When I talk to journalists, including ones just entering the field, many say the same thing about why they got into the business: “I want to tell stories.”

If that is the case, I can recommend a nice MFA program. But journalism? Journalism is something different entirely.

We are here to serve, not to be storytellers. As a former English major–turned–journalist, I have been guilty of this confusion myself. I came to journalism with romantic notions about narrative and voice and poignant characters. And while those things matter, they’re not the point. Serving is the point.

What does “serve” actually mean? To my mind, it means helping people make sense of the world. It means giving them the information and context they need to make good decisions. It means helping them act constructively to shape their communities, their country, their lives. It means showing up where they are, not where we wish they would be.

I predict that more journalists in 2026 will be asking what it actually means to serve the public. From there, the rest will flow: How do we do this thing called journalism differently in order to truly serve? Really differently, from the ground up. What parts of journalism do we keep, and what should we let go? (And how the hell do we do this when AI will turn our stories into a thousand modular data points?).

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: We are not entitled to be relevant. We have to earn it, every single day. It is not enough to say we hold power to account or we are here to save democracy. That may make us feel good — it may even be true — but it doesn’t resonate with anybody else. On the contrary, countless studies have shown that all these phrases we love — “watchdog,” “speaking truth to power” — are met with cynicism from the public. They view words like that as adversarial and biased. Who are you watching, exactly? And who appointed you to do it? These are fair questions that we’ve been too defensive to answer honestly.

Yes, journalism is under fire and under threat in the U.S. and around the globe. Press freedoms are being eroded. Newsrooms are shrinking. But if we want anyone to care, if we want anyone to fight alongside us to preserve what’s essential, we need to start by being humble enough, curious enough, and brave enough to ask these questions.

And maybe, just maybe, we’ll finally start getting some answers.