Will newspapers keep their soul?

One way is to maintain the serious news media's postwar tradition of nonpartisan journalism, leaving advocacy to the editorial pages. As they give themselves over to more analysis and commentary, newspapers will have to be more vigilant about being genuinely honest brokers of ideas, opening their news columns to a far broader spectrum of serious opinions and perspectives -- liberal to conservative -- than even the best of them do now. Politicization is the enemy rather than the logical consequence of that process. Newspapers can distinguish themselves from the current undifferentiated cacophony of substantial and frivolous opinion on the Internet -- and best serve their readers -- by insisting that their analysis and commentary conform to the discernible facts. In a society that seems more deeply and reflexively divided along partisan lines, that would be more than a service.

As the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan was fond of saying: "Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not to their own facts."

Simply surviving the current turmoil isn't enough. In 1860, on the eve of Civil War, Americans were -- on a per capita basis -- the world's greatest newspaper readers. The country was hip deep in partisan broadsheets and news weeklies only too happy to encourage their readers to slaughter and despoil one another, and so they did.

That's a thought for the people who run our serious news organizations to keep in mind, because it's increasingly clear that, if your only concern is profiting yourself, you easily can contrive a solution that makes you part of the problem.

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timothy.rutten@latimes.com