The apparent orthodoxy of forbidding all orthodoxies is a philosophical puzzle in liberalism since John Locke. Journalists cannot be expected to solve it However, they might in some future professional climate (which may be around the corner) come to examine the prevailing orthodoxy about journalism--how to do it, name it, explain it, uphold it, and protect it--for that orthodoxy does exist. And it does not always have adequate answers.

Four: Practicing Journalism But Not Understanding It.

Tim Porter writes First Draft, one of my favorite weblogs. It's about quality journalism and what gets in the way. In Porter's archives is one of my all-time favorite posts. He says that in nine months of doing the weblog, "I have read more studies about the nature of journalism and the habits of readership, more debate about what should be done to arrest the continued declined of newspapers as a mass medium, more criticism about the obdurate refusal of the industry to act on matters it knows must be addressed... than I ever did in the 24 years I worked for newspapers."

Which led to Tim's mini-epiphany. I see it as the statement of a journalist disappointed in what newsroom religion taught him about larger matters:

I practiced journalism, but I knew almost nothing about it - although I thought I did. Hindsight, of course, clarifies and age, if we allow it, deepens perspective. Still, while working in a role dedicated to informing the public, I had precious little information about my own profession, about its best practitioners (or greatest charlatans), about its history and role in the development and preservation of democracy, about its standards or even about the people I intended to inform-- the community around me.

I practiced journalism, but I knew almost nothing about it. What do these words mean? Certainly Porter knew enough to do the job, and get promoted to newsroom management at the San Francisco Examiner. The nothing he knew means nothing deeper than news, nothing to connect the "job" to larger things, which in turn shine a bigger light on journalism. The "preservation of democracy" is one example, a larger thing. But are belief and practice in daily journalism constantly wrestling with democracy's preservation? Porter searched his experience. He did not find much of that.

He took time off. Started a weblog. Began to read and reflect on journalism, and on a certain professional emptiness--a missing knowledge, a missing purpose--he had not known was there before. If you read First Draft, you may see how Tim Porter got religion again about journalism. Which, in my reading, came only after a loss of faith.

Five: First Amendment as Press Religion

There is one matter on which is it permitted, I think, to be an absolutist in the newsroom. You can even be admired for it. And that is First Amendment absolutism, with its obvious appeal to journalists. The events at Columbia's J-school were about this part of the religion, which has an epic legal narrative attached to it, a story about freedom of the press shared across the press establishment and taught to thousands of students every year as gospel, more or less.