In their book, The Elements of Journalism, Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel lay some pretty hefty obligations at the feet of America's journalists. Members of the Fourth Estate, we are told, are obliged to monitor power, seek and verify "the truth," provide citizens with the information they need to exercise their rights and create a public forum, where the criticism and compromise that are so essential to any democracy can take place.All the while, Kovach and Rosenstiel insist, journalists must strive to be "interesting and relevant."

It seems to me that the way reporters and editors can best accomplish this final obligation is by fostering a sense of community through their product. They can monitor power and verify truth all they want, but if their audience has not been encouraged to identify with the power and the truth, journalists will not have met their obligations in a free and democratic society.

To foster community, journalists do not always have to focus specifically on such grandiose notions as "power" and "truth." Communities, after all, are made up of people-some powerful, some not-who all have different ways of discerning and understanding the truths in their lives. A good news product will introduce citizens to one another and challenge readers to understand the "different ways of knowing," so to speak, that are expressed by individuals and groups within their community. It will also compel readers to constantly redefine the boundaries of their communities.

This brings me to the commitment the Justice clearly has to reporting on the arts at Brandeis. I was delighted to discover that each week, the paper devotes an entire pull-out section to the wealth of artistic expression on this campus-music, theater, photography, sculpture, painting and dance. Not only that, but the writing is good-often very good. I was able to learn from Kendra Fortmeyer '08, for example, that the obscenely wealthy Mexican women in Daniela Rossell's photography exhibit at the Kniznick Gallery are "bored out of their tanned, bleached-blond skulls," and that their houses are full of the "desperate possessions of those who long ago lost all sense of what it was to want." Michelle Minkoff '08 made me sorry I had missed the "camaraderie" that was apparently quite evident between and among the four cellists who kicked off this year's classical music series at the Slosberg Recital Hall. I'll be sure not to miss the next performance.

Poetry is another mode of expression the Justice recently touched upon, in the profile of poet-in-residence Franz Wright that was put together by Claire Moses '08 and Shana Lebowitz '10. The feature alluded to some of Wright's poems, but it was really about the man-how he works, what inspires him, and how he feels about his art. In this respect, the piece was similar to the profile of my American Studies colleague, Prof. Brian Donahue, that was written by Rachel Pfeffer '08 and printed the week before. Both profiles provided me with a very personal window (a llama, Brian?) into the lives and motivations of two men who contribute to the unique intellectual identity of this community I recently joined.

I encourage the editors at the Justice to continue with these profiles of faculty and to look beyond the professoriate to administrators, staff and students. Each of us brings to this community elements of the other communities that have shaped us-ethnic communities, racial communities, political communities, religious communities.

And speaking of religion, it strikes me that a newspaper at "a nonsectarian university under the sponsorship of the American Jewish community" probably ought to have much to say about the issue of faith on campus-starting, perhaps, with an exploration of what that phrase actually means to the people who live and work in this community.

The Justice is not alone in the short shrift it has given to religion. Until very recently, mainstream American journalists were quite loath to recognize that as Western democracies go, the United States is a pretty gosh-darned religious nation. Even after the election of 2004 forced members of the media to stand up and take notice, the coverage of religion in America has seemed, at times, to border on pandering. And so I issue a challenge to the reporters and editors at the Justice: Do better than some of the people you aspire to be.

The ombudsman serves as the readers' representative, writing a regular column evaluating the newspaper's journalistic performance. Prof. Maura Farrelly (AMST), the director of the journalism program and a former brodcast reporter for Voice of America, can be reached at farrelly@brandeis.edu.