The central purpose of journalism is to provide citizens with accurate and reliable information they need to function in a free society.

This encompasses myriad roles--helping define community, creating common language and common knowledge, identifying a community's goals, heros and villains, and pushing people beyond complacency. This purpose also involves other requirements, such as being entertaining, serving as watchdog and offering voice to the voiceless. Over time journalists have developed nine core principles to meet the task. They comprise what might be described as the theory of journalism:

1. Journalism's first obligation is to the truth Democracy depends on citizens having reliable, accurate facts put in a meaningful context. Journalism does not pursue truth in an absolute or philosophical sense, but it can--and must--pursue it in a practical sense. This "journalistic truth" is a process that begins with the professional discipline of assembling and verifying facts. Then journalists try to convey a fair and reliable account of their meaning, valid for now, subject to further investigation. Journalists should be as transparent as possible about sources and methods so audiences can make their own assessment of the information. Even in a world of expanding voices, accuracy is the foundation upon which everything else is built--context, interpretation, comment, criticism, analysis and debate. The truth, over time, emerges from this forum. As citizens encounter an ever greater flow of data, they have more need--not less--for identifiable sources dedicated to verifying that information and putting it in context. 2. Its first loyalty is to citizens. While news organizations answer to many constituencies, including advertisers and shareholders, the journalists in those organizations must maintain allegiance to citizens and the larger public interest above any other if they are to provide the news without fear or favor. This commitment to citizens first is the basis of a news organization's credibility, the implied covenant that tells the audience the coverage is not slanted for friends or advertisers. Commitment to citizens also means journalism should present a representative picture of all constituent groups in society. Ignoring certain citizens has the effect of disenfranchising them. The theory underlying the modern news industry has been the belief that credibility builds a broad and loyal audience, and that economic success follows in turn. In that regard, the business people in a news organization also must nurture--not exploit--their allegiance to the audience ahead of other considerations. 3. Its essence is a discipline of verification. Journalists rely on a professional discipline for verifying information. When the concept of objectivity originally evolved, it did not imply that journalists are free of bias. It called, rather, for a consistent method of testing information--a transparent approach to evidence--precisely so that personal and cultural biases would not undermine the accuracy of their work. The method is objective, not the journalist. Seeking out multiple witnesses, disclosing as much as possible about sources, or asking various sides for comment, all signal such standards. This discipline of verification is what separates journalism from other modes of communication, such as propaganda, fiction or entertainment. But the need for professional method is not always fully recognized or refined. While journalism has developed various techniques for determining facts, for instance, it has done less to develop a system for testing the reliability of journalistic interpretation. 4. Its practitioners must maintain an independence from those they cover Independence is an underlying requirement of journalism, a cornerstone of its reliability. Independence of spirit and mind, rather than neutrality, is the principle journalists must keep in focus. While editorialists and commentators are not neutral, the source of their credibility is still their accuracy, intellectual fairness and ability to inform--not their devotion to a certain group or outcome. In our independence, however, we must avoid any tendency to stray into arrogance, elitism, isolation or nihilism. 5. It must serve as an independent monitor of power. Journalism has an unusual capacity to serve as watchdog over those whose power and position most affect citizens. The Founders recognized this to be a rampart against despotism when they ensured an independent press; courts have affirmed it; citizens rely on it. As journalists, we have an obligation to protect this watchdog freedom by not demeaning it in frivolous use or exploiting it for commercial gain. 6. It must provide a forum for public criticism and compromise. The news media are the common carriers of public discussion, and this responsibility forms a basis for our special privileges. This discussion serves society best when it is informed by facts rather than prejudice and supposition. It also should strive to fairly represent the varied viewpoints and interests in society, and to place them in context rather than highlight only the conflicting fringes of debate. Accuracy and truthfulness require that as framers of the public discussion we not neglect the points of common ground where problem solving occurs. 7. It must strive to make the significant interesting and relevant. Journalism is storytelling with a purpose. It should do more than gather an audience or catalogue the important. For its own survival, it must balance what readers know they want with what they cannot anticipate but need. In short, it must strive to make the significant interesting and relevant. Quality is measured both by how much a work engages its audience and enlightens it. This means journalists must continually ask what information has most value to citizens and in what form. While journalism should reach beyond such topics as government and public safety, a journalism overwhelmed by trivia and false significance ultimately engenders a trivial society. 8. It must keep the news comprehensive and proportional. Keeping news in proportion and not leaving important things out are also cornerstones of truthfulness. Journalism is a form of cartography: it creates a map for citizens to navigate society. Inflating events for sensation, neglecting others, stereotyping or being disproportionately negative all make a less reliable map. The map also should include news of all our communities, not just those with attractive demographics. This is best achieved by newsrooms with a diversity of backgrounds and perspectives. The map is only an analogy; proportion and comprehensiveness are subjective, yet their elusiveness does not lesson their significance. 9. Its practitioners must be allowed to exercise their personal conscience. Every journalist must have a personal sense of ethics and responsibility--a moral compass. Each of us must be willing, if fairness and accuracy require, to voice differences with our colleagues, whether in the newsroom or the executive suite. News organizations do well to nurture this independence by encouraging individuals to speak their minds. This stimulates the intellectual diversity necessary to understand and accurately cover an increasingly diverse society. It is this diversity of minds and voices, not just numbers, that matters.

DESKTOP PUBLISHING

DESKTOP PUBLISHING, as its name suggests, allows a publishing house to be established on the top of a desk. It represents an enormous saving of both time and money. With the use of a personal computer system and the appropriate software, it is now possible to edit, design, illustrate, lay out and typescript a book in a relatively short time and without a large staff and staggering budget.

Desktop publishing eliminates the need for outside typesetters and artists. With the use of a relatively inexpensive computer, type can be set in the office. The results can be checked at once and corrections made easily and at no extra cost. Full page make up, too, can be done on the computer. Changes can be made on the screen, and there is no need for galleys, or for cutting and pasting.

With the use of the painting and drawing programs, digitizers, imagemakers, and other graphic tools, it is possible for artists to create images on the screen. This artwork combined on the same page with the text, can be examined on the screen before printing. Once again, by this method, correction is simplified.

Finally, type and art, in page format can be output in the office, by means of a laser printer, which looks much like an office photocopier. The results are good. These pages then go to the offset printer.

Desktop will enable a writer's words and ideas to reach a large number of readers more economically than ever before.

Desktop publishing appeared in 1985, when the first programs capable of composing text on a computer were produced. It is the application or personal computers to the entire printing process. It is a means of producing documents, advertising leaflets, magazines and even books on equipment which can be housed on a large desk. The basic equipment or hardware consists of a computer complete with a visual display unit, a keyboard, and a movement sensing device known as mouse, an optical scanner, and a laser printer. The program, or software needed to operate the equipment consists of a "page description language" which translates the image on the computer screen into a set of digital instructions that the laser printer can follow, and a composition program to drive the entire system. Once the image has been transferred to the computer, it can be modified, saved, and printed out like any other data.

Increasingly, writers make use of computers and word processors, which allow them to revise easily what they write. They can insert, delete or move words and sentences, and see the results on a screen without having to retype entire paragraphs or pages. Editors work in many ways. Today many publishing houses allow an author to turn in an electronic manuscript, one which has been written on a word processor or computer. In this case, the copy is on a floppy disc rather than on paper, but for convenience in reading it is essential that the author also submits the entire manuscript printed out on a paper. When the editor is ready to begin editing, the disc can be put into the editor's computer and all the work done right on the disc. By using a modem a telephone connection between computers -the editor and author can communicate directly through the keyboard. There are instances of authors and editors many miles apart working on the same manuscript at the same time-editing, rewriting and correcting that manuscript by computer.

In recent years the computer has become a valuable tool for technical illustrations. Today illustrators and authors can make their own graphs, charts, and blueprint style drawings on a home computer with excellent results. Changes are easy to make, and they can even be done.