About CCJ

The Committee of Concerned Journalists is a consortium of journalists, publishers, owners and academics worried about the future of the profession.

To secure journalism's future, the group believes that journalists from all media, geography, rank and generation must be clear about what sets our profession apart from other endeavors. To accomplish this, the group is creating a national conversation among journalists about principles.

Three Goals

1. To clarify and renew journalists' faith in the core principles and function of journalism.
   
   
2. To create a better understanding of those principles by the public.
   
   
3. To engage and inform ownership and management of these principles and their financial as well as social value.

How Do We Accomplish Them?

To initiate a conversation about standards, the group first issued a statement of concern [1], created a network of professionals nationwide [2], held twenty-one forums [3], and conducted surveys [4] and content studies to identify the core principles [5] journalists share. These were then distilled in 2001 into a book, "The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect" [6] (Updated and Revised in April 2007). In turn, these ideas are available to news people through our Traveling Curriculum [7] of workshops. The work continues through further research, reporting, writing and discussion.