What readers want vs. what they need

[Commentary] Shouldn't journalists just find out what people want and give it to them? That seems to be what Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google, advises. Mind you, his company has grown fat from hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising sold against content it doesn't pay for and does nothing to create. Well, fine. But for journalists the hitch has always been that news, if done honestly, is routinely unwelcome and, more to the point, that it isn't just another consumer product. It's a kind of civic good. Sure, it must be bought, but if success were measured solely by marketability journalists could safely ignore vast areas of coverage that help keep leaders honest and the public conscious of significant realities. Hence, the paradox: If all you do is give the public what it thinks it wants, you aren't doing your job. But if you ignore those wishes, you won't have a job. Prof Wasserman has long argued that news is best understood not as a consumer product, but as a professional service. People buy a paper or go to website not to consume a good, but to renew a relationship with an informant they trust. That's not to say readers don't want to be amused or don't like reading the comics and hearing about celebrity bust-ups or money-saving recipes. And they aren't passive receptacles: They'll make vigorous use of new media feedback channels to dispute, correct, redirect and enrich the news they get. But what this suggests is that ultimately, people look to journalists for a special service -- keeping them on top of what they need to know. They can't say exactly what that is, any more than journalists know in the morning what they'll report that day. But they trust the news source to tell them.