Journalism is not what it used to be.

But then, what is?

Yet the changes happening to American journalism — newspapers in particular — have got some people panicked in sort of a chicken-little-the-sky-is-falling thing.

Try this one on.

In Saturday's Los Angeles Times,one of the biggest stories on the front page had the article starting somewhere in the middle (the lede and first few grafs were missing). Both my sons, neither of whom are avid newspaper readers — not of the front page, anyway — pointed out to me the oddity of what they were seeing. And I smiled.

I was glad they noticed. I told them it's a sign that somebody wasn't paying attention (I suggested heads would roll, but knew inside that probably wouldn't be the case.)

Should I have taken that moment to point this huge error out as a harbinger of a much bigger problem — evidence that the big ship is finally going down?

Look at it! AUGH! Right there in front of us!

Or one might put it in perspective.

Journalism, someone other than Ben Bradlee said, is the first draft of history. (He picked up on it and repeated it famously.)

First drafts are rough. I know. I've been grading stacks of them this semester.

Newspaper journalism, television journalism, radio journalism, blogs, Webzines — if they have any sense of inquiry about them, any desire to be timely, are bound to run into problems (layoffs of copy-editors notwithstanding).

So somebody in the layout area of the Times newsroom had a bad night Friday. Asleep at the switch? Sent the wrong file to the press room?

Nobody 'fessed up in Sunday's paper. I suspect the newsroom got some mail on this over the weekend. Come Monday morning when the non-weekend shift comes in there'll be some pointed dialogue.

But I suggest that the bigger deal in all this is that this newspaper hit the driveways and news-stands Saturday despite its little problem.

In so doing, this newspaper — the big package — did what it's supposed to do. It informed readers in Los Angeles and surrounding regions (like mine) about our world. It got people thinking. Hopefully it got people praying — for Christians are called to be watchful as well as intercessory.

And tomorrow's another deadline.

Will journalists get it right? Probably. And they'll probably run into some snags.

But journalism, bigger than any one front page on a Saturday, will roll forward — or so we should hope in this era of diminishing democracies.

Carpe diem.