From news editor Daniel Silliman: It’s hard to measure everyday faithfulness. In my spiritual life, family life, and work life, I find myself frequently asking, Am I doing this right? and Am I paying attention to the right things to know if I’m doing it right?

I was thinking about how challenging this is for journalists recently as I read America’s Last Great Newspaper War. Author Mike Jaccarino recounts his experience reporting for the New York Daily News amid the tabloid’s bitter battle with its rival, the New York Post. Everything he did was guided by the goal of "beating" the Post. The results are terrible—for him, for the people he’s writing about, for the people he’s supposedly writing for, and for journalism itself. As a reader, you keep hoping someone will break in and stop everything and ask, How does any of this serve the reader? How does this make your city a better place to live? How is this good journalism?

Bad metrics are easier to come by than good ones, though. For journalists and really everyone, it requires spiritual sensitivity and discipline to pay attention to the right things.