to control the news content of the No. 1 web site covering the sport.

If the values of an independent press do not transfer to the web, they will begin to disappear in the old media as executives there try to keep up. Already, newspapers like the New York Times have differing ethical standards on-line than in print. At stake is whether journalism will remain an independent force in society able to monitor and investigate government, business and other institutions.

Doing so will require three steps. The first is that journalists themselves agree on and be able to articulate what their profession stands for.

A group we head, the Committee of Concerned Journalists, has undertaken two years of study to identify the principles held in common by those who cover news. The principles enunciated in L.A. are precisely those journalists elsewhere already embrace, though they are often poorly articulated and defended.

Journalists believe they must: maintain a first obligation to the truth; put citizens ahead of other considerations; stay independent from faction; employ an ethical method of verification; provide an open public forum; report what is significant as well as what is engaging; keep news in proportion; monitor the powerful; and remain true to personal conscience.

The second requirement is that owners share these values. The Times case proves who owns the company, who manages it, and what they feel matters. These values were never absent from the Times newsroom. But they were being systematically compromised inside the paper.

The third requirement is that these values matter to citizens. Otherwise it is irrelevant what journalists prefer. Yet for citizens to care, the profession must champion these ideas and market them. If they fail to make that case, journalism will become an infomercial.

In other walks, the stakes are similar. In law, will winning at all costs overwhelm any concept of justice? In medicine, will profit supersede patient care? In politics, does accruing power thoroughly swamp solving social problems? In an age when the power of computing makes everything measurable, how will we measure the more abstract human values? If we do not find a way, or choose not to, capitalism may triumph but democracy will shrivel.

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