It’s hard to feel sorry for those big news organizations that have utterly failed to pay enough attention to the top story of a generation. It’s one thing to bury the lede. It’s another to allow it to bury your industry. But we can’t treat the news like just any other business. It’s too important. Here my take on why news is different.

+ For more evidence of why news matters, load up your reading queue courtesy of these links to the winning stories recognized by the 2015 Online Journalism Awards.