While the electronic news media higher ups work on the perplexing issue of how to continue to make money in an era of massive technological change, the print folks have major issues of a different sort. How will they reclaim their credibility following the year of Jason Blair?

The Poynter Institute, a journalism training organization based in Florida, took on that issue with a conference of leading journalists and journalism educators. They called the meeting Journalism Without Scandal. Sound planning? Or wishful thinking?

“The assault on our journalistic values this past year prompted headshaking and tongue wagging in many newsrooms,” says the opening paragraph of Poynter’s introduction to coverage of the conference. “With lapses in leadership and ethics occurring month after month in a number of newsrooms, including the venerable New York Times, journalists wondered what was going on. More importantly, they wanted to understand why, and how it affected them.”

The result of this three days of senior journalist conferring is a set of essays penned by the conference participants. Tim Franklin, editor of the Orlando Sentinel, offers the opening shot in the long list of essays, with a piece called Coming Clean: Demystifying Journalism. Whether the piece was intentionally positioned as the lead essay or just wound up there by chance is unknown. But it’s interesting since it suggests that news media arrogance could be at the heart of print journalism’s slide down the ethical tubes.

 “As journalists, we rightly believe that governments and institutions owe their citizens and shareholders explanations about what they're doing and why they're doing it. We implore them to come clean. We cajole them to be open with us. We question their motives when they hide information,” Franklin says. “So, what do newspapers do when their own work is called into question? Do they explain what they did, why they did it, and how mistakes happened? What are the answers to those questions? Well, let's just say we can and must do better. Our mantra should be: Transparency builds trust."

Franklin’s recommendations include newspapers adding ombudsman positions, public editors preparing weekly columns about newsroom operations and a general cleansing of the journalist’s ethical spirit.

“We must renew our commitments to ethical, accurate, and truthful journalism. But our credibility also hinges on opening the shades to our own operations and responding to our customers who are looking in the windows,” Franklin said. “Readers should know where information in our stories came from. In rare cases when we can’t reveal our sources, we should be as specific as possible about who they are, their motives, and why they can't be identified.”

Much of the journalists discussions (and essays) focused on the issue of “transparency” as the method of choice for regaining print journalism’s credibility. But the meaning of “transparency” wasn’t exactly common among all the participants and essayists.

 “One antidote to such poison, according to a group of editors gathered at the ‘Journalism Without Scandal’ conference, is a virtue called "transparency," wrote Poynter Senior Scholar Roy Peter Clark. In other words, newspapers would be better off if readers had a clearer understanding of how journalists think and work. But a number of descriptions of a transparent press had a one-way mirror feel to them: We editors will explain to you readers what we think you should know about us. They called to mind the words of the great slapstick sage Soupy Sales: ‘People in glass houses shouldn't invite Sophia Loren over for the weekend.’”

“The decline of newspaper readership over the last 30 years can be traced to many complex factors, including social and technological changes over which journalists have little influence and control,” Clark offered. “That leaves many things that editors can do. They can improve their level of public service and customer service. Without sacrificing their independence, they can open up their news organizations for inspection. They could pay more attention to how readers think the news report could be better.

“Such measures might make a pipe dream start to look real and get us closer to a transparent, accessible, accountable press,” he said.

Poynter’s Journalism Without Scandal essay series is recommended reading for anyone interested in newspaper reporting, but especially for those work directly with journalists on a daily or even occasional basis.