How do YOU define journalism?

I came across this review of Vice, HBO's edgy news show, in the San Francisco Chronicle today. These two paragraphs caught my eye:

"Traditional journalists and academics may debate the validity of "Vice's" approach to storytelling: Reportorial distance used to be seen as crucial to being able to fully report the facts on all sides of a story without bias. 

"But does reportorial distance also keep traditional journalists from either getting stories that go unreported or from getting to the real heart of the stories that do get reported? There's no question that the image of that bodiless head instantly and indelibly communicates the horror of daily life in Afghanistan, perhaps better than more conservatively selected images we're likely to see on broadcast or cable news shows.

It occurred to me that, based on the above, I am neither a traditional journalist nor an academic.  And hooray for that.  But I am always amused when folks who don't do what I do make assumptions about what it is that I do do.

Anyway, what do you think?  Does this whole business of "reportorial distance" help or hinder the process of journalism?  bk