Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer:

Every journalist should wake up in the morning and ask herself or himself, am I working on something that will make my town, my state and my country a better place to live? And how am I using my talents — my ability to ferret out facts, track down the right officials or the right documents, to analyze, interpret and write — to get us there. That doesn’t mean ditching certain basic tenets — fairness, listening to differing sides on an issue, or a willingness to accept truth, even when it’s uncomfortable. But it also doesn’t mean treating journalism like an ossified religion where the daily rituals of access to the powerful outweighs the spiritual quest for the very soul of what we do.

This wonderful quote comes near the end of a long piece examining the decades-long journey to the current media situation in the US, but there's much that resonates there for other countries, too.

And that conclusion is hard to argue with…

[via John Robinson]