Princess Diana caught our attention first in her supporting role in the royal pageant, then as a lead player when she pulled the curtain to expose the backstage shenanigans behind the magic in the castle. In an earlier time she simply would have been beheaded, like other inconvenient women with temporal ties to the throne. As it was, she lost the power struggle and was sent packing to make her way in another world, if she was lucky. She wasn't. Had she lived, she might have been a sideshow to history. Because she died, violently and too young, her seemingly futile attempt to update the royal script might actually have an impact on the future of the king.

So the story continues, and it's full of surprises. A bloom of love and grief at the palace gates overwhelmed tradition. Every blossom was a vote against a cold, distant, and destructive monarchy and, also, by the way, against, a cold, cold-blooded, and destructive press. Death by paparazzi.

The death of Diana is a great story, no doubt about it. It fits every definition of news: An accident with three fatalities is, in every case, at least a news brief. Add to that the rich and famous victims plus the drop shadow of tragedy - loss of young life and an end to the hope of love - and you have the stuff of ledes and legends. The story is a prize in the hard news sweepstakes, and even better, in the sweeps.

Actually, the death of "the people's princess" is the ideal story, born in fantasy and ending abruptly in brutal fact. As viewers and voyeurs, even as reporters, we loved looking at Diana in all her juicy parts: our mother of the ski slopes; minister to the sick, the maimed and the outcast, including herself. She outshone Prince Charles in every lens.

 As journalists, naturally, we will continue to cover the still unfolding story, even ad absurdum. But, excess aside, the story is important because it tells us something about ourselves: for people, about their aspirations and their disconnect from tradition; and for journalists, about their disconnect from the audience's life.

Stories are important because they tell us who we are - where we came from and where we are going. Stories guide us in the uncharted waters of life; they are a mirror of our minds. Today, journalism, with its pervasive electronic power, has become the world's principal storyteller. In light of public outrage against the press, exemplified by the reaction to the Diana story, we might ask: What about our stories so offends the public? What about our behavior? How do we define ourselves as journalists? How do we define the news?

 Through the lens of news, we live in a world filled with danger. The journalist warns of storms on the horizon, literally - the weather - and figuratively - economic, political, and other threatening weather as well. Our front page stories tell of conflict, corruption, pollution, greed, ignorance, theft, murder, and death. That is journalism's prevailing definition of news, so-called hard news.

In fact, today, in more of the world than ever before, we live in peace and relative prosperity, in a growing economy with new opportunities, at least for some. Yes, there are problems, but in a context of relative safety and security. In such an environment, journalism could contribute even more to an informed civic dialogue on the distance democracy has yet to go. Instead we continue to headline a world in which daily survival is at stake, while we whisper in newsrooms that "there is no news," meaning nothing to fear, at least not today. Some journalists lament the end of the cold war and the health of the economy as the death of news, at least as we define it.

But if we count the flowers in the Buckingham referendum, or if we listen to public opinion polls, what we call news, much of the public finds negative, intrusive, inaccurate, irrelevant, and often unfair. What we call objective journalism, the public finds inhuman. What we call hard news, according to the research, does not reflect the reality of people's lives.

 Ask a journalist why there is so much coverage of sex, violence, and scandal, and we answer that's what the public wants. Ask why news is so negative, we answer: Dog bites man isn't a story. Man bites dog is news. Why we are so knee-jerk adversarial to power? Answer: It's the journalist's job to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Why do we rush to judgment? Answer: To pursue the truth (when, in fact, we do it to beat the competition.) Why aren't journalists concerned about the impact of what we do? Answer: The impact of a story is not the journalist's concern. Our only concern is to pursue the truth.

Those are the guiding rules of professional action, our catechism of faith and practice. They may explain why at least one of the paparazzi kept snapping pictures instead of seeking help for the dying Diana; why Diana's brother, Earl Spencer, said of journalists that we live at the opposite end of the moral spectrum to his sister; and why the public so mistrusts the press.

Like the monarchy, for us this could be a moment, not of self-excoriation but of self-examination, to question our assumptions, reconsider our conventions, reprogram our habits of thought. What are these dog-bites-man clich?s, these stories, by which journalism keeps defining itself? Are they appropriate to the state of professional evolution and to today's greater power and reach of the press? What aren't we covering? Where aren't we looking? How do we tell the story better, meaning the story that more closely reflects people's lives?

In life, Princess Diana tried to rewrite the script of history. In death, she may succeed, although I tend to doubt it. In the shock and sorrow of the moment, Charles, too, tried to, if not rewrite, at least edit, the transcript of his marriage, dutiful and respectful to Diana in death as he had not been in life. Perhaps journalism, too, may find in this story an impulse to action. We will not know whether the updated versions of the royal marriage, or the monarchy, or the practices of journalism will serve any better. But we'd love to cover the story. (More on Diana and the press)

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