For years I've attended the annual conferences of the Organization of News Ombudsmen, an international group that tries to keep the media honest. But the gathering just held in Montreal was unique. For the first time, ONO's sessions offered simultaneous translation in three languages. How that little upgrade happened offers an illuminating sidelight to a big problem confronting today's revenue-starved media industry: Finding money.

When President Obama addressed the American Society of News Editors convention last month, the real news was what didn't happen. The watchdogs didn't bark.

The arrest of a leading French statesman and politician, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, on charges of sexually assaulting a New York hotel chambermaid became a transatlantic media spectacle when he was photographed - manacled and miserable - being led from a Manhattan lockup. Publishing such pictures is illegal in France, and some commentators there were incensed by the photos of what U.S. reporters call the "perp walk." That's when an accused person, if newsworthy, is deliberately marched to arraignment past the cameras.

...report the world. "We say" helps, but only a little. The real solution is simple: It's called news judgment. Edward Wasserman is Knight professor of journalism ethics at Washington and Lee University.

...brave journalism it's time to stop expecting somebody else to pay for it, and to reach into our own pockets. Edward Wasserman is Knight professor of journalism ethics at Washington and Lee University.

...Getting it first trumps getting it right. Funny, that's something the corrupt old press barons believed too. Edward Wasserman is Knight professor of journalism ethics at Washington and Lee University. He wrote this column for The Miami Herald...