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Marty Baron, center, with U. of Navarra faculty and students. Photo by Manuel Castells Marty Baron, editor of the Washington Post, came to speak at University of Navarra events in Madrid and Pamplona last week. Baron's message made me proud to be an American and a journalist. The whole world looks to the U.S. for leadership. Here is an excerpt from his speech in Madrid. " At the center of our mission is journalism that holds powerful institutions and individuals accountable . We have an obligation to speak truth to power. And the powerful in our world should never be allowed to suppress it. For all the challenges we face in the media today, this is the greatest. It is why we as journalists must stay faithful to our central purpose. Someone must still tell things as they really are. No government power, no powerful institution, and no powerful individual should have the right to stop us . And we in the press should not stop ourselves because of fear or self-censorship. These a...

From GDJ's Clipart, Openclipart.org Lately I have been reading a lot about a new way of valuing media that would benefit entrepreneurial journalism ventures, which nearly always lack capital to launch and sustain themselves. Sociologists and economists have been writing about it for years -- social capital -- and I am embarrassed to say that I have just started learning about it. Social capital is a value that media entrepreneurs possess through their ethnic, social, professional, and business networks . It is also a value that they create through their work's impact on society . Below I will show how three entrepreneurs are making it work, in France , Holland , and Spain . Versi�n en espa�ol Hard to value Investors, the public, and the media entrepreneurs themselves have tended to undervalue their work because it is hard to place a value on their social capital. By contrast, it is easy to value a publication through the advertising and subscription revenue it generates and t...