Journalists believe that they carry the fate of the world on their shoulders and walk around with stooped gravity debating the products of their institutions of learning. If they cut through the pretensions, they will realize that they are simply story tellers, members of an ancient craft. It does not matter whether the story is a feature told in 1 000 words and pictures of in a headline of three words. South African journalists have a major story to tell, that of the painful transition from apartheid to democracy, but very few of them are telling it well. Watch the faces of South Africans when they read the local newspapers: when they read stories that have a profound impact on their lives, stories about the interim constitution, about the future of the country, their eyes glaze over. Often they don't understand what is happening and sometimes they don't care. It is not their fault: there is something seriously wrong with our story telling.