The always-excellent State of the News Media report was released today: "Does the industry have a vision that is bold enough, and does it have leaders whom journalists and audiences will follow?"

News is not a corporate product. It was not invented in a laboratory or an R&D department. It evolved out of popular sentiment, out of political movement and out of a human instinct for knowledge and awareness. And its greatest leaps forward came from risk-takers who were often discounted because their vision broke with convention, and because their tastes ran in sometimes contradictory directions, the likes of Ted Turner, or Joseph Pulitzer, or Adolph Ochs.