Intellectually, journalism should recognise itself as a discipline among the humanities with affinities for history, geography and sociology, and as one of the creative arts.  Like all the humanities, it is necessarily interdisciplinary.  Critical self-reflection is essential.  The intellectual quality of journalism can be gauged by the rigour of the questions it asks.  Journalism should demand of and for itself the necessary scope and rigour of a discipline, without for a moment sacrificing its contemporary relevance, public accessibility and accountability.

Journalism requires news sense: that is, a sensibility to meaning and significance.  It manifests in the ways a story is investigated and told, and it creates meaning through juxtaposition _— putting one thing together with another. Necessarily, therefore, journalism is an art form; but its product cannot be reduced to an art object.  Like all art forms and disciplines, journalism should be judged by the perspective and methods of its practice. 

Journalists are front-line brokers in the politics of contemporary knowledge, a fraught and contested position.  Successful mainstream careers often require the production of silences.  Indeed, mainstream journalism could be said to produce silences as much as knowledge.  Silences speak volumes about the contemporary politics of knowledge.  As with history and all disciplines, an essential role for the critical practitioner is to identify and explore silences. 

Speaking truth to power will provoke opposition, witness the annual global toll of suppression, imprisonment, and deaths, not least currently in and around Israel/Palestine. Journalism cannot be the exclusive preserve of tamed corporate workforces.  The broadest and most creative capacity to produce journalism is fundamental to democracy and the common good.