by Joan Konner

As modern-age human beings we have grown accustomed to measuring our historic ages in hundreds, even thousands, of years -- the Stone Age, the Dark Ages, the Age of Enlightenment, and so forth. But in our lifetimes, the pace of Ages has picked up. In a mere flash of one hundred years, today's humans have lived through the Industrial Age, the Nuclear Age, the Electronic Age, the Communications Age, and the Information Age, not counting the New Age, which is rapidly getting to middle age. By all measures, the twentieth century appears to be the most event-filled period of change in all history (perhaps to be known in the future as the Age of Ages.)

With this issue, the Columbia Journalism Review jumps aboard the Millennium train to explore this last century of the past one thousand years, specifically to examine how the news has shaped the century and how the century has shaped the news. Journalism not only wrote the first draft of history, it played an ever larger role in defining history. We learned from science in this century that the observer changes the observed. So too we now recognize that observation of current events affects those events and promotes perceptions that become the foundation for the future. Journalists not only cover reality, they have an important role in creating it.

From the Wright brothers' first flight to the walk on the moon; from the automobile to the picket line; the troops in trenches and the stock market crash of '29; TR, FDR, and the presidential debates; Pearl Harbor, the death camps, and the mushroom cloud; the movements -- civil rights, anti-war, the women's and gay liberation; the assassinations, the glittering City on the Hill, and the Global Village -- all became media, as well as historical events. The words and images by which we came to know them are branded into our collective memories as the moments that defined our lives and times.

During the coming year, in a project supervised by editor at large Neil Hickey, the Columbia Journalism Review will examine how journalism came of age in the twentieth century. What was the press like when the century began? And how is it operating today? How did the press's observation of events affect those events, and how was journalism changed in the act of recording them? What kinds of people became journalists in 1900 and how are today's journalists different? We'll look at economics, technology, and the political and social scene -- how we covered them and how we were changed by them. And we'll explore when and why the public's confidence and respect for the press began to decline, and what can be done about it in the future.

We lead off this "Twenty-First Century Project" with a cover article by Harry Evans, editor, publisher, and author of a new definitive book The American Century. We'll follow up the theme in some other issues in 1999 with articles by authoritative voices in journalism and history; with polls, time lines, and reflections; plus symposia on the State of the Press, discussions that will also appear in our pages and online. The purpose will be, as always for cjr, to assess the performance of the press over this most remarkable period of human history -- or was it just human history-as-usual with journalism so magnifying events that it only seems that way? We'll be trying to find out.

Also in this issue, we publish the first annual report by the Project for Excellence in Journalism examining the state of local television news. The report, funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, looks at twenty television markets and evaluates the local news coverage of sixty-one stations by standards developed by a select panel of thirteen news professionals. Which stations are best, which are not, and why? What works? What doesn't? At a time when most Americans get most of their news from television, the purpose of the study is to explore what is right and what is wrong with local TV news and what lessons can be learned to make it better.

Finally, a word of tribute to a man who made all of television better -- Henry Hampton, award-winning producer, who died in November at 58, leaving a legacy of teaching, leading, and bearing witness to the historic racial struggle of African Americans and his time. We remember Henry for his exceptional documentaries, including Eyes on the Prize, the defining television history of the civil rights movement; Malcolm X and The Great Depression, among others, a body of work for which he won several Emmys, the Peabody Award, and the duPont Columbia Award for Excellence in Radio and Television Journalism.

But we remember Henry Hampton as well for the person he was and his service to journalism in his nine years as a member of the jury for the duPont Columbia Awards. We came to know Henry not only as a gifted producer but as a wise, insightful, and generous man. He was a quiet voice in a clamorous field. In fulfilling the vision of the best of television journalism against formidable obstacles and odds, he was a hero in an unheroic time.

We are deeply grateful to Henry for the spirit and sensibility he brought to his work and to his service in the Graduate School of Journalism, and we recognize his accomplishment in using television to teach, to illuminate, and to inspire.

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