American journalism has suffered from many ailments at many different times, but every opinion on what ails it past, present and future is just an opinion, not science: just a proposition that cannot be proved, only found by any reader to be more or less persuasive.

The late Post columnist Michael Kelly often reminded my radio audience that journalism was a craft, not a profession. No licensing agency acted to credential “journalists.” You take up the craft, practice it, got better at it (or not), flourish (or not). There aren’t any rules that bind, nor oaths or codes to take or break: just a craftsman’s pride in doing good work, occasionally recognized in ways that mattered by fellow craftspeople.

I have been part of this guild since 1989, in print, over the radio for Salem Media and on television, both for PBS and now for NBC. I’ve conducted more than 10,000 interviews and moderated hundreds of non-broadcast conversations.

My most recent interview of some note and much fun was with Henry Winkler, loved by those 50 and older for his “Happy Days” role as “The Fonz,” by millennials for “Arrested Development’s” Barry Zuckerkorn and now the co-author along with Lin Oliver of the Hank Zipzer series of young adult and children’s novels about a dyslexic Manhattan boy, based on Winkler’s own life.