An editor once told me that, "in this day and age of Google and the Internet, breaking a news story ahead of the competition doesn't really matter." In other words, no matter how hard I tried to cultivate timely, relevant news stories that would resonate with our highly specific audience, the whole idea of providing information, getting it first and getting it right was meaningless. 

In a way, that conversation was a snapshot of that editor's vision of that particular publication's role in the larger world. It wasn't so much about providing news as it was content. Be it analysis, opinion, rewrites of press releases, whatever, it was more important to throw up a few simple, lazily-created articles that would easily fill up more "space" in a daily-updated site.

It wasn't about news in any traditional sense of running a periodical. 

News (noun):
1: A report of a recent event; Intelligence; Information.
2. The presentation of a report on recent or new events in a newspaper or other periodical or on radio or television.
(via dictionary.com) 

To this day I still have a problem with that editor's assumption that search engines and the Internet have somehow changed the entire definition of news. 


The basic mission of a journalist is, simply, to provide news, and to do so in a timely, relevant fashion that resonates with his or her audience. Irrespective of how search engines and the immediacy of the Internet have changed the game, a journalist's purpose stays the same. That is, news is the reason journalism exists. 

So when I reflect on that editor who didn't care about breaking a news story, my thoughts return to one simple question: If you're a journalist who doesn't care about the fundamental purpose of journalism, what are you?