Journalists tend to be trinitarians. We can't support an argument with less than three bulleted facts; can't proclaim a trend with less than three anecdotal examples; and most certainly cannot enter a new year without a solid three-legged pronouncement on the State of Some Important Concern. It isn't hard to come up with a trinity of problems confronting the practice of journalism: * The loss of credibility and the respect of the public; * The challenges posed by the new technology; * The "convergence of once-separate media industries" -- a convergence that, media policy analyst David Bollier predicts, "will sanctify and accelerate the media's ongoing vertical integration."

These forces, which are not individually news, are interacting in important ways that heighten their impact. First of all, when journalists respond to criticism (about their perceived arrogance, their insensitivity, their lapses in judgment) with characteristic bravado, it sounds like more of the same "attitude" that has already alienated many Americans. Only now, thanks to the new technology, the public doesn't have to take it anymore; with every passing day people have more alternatives to the traditional news media to choose from, a situation that has prompted commentator Jeff Greenfield to warn that journalists may become "roadkill on the information highway."

Compounding the marginalization of journalism as we know it by conditions one and two is the increasing centralization of media power in conglomerates that show more interest in the entertainment potential of their empires than in the newsgathering possibilities. As a result, at the same time as there is a proliferation of alternative information resources for the disenchanted public to feast on, there are fewer and fewer institutions nourishing the practice of thoughtful and enterprising journalism.

If we gatekeepers of the news do not reestablish ourselves as indispensable, we will become irrelevant.

An indication of journalists' concern about the future of our profession was provided by CJR readers who responded to a subscriber study conducted last summer. Above all, they said, they want articles that address three (what else?) questions to relating to change: * What is happening to us? (specifically coverage of "the changing state of journalism" and "the changing shape of news"); * What is happening to the safeguards of journalism? ("First Amendment and legal issues"); * And, most earnestly, How can we do better? ("Evalutions of major news stories," "Judgment Call," and the ever popular "Darts and Laurels").

We promise to stay on those stories in the months to come, but (CJR can do more. We can try to help reconnect the journalistic community with the public it serves. One way we plan to do that is to reach out to potential readers who are not in the media but who care as much as those who are about how the news is shaped and the ethics behind the many decisions involved. Another link is a new column, "The Media & Me" (see page 47), which will give nonjournalists an opportunity to hold a mirror up to those who report on them. We hope that in the pages of this magazine such feedback will be seen as a challenge, not a threat.

Another part of our mission is to define and reaffirm common goals for practicing a journalism that serves the public good. One of the most familiar complaints is that the press is chronically distracted from larger moral and civic issues by sound bites, gossip, and horse races. CJR's series on covering the so-called culture war and the several articles on issues raised by the drive toward diversity in the newsroom were two recent efforts to focus on the expanding universe of stories that defy a once-over-lightly approach. The articles also generated a heightened awareness of the need to find a journalistic vocabulary for dealing with matters of faith and morality and to work through the ambivalence and fears inspired by social change.

All of us -- journalists and nonjournalists alike -- know that comprehending the contemporary world takes more analysis, more digging, more verifying, more insight than even the most animated electronic conversation can offer. What is less clear is how the new technology can assist the process and how well journalists will meet the challenge.

One place to start is by cleaning up our act -- resisting cynical short cuts and gotcha reporting, for example; in addition, we can keep up a drumbeat for quality -- fending off the incursions of quasi-news and calling for more thorough reporting on and analysis of the important issues of the day. Once we make it clear that is what we want to do, we can reach around the institutional obstacles and engage our real partners in the democratic process: our fellow citizens.

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