There is no golden age of journalism for which believers should pine, but there are many models of great journalism to which we might aspire. The collapse of the objectivity paradigm and the ad-supported business model means that the field is wide open for innovative ways both to do journalism and to finance it.

C.S. Lewis famously dismissed the journalism of his day. “I never read the papers. Why does anyone?” he wrote. “They’re nearly all lies, and one has to wade thru’ such reams of verbiage and ‘write up’ to find out even what they’re saying.” The notion, he quipped elsewhere, that journalists “can be saved is a doctrine, if not contrary to, yet certainly above, reason!”

Many people would still agree. Readers can find brilliant work and even some good publications, but the industry as a whole is a hot mess. As we’ll see below, its credibility is sinking like a cast-iron swimming pool noodle, the internet (and other factors) blew up its ad-focused business model, and mainstream coverage of important issues, from abortion to gender identity to religious freedom, seems more deranged each day.

In the endless scramble to produce news that floats even briefly atop the soul-sucking dreck that dominates social media and TV, journalists too often cut corners and push agendas while pretending to be above the fray. Nobody can say with authority anymore what is or is not journalism because the paradigm that defined it for the last century—the professional standards and practices of “objectivity” applied in the name of public service—has burned to the ground.

This is a perfect time for Christians to embrace journalism.

Disruption offers an opportunity to build and support excellent news organizations that offer true stories, but to do that believers will need to rethink their approach to news. For more than a generation, many have taught their young people that journalism is a job fit only for hacks and propagandists, and now we complain that so much news is hackery and propaganda. Lewis confronted a similar irony: “In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function,” Lewis wrote in The Abolition of Man. “We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”

Christians should not cheer for the abolition of journalism—good journalism helps defend against the abolition of man. Yet we have undervalued news in part because it comes wrapped in conventions and styles that, while useful, can obscure the reporter’s core task: to see the world clearly and help others see it clearly too. Journalism is a profoundly noble and deeply Biblical calling that combines the gifts of a storyteller, a historian, a philosopher, and a theologian. To live rightly, we must understand the times in which we live, the culture that shapes our imaginations, and the people God calls us to serve.

Journalism is a profoundly noble and deeply Biblical calling that combines the gifts of a storyteller, a historian, a philosopher, and a theologian.

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