(Warning, semantics ahead!) For what, exactly, are we saving journalism?

The 2020 Mega-Conference for newspaper executives wrapped up this week, and conversations there led me to think about all the rally cries about ensuring a sustainable future for local journalism. Views here are mine, not those of my employer, Local Media Association. And I'm writing commentary, not committing an act of news reporting, so please allow a few J-school faux pas, starting with a question lede.

When we say we are trying to "save" journalism, why and for what, exactly, are we saving it?

Lest you think I'm an "anti-journalite," here's a spoiler: I wish for, work for, and wholeheartedly support a reinvigoration of local journalism. But we're pitching it wrong.

I wordsmith everything. I parse what people say and write, trying to understand what they mean and use that understanding to shape my view of the world. Consider me an enthusiastic student of, but not expert in, semantics, intent and logic in language (especially English, since my skills in others are insignificant).

This all drives my wife, family and co-workers batty, but it helps in this context.

Mindset established, let's look at answers to my initial question, from some of the people and entities most active in the effort for journalism:

• The Save Journalism Project says, "High-quality journalism has been recognized since America’s founding as fundamental to the functioning of our democracy."
• The Washington Post made a Super Bowl scale campaign with the tagline "Democracy Dies in Darkness." When Tom Hanks says it, we listen, right?
• My colleagues and I at Local Media Association work hard to execute on mission and vision statements that cite "the essential role of local news and information in a healthy democracy."

Those three answers to the "what-for" question have one common theme: democracy. That's the reason to save journalism. Except Semantics Boy here (can't wait for the Marvel Studios movie!) has just a few questions about that:

What do we mean by democracy? Any respectable middle school civics teacher can tell you the basic characteristics of democracy, by classic definition: rule by the people, or self-government, in typical practice via elected representatives. A nation that can be considered a democracy manages its laws, institutions of government, and the services they provide with consent of its people as expressed through those representatives.

That definition describes a structure, a framework, for governing a body of people with consent of the governed. It assigns no qualitative value to the practice of democracy, no explicit benefits.

So are we saving journalism to preserve a framework? A Governing Framework Dies in Darkness? Not sure that motivates a lot of "here, take my money" behavior.

The practical definition also describes a republic more than a democracy. But these days it is hard to build a good alliterative rally cry to save journalism in order to preserve a republic. We won't even visit the propagandistic hell where the co-opted labels (brands, really) of America's major political parties, Democratic and Republican, live in perpetual, flaming ooze.

I had this reaction years before the current crisis in news media, when I first heard Obi-Wan Kenobi call out "the republic" and "democracy" as Jedi reasons to exist in Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith. All I could think then was, "Hire some script writers, Lucas!" Even Capt. Kirk's dramatic reading of the preamble to the U.S. Constitution was better dialogue (plus his wig wasn't the worst one by far in this scene).

Point being, I wonder if we news media types lend assumptive values to the term democracy that are not inherent by definition nor agreed upon by non-news media types.

Nothing stops a group of people from running a democracy, or republic, with values most people would consider completely evil. (You might say "the rule of law," or "the courts," but both of those are institutions of government, not by default institutions of democracy. Dictatorships still have laws and courts.)

Conversely, nothing prevents a benevolent monarch, at least not in Disney movies.

So a good script writer would have had Obi-Wan toe the Declaration of Independence line more closely, such as: "Anakin, I fight for people to be free, loving, just, happy, and able to live their lives best they can."

Now we're getting to a rally cry, with or without light sabers or blue face paint.

Which democracy will we help by saving journalism? This one is easier to answer for most of us working in local media, stateside. It's democracy in the United States, including all the state and local governments, special districts and administrative bodies that form the massive, often unwieldy structure of American government.

If you're The Washington Post, you aim your resources and your slogans at the highest, largest institutions of government, which happen to be in your Nation's Capital backyard. If you're the Lebanon (Tenn.) Democrat (picked because I live there), your eyes are fixed on city hall down the street, and the sheriff's office you can see through your office windows.

Wait.

Does that mean saving journalism, and in turn preserving healthy democracy, logically cascades down to this statement? "Save the local newspaper and you preserve city hall, the sheriff's office and the local water board."

No.

It seems we want to say the watchdog role journalists revere and assign to themselves — especially aimed at politics and government — should be important to a society that endorses the values Obi-Wan's new ghost writer just fed him. In practice:

The Washington Post watches the U.S. government and reports on evidence of waste or wrongdoing. The Lebanon Democrat attends city council meetings and court proceedings, and lets the locals know how their tax money is being spent or how local justice was or was not served. Great. That's important work at both orders of magnitude. When you help save and sustain journalism, you get that benefit. We should say so.

Is that it? Is that enough? News media people may assign many of Obi-Wan's rewritten values to the term democracy. Lots of people outside our business don't. They wonder why we focus so much on institutional and political coverage while wearing our spiky watchdog collars. Shouldn't journalists look outside halls of government to find and report examples of:

• Inequity ... and equity?
• Injustice ... and justice?
• Hate ... and love?
• Violence ... and peace?
• Oppression ... and freedom?

Do people doing great things or awful things — do those exemplary or ill conditions —not exist outside the halls of government?

Of course they do. And of course, the best journalists seek out and tell those stories when they can. With the local media business, especially newspapers, suffering severe downturns, we now have fewer journalists with fewer resources and less time to even think about doing that work. Many news organizations now need help from the communities they cover.

We need to find better ways to tell people that's what journalism can be at its best, and that's why helping to sustain the craft matters. Attaching the values of journalism — the many reasons it is and can be vital — to the term democracy fails to communicate those benefits.

We should be saying things like:

The best journalism makes the world a better place.

(Please note, I said the best journalism. This is not the place to show-and-tell your write-up of a glum coach's press conference after a non-conference game between two last-place teams. We do plenty of work in this business that does not demonstrably make the world better. Fixing that problem is a topic for another day.)

Then, of course, when we have done our best work we need to follow that value statement with proof of performance, which could be specific to each news organization.

Here's how:

• Watchdog example, corruption exposed, bad actors removed from power
• Solutions example, community crisis identified, experts and stakeholders work together to make things right
• "Lead-by-example" example, report on someone in community who does good and inspires others to do good

... and so forth. That approach at least (a) assigns the value of journalism to outcomes, not structures or institutions; (b) is not constrained to any specific group, or nation, or even species of life form; (c) is hard for even contrarians to argue, thus (d) shuts up nit-picking wordsmiths like me.

OK, tagline rewrite stand-up meeting in 20! But even if we get that right, will people ever agree on what constitutes "a better place," or even truth, liberty, justice, fundamental rights etc.? Nope. Sorry. Not gonna happen. Therefore, any given news organization and any individual journalist will incite positive and negative reactions to the work they do.

If you ask everyone in Lebanon for chip-ins to "save the Lebanon Democrat," roughly half of people who have any opinion on the subject might think that's important, and the other half won't. Neither group's opinion necessarily reflects how people feel about the ideals of journalism or what it can do. It may reflect only what they think of how the people at the Democrat practice the craft (or run the business). The same would be true most places, with most news media organizations.

Plenty of people think the incumbent news media are part of the problem (any problem!), not part of the solution. They don't have to have a reason! Just as I will never be convinced to like a Mounds or Almond Joy bar — because I hate coconut — let's stipulate we will never convince all people that they need us or should even want us.

So not only do we need a new tagline, we need better targeting. Aim our appeals at those people who think it's at least possible the best journalism can make the world better. Mounds and Almond Joy don't need me; they seem to have found plenty of people who like coconut.

I am not trying to be a smartass, just to call out the need for a stronger case. We must be bolder and more precise about why journalism matters. And we must craft appeals that work even with people who do not live in the news media bubble.

The craft of journalism — especially that focused on identifying problems and solutions — must be reinvigorated in communities of all sizes. If we are fortunate enough to earn the opportunity to do that, let's not take it as license to relax and keep doing the same things the same way. A little reinvention would help, too.

Less wire, more local. Less institutional reporting, more from outside government. Less horse-race politics and they-said-we-said legislative coverage, more ground-level causes-effects-solutions. Less time spent at coaches' postgame news conferences, more almost anything else.

"Does it make the world better?" makes a pretty good newsworthiness test. Make the rescripted Obi-Wan proud!