What is a journalist's job?

Eating breakfast and mentally preparing for the CAJ workshop today, I am struck by the incredible importance of this fundamental question.
On the plane to Winnipeg I read The Elements of Journalism, a must read book. It was written out of work done by a group called the Committee of Concerned Journalists, 20 journalists, academics and editors who were worried about the state of journalism in America.
The book takes on some of these very difficult questions that are rarely asked without the intellectual trappings of acamdemia, but rather from a multitude of perspectives: journalist, citizen, academic, editor and so on.
More later.