Journalism with­out effect does not deserve the spe­cial place in democ­racy that it tries to claim.

But rather than the head­lines reflect­ing the most impor­tant events, per­haps they should reflect the most per­ni­cious mis­con­cep­tions. Good jour­nal­ists already have some sense of this, and every so often we learn of an alarm­ing gap in pub­lic knowledge.

Jonathan Stray’s lat­est mas­ter­piece. As he notes, jour­nal­ism must be about improv­ing the day-to-day func­tion­ing of a society.