Journalism lost a pioneer last week with the death of Walter J. "Buzz" Storey. The former editor of the Herald-Standard in Uniontown had spent 61 years as a reporter and editor, but what is perhaps more significant are the countless contributions Buzz made to the broader institution of journalism. Hundreds of reporters and editors (myself included) who worked with him learned much more than basic journalism skills. We learned to appreciate what drove Buzz: The realization that the individual is the common denominator to the thousands of intertwined stories that create our reality.

		Steve Urbanski is a Post-Gazette page design editor (surbanski@post-gazette.com).

Today's journalists still talk to people, and they report what is being said. But consider this: Most journalists are at best abstract participants within the communities they live. Especially when beginning their careers, journalists tend to move into a new community, learn a set of basic functions for covering schools, government, police or sports and then look for stories. Once they get experience, they move on to higher-paying positions within other, largely unfamiliar communities.

Buzz was born in Fayette County, and, aside from a stint in World War II, he lived there his entire life. He recognized the numerous unseen historical, political, religious and social forces that collectively create the entity we label as news.

Buzz's style was not to cover the hot story of the day just because everyone else was covering it. He took care to show how those stories affected people and the larger dynamic of community.

Many of the lessons Buzz taught obviously concerned news. Verification -- a notion that has become less important in the scoop-everyone-or-die 24-hour news cycle -- was a requirement for every reporter. Don't take one person's word, he said. When you get four or five people saying the same thing, then you have a story.

Often his simplest advice packed the most clout. In 1981 when I was promoted to night editor of the Herald-Standard, I immediately sought Buzz's input. At 24, I felt too young to be supervising reporters and photographers who were, in many cases, older than I. "You're in this position because the paper has faith in you," Buzz said. "Always remember: When someone does something wrong, take them aside and tell them quietly. But when they do something right, stand on top of your desk and yell it so the whole newsroom can hear you." Such simple advice, but at its core is, once again, the individual. Strong individuals make up strong communities. And the potential of strong communities is limitless.

We are living in an era that needs more journalists like Buzz Storey. Trust in the media is declining at an alarming rate. In 1999, according to Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel's "The Elements of Journalism," just 21 percent of Americans thought the press cared about people. This was down from 41 percent in 1985. Only 58 percent respected the press's watchdog role, a drop from 67 percent in 1985. And, perhaps most startling, only 45 percent -- fewer than half of those polled -- thought the press protected democracy. In 1985 that figure had been 55 percent.

Is journalism forgetting the individual and concentrating more on bottom-line profit? As old-school, shoe-leather reporters like Buzz Storey die, is respect for the guiding principles of the public trust, truth and objectivity beginning to wane?

In 1920, journalism philosopher Walter Lippmann interchangeably used the words truth and news in his book "Liberty and the News." A journalist's job, he wrote, was to sift through the "medley of facts, propaganda, rumor, suspicion, clues, hopes and fears" that reaches the newspaper office each day. This task, he said, "is one of the truly sacred and priestly offices in a democracy." Lippmann said journalists can never be objective but the reporting methods they use must be objective.

Just two years later, Lippmann's opinion changed drastically. In his celebrated work "Public Opinion," he wrote: "News and truth are not the same thing. ... The function of news is to signalize an event. ... The function of truth is to bring to light the hidden facts, to set them into relation with each other, and make a picture of reality upon which men can act."

Lippmann was a grand writer and a perplexing philosopher. Though his words attempted to separate news from the more comprehensive idea of philosophical truth, Storey dedicated his career to truthfulness, as in not telling a lie. The difference between truthfulness and truth is much more than a suffix. It is attempting to locate human interaction at the center of day-to-day journalism, a process that is simple in theory but far more challenging in practice.