Stewardship in Media

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By Sammi Davis

Edited by Fernando Aguilar

I’m not going to lie, I had to look up what stewardship meant. But, in doing so, I found a definition and article that helped inspire this post.

Stewardship is not a word you hear a lot in day-to-day conversations. However, I think it’s an important idea for leaders to keep in mind. If you look at what the word really means, it implies a relationship and an understanding. The core idea is that we don’t really own what we think we own – we are merely managers, or stewards, of these things. And, as a steward, we are accountable to someone else for how we manage that which has been entrusted to us. –Mark Miller “Leadership is Stewardship”

For people in media, this has a special meaning. We are accountable to our audience, and in news especially, we have a responsibility to the public. Journalists have to keep in mind the relationship they have with their audience, as well as the relationship they have with advertisers/ producers/ directors/ editors/ subjects of stories/ etc. By this definition of stewardship, journalists don’t own the news—no matter how much time we might spent writing or editing it, crafting it into an interesting and digestible story—we only manage the news. And because the media is a public service, we are accountable to everyone for every aspect of our stories. So it’s imperative for journalists to be good stewards of news, so that we tell important and interesting stories, and do so responsibly.