Second, legal guarantees and protections, which in the American case are sewn deep into the constitutional fabric. Third, a bright, clear line between opinion and reportage. Fourth, a nosy, assertive inquisitiveness, a restless curiosity to look behind closed doors. Fifth, the quest for relevance. Let's spend a moment on this one.
Relevance means focusing on what turns out to matter.
If you were an editor in the German principality of Saxony in the sixteenth century and you decided to cover in depth the pomp and pageantry surrounding the marriage of the next Holy Roman Emperor, and decided to pay no attention to a young monk named Martin Luther, you would run a serious risk of having ordered up coverage that was irrelevant. Your readers may have been more interested in the marriage. But measured by the test of what turned out to be important and formative, you would have failed. In the end journalism that is not relevant will not be judged to have been great journalism. And in that hard reality lies a great portion of our most difficult challenge today.