Good journalism stories have clear leads, a point of view, and publishers have the courage to defend the results.

There is very little good journalism going on today, which may be why the profession's reputation is shot. In today's class we have two examples of this to show you.

Exhibit A is Spectrum Wars, a long National Journal feature proudly sent to the Interesting People by its author, Drew Clark of their Technology Daily.

It's a solid, workmanlike overview of efforts to free-up spectrum going back over a decade. But it fails to put across any point of view, other than repeating that broadcasters want to keep their frequencies, including those given for HDTV.

It refuses to answer key questions:

1. Should frequencies be sold or made part of the commons?
   
2. Should we be broadcasting or data-casting?
   

In fact, it doesn't even effectively ask them.

Why is this? Any why all the complex chapter-and-verse over the issue rather than a straightforward statement like, "efforts to use re-use spectrum for data are being thwarted by broadcasters," which happens to be a conclusion easily drawn from Clark's facts.

Instead he goes with a "scene-setter" lede, a viewing of HDTV at the recent CES. He's afraid to say what the facts tell him, and thus the impact of the piece is lost. We're left with the details, and no better off than we were before.

Exhibit B is an AP story on e-mail deliveries being threatened by spam controls.

The headline is nonsense, as the story makes clear. The story, by Anick Jesdanun, focuses on Verizon's decision to block all e-mail from Europe, even personal e-mail, claiming it is a spam control measure. (In fact, most spam traffic is from the U.S. to Europe, not the other way around.)

The headline is pure Verizon spin. Verizon made a conscious choice to blacklist an entire continent for a problem caused by its own Cluelessness. (It doesn't know how to deal with spam, and many Verizon broadband users have had their machines hijacked by spam bots.)

Why is the spin repeated? Is the AP afraid that Verizon will sue it if it states the simple truth? Is the National Journal afraid broadcasters and spectrum speculators will sue them if they put things clearly?

Readers must come to a blog to get any understanding.

That should not be necessary.

No wonder the media's credibility is shot.