I have been forced to think about the role of the news media in the governance reform agenda a lot in the last few weeks. First, CommGAP had the workshop at Harvard. And last week, we had a brown bag seminar here at the World Bank (organized by our public sector reform colleagues) on the media as an institution of accountability. I spoke at both events. These were very important moments and one could say a lot about each one, but the one thing that has stayed with me is the extent to which most colleagues working in international development think of support for the media as little more than training journalists.