I’m a graduate of the best university journalism program in the United States: Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.

Okay, so I can’t really prove that it’s the “best” as that is a subjective term. But it you ask several of the Northwestern graduates now working at America.gov, they will be more than happy to tell you about how the Illinois school prepared them for careers in journalism. Which is why it pains me a bit to admit that my new favorite journalism professor comes from Northwestern’s rival, the University of Missouri.

I happened to sit in on a “training the trainers” class in Pristina, Kosovo in which Kent Collins was visiting and teaching media professionals how to train their newer colleagues on reporting practices in a democratic society.

As is often the case these days, the discussion delved into old media versus new media and how journalism practices have changed. Not too long ago I sat in a Northwestern classroom learning about the “inverted pyramid” and in Kosovo, I listened to Collins explain that in the Internet age, stories that pull out specific anecdotes up top often are best.

But regardless of the tools or styles, some elements of journalism always ring true. Collins passed out a sheet listing nine basic principles of journalism, identified by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel in their book “The Elements of Journalism.” Most of the elements are what you would expect – journalists’ first obligation is to the truth is the first tenet- but some are more surprising. For example, element number nine is “practitioners have an obligation to exercise their personal conscience.”

What do you consider to be an element of journalism?