I've been doing this work for so long now that's it's hard to imagine being in a place and not working at the paper, even harder to imagine not seeing it and reading it every day.

After so many years being so close to the process and its product, I get a strange comfort from daily headlines printed on a white page. Even when their news is bad, I feel better that at least I know the worst and can hope for better. As an editor I also have the advantage of knowing first-hand the motives and methods of those who gather and deliver this information.

I know we mean well and care about the people and institutions we write about. I know we don't do it simply to sell newspapers or to frighten, scandalize or shock anyone. We do it because we feel we are performing a service. The effort is rewarding.

Folks don't always see us quite that way.

I shared some of these feelings this past week with friends from the Golden K Kiwanis Club. I told the group that lately I sometimes worry that the newspaper's place in its community is threatened from all sides, with long-held tenets of journalism facing challenges faster than in previous eras.There is growing mistrust of media as its various motives and methods occasionally become questionable.

I worry because newspapers traditionally have held close the principles of fairness, openness and truthfulness. Any compromise of those principles would be a sad thing and one that could undermine our common good.

With the advent of 24-hour cable news and the Internet with its blogosphere of writers and reporters of every stripe, it can be a minefield out there when trying to precisely discern fact from fiction or hearsay. Who and what can you believe, what can you "take to the bank?"

It's definitely a new world, one requiring a lot of new thinking. Staying up with and ahead of such times can put editors peering down on that infamous "slippery slope." This is how the newspaper's role in the community could become more important as a society rife with new media works to find level ground.

The Daily Reflector has been working for 125 years on developing and maintaining its credibility as an information provider. As the Internet's importance as a news source continues to expand, as it certainly will, this task becomes more difficult. The pressure to report news faster and faster puts credibility at stake.

When you can instantly correct a mistake, the tendency to be careless can grow. As our reporters and editors move more into this realm we can't leave behind the more deliberate pace of the traditional daily newspaper — report and research, write, edit. Edit again and maybe even again — and if you're still not satisfied, hold the story until you know its facts are correct, it's been written with the least amount of bias and it answers all appropriate questions

That order itself is tall enough. Doing that at the speed of today's media world is a challenge going forward. Hang on for the ride.

Al Clark is executive editor of The Daily Reflector. Tell him what you think at 252-329-9560 or at aclark@coxnc.com.