I have never met Sorensen, but she has been challenging me in recent months to be a better journalist, especially when addressing society's more complex issues. Our relationship began the day she called my voice mail to respond to a column illustrating the growing chasm between executive and worker pay. Answering this question for readers who feel detached but long to be engaged is not as simple as one might think. What makes it tougher are some of the long-standing values of journalism. Amid the front pages, news clips, and Web pages reporting changing times and social discord, readers are scrambling for a sense that answers exist.
Answers provide hope.
But what journalists tend to provide is a bevy of contradictory information and opinions on complex subjects that serve to further frustrate and confuse, leaving readers feeling more isolated and hopeless than before. And like they must choose sides. The values we hold as we march ahead into the next millennium must acknowledge the public's growing disenchantment with institutions, including the media. From militias playing war games in Montana to sentiments about the O.J. Simpson verdict split cleanly along racial lines, we paint these snapshots of disenchantment and social unrest largely as singular, disconnected events. What is more accurate is that they are a piece of the mosaic that has something important and telling to say about society - connections readers long to understand.