Journalism is not and will never become redundant. There will always be a need for edited news reports, and those reports are best produced using journalistic principles, some of which I have described in this discussion: objectivity, definition by language, the professional news values, and the benefits of diversity.
   Democratic society cannot do without journalism, and journalism is also of great importance to the economy by which it is sometimes so threatened. The struggle between economy and culture (of which journalism is a part) will go on--for should one of them win, both will die.
   "At the end of the 20th century, journalism must once again seek its place in a changing society." (Bardoel 1996: 299) All times are times of change. And still so little changes. McGrew asks if we are possibly moving towards the first truly global civilization (1992: 63). I would say so. However, I am not so sure that it is an entirely new era. The Global Village might not be around the corner, but we do see how technology is moving us backwards through the ages, to a time when it was not too difficult to contact everyone, when people knew all about their neighbours-for good and for bad-and when it was easy for someone powerful to do have evil things done. The stories and the flickering light in our midst are all but the same as they always have been.