Faced with the litany of criticism - sadly, particularly shrill right now - some journalists believe this is a grim time for newspapers.

It needn't be. We haven't yet done our best work.

If this is a time characterized by a continuing cultural coarseness, it is also a time when newspapers can demonstrate excellence and satisfy an unsated thirst for quality.

If this is the most cynical of times, a time with trust for no one - not politicians, government itself, big business, and certainly not the media - then it also is a time when things that matter to readers cry out for the attention of reporters and editors.
And if this is a time when the destructiveness and tawdriness of mass media hang like a curse over even the best-intentioned newspaper editors, it is also a time when changing values and new media players should prompt us to seek higher ground.
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To get more credibility, we first must stop squandering what we have.
In many newsrooms standards are unclear or, given recent evidence, wildly inconsistent. Editors routinely talk about the gap between the journalistic values they hold most dear and those they think guide the reporters they work beside. They worry whether they can hire people with the skill and breadth and understanding to do the job. Reporters say they don't get the journalistic support they need from their bosses. They wonder whether their editors have sold out journalistic values for business ones. They long for the inspiration provided by leaders with abiding passion for the gritty world of journalism.

If newsroom values are out of whack or reporters and editors are out of touch with each other and with their communities, whose responsibility is that?

It is ours.

Our challenges are not limited to our newsrooms. In some companies, the talk has shifted to financial and marketing imperatives to such an extent that journalists have concluded their owners are blindly driven by Wall Street, unconcerned about the quality of journalism. There are, happily, some newspaper companies that continue to invest generously in their newsrooms and in the professional development of newsroom staffs. But as profits have hovered near all-time records, many companies have not invested in journalistic training significantly enough to demonstrate their commitment to the highest standards. Nor have beginning salaries at most papers become competitive with those in other professions. It is now left to editors to provide the leadership within their companies to demonstrate the true relationship between quality journalism and long-term success in the marketplace.

But if editors are too weary for the fight, too weighted down with their own faded ideals, who will raise high the journalistic flag within today's media giants?
We must.
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Editors will either confront the massive challenges in their newsrooms and their companies and in the public's view of our work or continue the handwringing and self-flagellation, and do nothing.

Leaders will choose action.
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What are our standards, for instance, on the use of anonymous sources? In the face of intense competitive pressure and in hot pursuit of story, the salient standard in the early Clinton-Lewinsky coverage appears to have been that someone said it, therefore we wrote it; the wire service sent it, therefore we printed it.

That is not leadership. It is a sorry squandering of the credibility we have. Newspaper editors are the primary journalistic standard bearers in each community. We all inherited the best practices and highest ideals of our craft and the courage of those who preceded us. We have debts that have to be paid not just with proper grammar and usage, but with decisions that show respect for our communities and our profession.

Other media that do not share newspaper standards are recasting the definitions of news. But we do not have to be pulled along.

Commercial television, a kaleidoscope of hype and irrelevancy, first creates then exploits fame. TV news, dumbed down to such an extent that its patron saints despair, seeks emotion more than enlightenment. We can't out-TV television. We should not try.

The newest news dispenser, the runaway Internet, makes a journalist out of anybody who has a modem. It values speed and sensationalism above accuracy. New media will not adopt our standards. We are foolish to treat them as if they have. Let Matt Drudge be Matt Drudge, but let's not pretend he operates from a base of sound journalistic standards.

The high road is there if we will just take it. If newspaper journalism and journalists long for greater respect, then newspaper editors must supply the discipline to play down - not play up - the trivial, the perverse, the bizarre.

Think back to the O.J. Simpson criminal trial. In the papers I checked there were between 75 and 100 O.J. stories on Page 1 during those nine months. That's two or three a week on Page 1. What if most newspaper editors had decided not to play up that trial to such an extent? What if we had said, "Let other media go gaga, we're going to move most of these stories inside the paper"? Instead, we could have displayed an additional significant, interesting local story on the front page. Would newspapers have been worse off for that decision? I don't think so. One editor, one day at a time, could have made this call.

And this individual decision making by individual editors - reinforcing the highest journalistic standards - is the only way out of the muck for us.

The notion that readers have created the demand for lowest common denominator journalism is false. We are doing that ourselves. We can and must stop.

As we apply our own high standards we can also improve our credibility by better communicating these standards to readers.

Readers are in the dark about journalists' goals and decision making. Explaining ourselves does not have to be self-serving. It can and should be respectful.

Several editor-written columns I see - notably those by Jerry Ceppos in San Jose and Rich Oppel in Austin - respectfully anticipate readers' concerns and give insight into newsrooms. They don't make excuses. They're not filled with promotional fluff. They communicate standards and help demystify the institution.
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Quality journalism requires significant investment. If we buy a top-quality car or piece of furniture or clothing, we expect that the manufacturer has invested heavily in attention to detail and the proficiency of employees.

In newsrooms, the lack of adequate resources to teach and guide newspaper staffs and to pay them sufficiently to keep the brightest young people in journalism directly affects our credibility.

With readers today much more knowledgeable about many subjects than in the past, and with the huge array of sources for that information at their fingertips, journalists must have more than superficial grasp of complex material.

What once was typical for journalists - a tendency to have broad-ranging interests but superficial knowledge, is a liability in today's media-savvy world. Our audience won't accept our reporting as authoritative unless we are able to write authoritatively. Superficial understanding doesn't cut it.

Other industries know that in a competitive environment, teaching more advanced skills is the key to survival. High-tech firms average more than $900 a year per employee on training, and the average of all companies is $500. If newspaper spending on training equaled that of high-tech firms, a newspaper staff of 100 would invest $90,000 annually in training.

Unfortunately, newspapers spend considerably less on training than the average business. But our people already know that. A 1993 Freedom Forum study showed that 93 percent of American journalists wanted regular training but that only 14 percent of American newspapers provided it. The report concluded that the lack of opportunity for professional development is one reason newspapers are losing some of their best talent.

Professional-level training is desperately needed in journalistic skills, ethical decision making and in the dozens of specialty subjects we presume to report on for our readers.

Newspapers have the profits to invest whatever is needed to make newsrooms centers of learning that combine the intellectual rigor of university life with the energy and drive for action in the best newsrooms.

Surely owners must understand that no matter how fine a college education reporters have when hired, we must not rely on learning by osmosis once they enter newsrooms. Editors should wage an unrelenting campaign to get more training and teaching in newsrooms.

When I embarked on this quest for greater attention to the cause of improving newspaper credibility, a friend suggested that I was really talking about character.
Credibility means accuracy and reliability and trust, which, to be sure, would be a great prize. But pursuit of that prize might be easier, he suggested, if we adopted the larger goal of journalistic character.

Credibility can be measured, more or less. Character is felt and ties directly to the whole nature of content rather than just to its accuracy. Character as the criterion involves how we choose stories, how we play them, how we perceive our priorities and readers' interests and needs.

Credibility is not theoretical, philosophical or remote from our work. It is at the heart of our professional lives.

Credibility is not about selling more newspapers. It is about building the quality and integrity of our news.

It is not about finding some new journalistic fad or silver bullet to solve our problems. It is about thoroughly understanding, clearly articulating and relentlessly applying the highest professional and ethical standards.

It is not even about what we have the right to do; obviously, we have the right to print just about anything we want. It is about doing the right thing.

Our central responsibility as editors is to make the believability - a combination of accuracy, authority, skill, judgment and respectfulness - of our newspapers THE central concern of our newsrooms. Ahead of profits. Ahead of what corporate thinks of us. At the front of the line - in time, commitment and passion.

We do this in part by being open, not defensive, about our weaknesses. We talk about them. We examine our successes and failures, in meetings, in memos, in the middle of the newsroom floor where we can be overheard by all.

We do this by nurturing editors who are alive with passion for craft and for coaching reporters and photographers - flesh and blood editors who aren't reluctant to state their responsibilities to their newsrooms and who honor their hopes and ideals, editors who understand that everything they do, everything they print contributes to their newspaper's character and credibility with the public.

That is all the prize that editing a newspaper has ever had to offer. It is a great deal indeed.

These excerpts are from Rowe's May 12, 1998, lecture titled "Leading the Way Out of the Credibility Crisis," delivered at the 1998 Organization of News Ombudsmen Conference, held in San Diego, California.

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