Every possible moniker for that Goliath we're prehumously mourning—the thoughtful, non-aggregated News about the world—carries with it some philosophical stumbling-block or anachronism. And as long as we're talking about the news rather than processing it, these hurdles will trip us. A rundown of the common terms:

 First, the news. If this really means what it says—new things—it should apply to the Twit-o-blogosphere more than ever. At no point in history has educated society been so constantly bombarded with new things. In fact, these things really are news, new in the plural, because the only thing that really sets them apart is their newness. In the hours after the shooting at Fort Hood, all the mistaken reports about the number of accomplices and the fate of the shooter and Allahu Akbar were absolutely news. We're long past the era when freshness could be regularly identified with quality. Newness is not tethered to late-night editorial decisions and deadlines. When the sun rises every day, it is new, and it is also good and fresh and the realest thing around. Newspapers, by arriving at that time, used to elicit some of the same reactions: patient wonderment, slow consideration over breakfast, anticipatory mulling over what the next day will bring. No more. News is not what we need.

Journalism is a nice word, and comes from the French word for newspaper, journal or 'daily.' So, it's obsolete out of the gate. Or is it? This term is nice because it recaptures that quotidian optimism and time for thought that the news used to bring. Any religious person can tell you that being mindful and unencumbered is a lot easer if you have a schedule to stick to. This term wholly rebuts the always-on buzz of headlines, the shorter the better. It's a more frequent version of the periodical. I'm certain that we need more of this. I'm a huge proponent of the cycle, with certain caveats. I don't argue for the abolition of breaking-news updates. We should make the most of instantaneous media, but not surrender to their instantaneousness.

Ah, that perennial swarm, the media. Few terms have ever attracted as much loathing from politicians, or as much bafflement on the part of the general public. We have new media, mainstream media, alternative media, multimedia, and I'm sure it's only a matter of time before somebody brings the horror MEdia into common parlance. But this term is woefully misleading. Paints are media, and so are brushes, and nobody gives a rat's ass about Picasso's media. They care about what was done with them. The medium, Mr. McLuhan, should not be the entire message. Sometimes when I'm reading articles online I do come away with the feeling not that I've learned something, but that I sure have been staring at the screen a long time. And paper-loving fogeys with smeared fingertips who smell the creases on subways may be guilty of the same fetishism. It's not how the words are made that we need to save; it's what they say and how they can be heard.

Which brings us to the next travesty, content. Just content. "Content is king," the new generation will tell you. The old generation scratches their heads at this, as most of them say 'yes, of course' and a few say 'I thought ad revenue was king' and then the whole class turns and stares at them and they start shuffling through their binders or whatever. And the new kids are up 'providing content,' like it's as easy as Hot Pockets, filling up illimitable gigabytes with sequences of comprehensible data that may interest somebody, somewhere. Struggling outlets talk about diversifying content, creating content, preserving content. This is as blind as talking only of 'the media.' Both of those things should be in service to something else.

And that thing, I am increasingly convinced, is reporting. Gerunds are a little jarring, but in an intellectual climate so whiny and sedentary this may be a good thing. This term focuses attention on the reporter, who is one of the most undervalued creatures of our current society. He is not a disposable asset, but a tremendously high-risk investment. He'll go anywhere in the world and can summon all the persuasive and revelatory powers of the human mind, all on a deadline. I may be biased, because I want to be one of these people and get paid for it. But the best journalists do it because they want to explain things to people. In thousands of years we have not found anything quite like interpersonal narrative.

What use is the news if it's just information? We're humans, and we have emotions. If we don't acknowledge and celebrate that, we'll be fed conciliatory breaking updates while some sinister interest goes to work hijacking the emotions we're neglecting. That's what happens when you watch television news. Our hearts have to subsist on dumb stories about heroic animals and blind hatred for entire swaths of the country, because the news we get is neither nuanced nor human enough to engage the wonderful, powerful facilities of emotion in decoding and making sense of the things we're learning. Reporting is nothing without the human point of view, both telling and receiving.

It is weak and childish of any thinking adult to suppose that politics, war, or economics are inhuman affairs. Our empathy, our quest to identify, will always bubble up. If it's not given due consideration by the humans that give us news, it will mutate into hatred of Nancy Pelosi's wrinkle lines or Joe Wilson's bigotry or Obama's stoicism. Stifled artists know that if you're not creating, your impulses turn destructive. And we all have a creative mind that wants to process information. If it can't engage the ideas, it will turn against them.

So the best writing about current events that I know comes in magazines, delivered monthly, written by a person who invested a great deal in actively, compassionately reporting on the things he or she has witnessed. The report speaks to the reader, clues him in, offers hints and biases, and occasionally surprises with a sheer unconventionality of perspective. We can't expect that for our daily information sessions: it takes far too long to prepare. But people are at the center of this, and they always have been. Knowing more is just a means to an end. If we know we can understand, and contribute to the discussion, and be more. News should never end when the television turns off.