At its heart, journalism is an empirical profession and it is the journalist’s job to discover and document the truth. This mission has always been beset by impediments, but in the post-internet age new challenges have emerged that are vast and complex in their scale. From online echo-chambers to partisan groupthink, and business models that incentivise sensationalism and reward misinformation, the journalist must grapple with assaults on their telos from all directions. I will discuss how a media business can navigate these complex challenges in the 21st century, and how an individual journalist can reconcile difficult trade-offs and preserve their mission, drawing on my experience of having founded and edited Quillette over the past seven years.