(Creative Commons licensed - paullyoung)

As of last week, with the unfurling of a banner and the boom of a confetti canon, USC's Annenberg School for Communication changed its name - if only ever so slightly.

While it's a minor moniker change - to the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism - it means a lot to me.

In the simplest terms, it signifies that journalism still matters. In fact, it matters a lot.

Maybe it matters more than ever.

Again and again, I keep hearing that this is an incredibly exciting time to be a journalist - and I'm starting to believe it. That's not to say I don't know how equally scary and murky it is. In just the short time I've been a working reporter - that is, before I decided to give up a paycheck and my cushy arts and entertainment beat for grad school - everything began to shift in big, major, game-changing ways.

When I started my first daily newspaper job in 2001, there wasn't MySpace, YouTube, Flickr, Facebook or Twitter. It seems like a lifetime ago but when I was an undergrad at the turn of the new millennium, I was stumbling through basic HTML and things like LiveJournal seemed so weird to me; why would you put your private thoughts out there for everyone to see?

Oh, the times they be a changin'.

Sure, newsrooms have seen technological advances before. But this time grey-haired reporters with a bottle of whiskey in their bottom drawer have a lot more to grumble about than the transition from a typewriter to a computer, from fax machines to e-mail, from chemical film to digital memory cards.

Those were simply shifts in the tools used to help put out a print newspaper, but the power to publish remained within the newsroom. The one-to-many model of news dissemination was unaffected. The advertisement department...well, journalists didn't need to or want to think about advertising.

We really should have seen it coming, seen the writing on the World Wide Web. We didn't.

So fast forward less than 10 years: ad revenue is in its "worst slump since the Great Depression;" newsrooms are scrambling, blindly, to try and compete in an online world they don't really understand; and, perhaps the strangest of all, any ol' Joe Blow with a broadband connection can publish his version of what happened at last night's city council meeting. And - gasp! - people are reading it. 

The future is now, as a friend of mine always likes to joke, and newsrooms aren't ever going back to the way it was. Ever.

This is a time of upheaval - a revolution, many argue - of the entire journalism philosophy and newsroom culture, which means journalists (from the old guard to my classmates) not only have to redefine their role but really rip apart what it means to be a journalist and, perhaps alter some of the ideals they've held so sacred.

These ideals I'm talking about are threefold:

• Really engage and interact with the reader.
It's no secret reporters consider the Letters to the Editor proof that we're smarter than our readers. It's a holier than thou attitude we, the gatekeepers, sometimes unconsciously adopt.
But we aren't the gatekeepers anymore, so if we aren't actively part of the conversation - through Facebook, Twitter, the Next Big Thing - pretty soon we'll be out of the conversation altogether.

• Be more concerned about transparency rather than objectivity.
This seems like the buzz phrase right now, but it has legitimacy. Because of social networking sites, and just the Internet in general, the kind of music journalists listen to, our favorite movies, where we grocery shop, the vacations we take are all out there and can comment about the kind of people we are. Be open about that and then continue to be the best damn journalist you can.

• And lastly, here's the real doozy - have some business sense.
When Tom Rosenstiel, director for the nonprofit Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism, was here last month, I asked him if it was crossing the line for the newsroom to be more involved with advertising and marketing?

However, the ideals I'm not - and never will - talk about altering are at the very core of journalism. There is no test, no certification that makes you an ordained journalist. But there is a code of ethics that separates the hobbyist blogger from a real reporter.

This is where journalists cannot lose a foothold. This is where we have to make our stand on the Web. Where, said Rosenstiel, we still matter as:
• The authenticator
• The sense-maker   
• The watchdog
• The forum leader
• The role model
• The smart aggregator

"The revolution," he added, "will not be organized."

Which means this is the time to make mistakes, to throw out some of the old rules, to accept that things won't go back to the way they were and that being a journalist right now is scary and murky - and very exciting.

Kim Nowacki worked for the past six years as the lead arts and entertainment writer for a daily newspaper in Washington state before beginning grad school at USC's Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism. Her focus is online journalism and new media -- and how they can help save ink on paper.