When I was about 11 years old, I think I first absorbed the idea that journalism really matters.

I had been around newspapers for a while, but delivering the Durango (Colo.) Herald every afternoon, in the smaller outlying town in which we lived, brought me face-to-face with the crystallizing experiences of, among other events, Watergate, the abduction of Patty Hearst and the fall of Saigon.

I remember how important that afternoon read was to folks that were waiting for the Herald on their back porch, or on the bar stool at the Hollywood, or in the corner drug store.

I guess I never got over that idea of importance. I hope I never do.

Tom Johnson, who served as chairman and chief executive officer of CNN News Group, publisher and CEO of the Los Angeles Times and deputy press secretary to President Lyndon Johnson, made the same point in an interview published in Best Practices: The Art of Leadership in News Organizations, a booklet edited by Shelby Coffey III.

 “Journalism really matters. There is a major public service side to what we do. We often shine the spotlight in the darkest corners of the world. We uncover many of the people’s plights, as well as some of the serious problems of government.”

Today, such talk sounds self-serving, preservationist and like we are galloping out on our high horse.

Changing the gravity?

After all — thanks to blogs, the Internet and the rise of the citizen journalists — it is no longer necessary to have access to millions of dollars’ worth of “big iron” to get the word out anymore. But does that change the gravity of a paper’s mission?

“I think newspapers play not only a vital role, they hold a sacred role in democratic society,” says Steve Hensen, the newly-minted president of the Colorado Press Association and managing editor of The Pueblo (Colo.) Chieftain in his initial column in Colorado Editor.

“I fear that we’re not talking enough about the essence of what we do. We spend so much time talking about blogging and video and audio that we aren’t talking enough about content.

“We all know the tough times our industry has been facing and will continue to face. Drops in circulation and ad linage has forced us to cut the physical size of our newspaper, cut our staffs and reinvent ourselves to produce both printed and online newspapers. These are grim times to be sure,” Henson says.

Time now to sharpen our sword.

Make it irrelevant

“We must take on and make irrelevant the 25-year-old sitting in his pajamas in his home, watching the city council on cable access channel, and then writing a blog. We are the experts, we are the ones that have been trained to provide the news,” Henson says.

As you move around this industry, you hear about it all the time. We need to reinvent ourselves. We need to move forward without forgetting the values that set us apart.

“For journalists, it’s not the pay,” noted former New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. in the Best Practices booklet.

“It’s the sense that you’re making a difference, that you have the ability to affect society, that you are helping democracy survive, which is not just words to say. It is true. It goes back to this: Enhance society.”

But, of course, it is not the same world that I faced as an 11-year-old paperboy or even the same industry of five or 10 years ago.

“We will have to rethink the way we do everything,” observes Henson.

“Then that’s what we’ll have to do. We must. What we do is vital. It is sacred.”

The idea still holds. Journalism matters.