Jeff Jarvis, the academic/journalist/blogger/adviser, wrote in The Guardian this week that the article is no longer the centrepiece of news. It's something else. The digital age provides a freer space, devoid of the box-like article artifice.

Jarvis believes that collaboration with the public now is an essential attribute of the journalist. The journalist can become curator, collaborator, organizer in the community.

Articles are either valued luxuries or bi-products of the processes of the digital era, he argues.
It's not that he believes the article should be killed; far from it, he's advocating the article as an expansive, analytical element of the larger media production.

The new annual Gallup poll on institutional trust suggests U.S. media are regaining (albeit slightly) the ground lost.

Its poll of trust in newspapers and television found growth after years of all-time lows. Some 28% said they had a great deal or quite a lot of trust in newspapers and 27% said the same about television.

That number, though, lags considerably behind numbers as recent as 2003.

The biggest gains in approval came from 35- to 49-year-olds. Younger Americans expressed greater trust in television and less trust in newspapers. While Gallup says the new numbers are good indicators, it points to the volatility of young trust as a precursor of possible difficulties.

Newspapers and TV ranked 10th and 11th of the 16 institutions assessed.

In his regular Monday Note, news executive Frederic Filloux turns his attention to what he calls the "lax" standards of correcting mistakes in his native France. In so doing, he also examines the changing nature of corrections and accountability in the digital age.

He laments the attitude in France to not bother correcting, or to append notes to corrections that disparage the complainant. He makes clear he is not innocent in this practice.

But he also looks the new distribution of responsibilities in the digital era. In this era, no one carries the full responsibility of a mistake, he says.

And in an era of free media, too often there is a new attitude: "In the digital cauldron, free is too often associated with a permission to be sloppy," he writes. Having a group of writers or editors responsible for the content is the best way to ensure accountability, he concludes.

Scott Rosenberg, the media critic and co-founder of Salon, writes in the PBS MediaShift Idea Lab that newsrooms have a credibility issue they can address. He notes that about half of all stories contain errors but only about three per cent of them are corrected.

He has some basic prescriptions to restore and redevelop trust:

1. Link out. Let people see what you've researched.
2. Show your work and let it be iterative.
3. Let people help you identify and fix mistakes.

Rosenberg says four problems beset newsrooms in grappling with their shortcomings: tools and workflows aren't up to the task, there is denial and avoidance, readers are seen as adversaries, and the business is obsessed with the business.

How do you think media can more effectively deal with errors?

The recent payments to principals in key American news stories have revived the debate about the ethics of organizations and newsmakers in business deals.

The New York Times has written an overview of the recent episodes of chequebook (or, to spell it as Americans do, checkbook) journalism --- payments to a woman who received text messages from congressman Anthony Weiner in one case, and a woman captive for 18 years in another --- while the Poynter Institute has written a critique of the situation. In both articles there is a certain sense of resignation about the practice.

Organizations indulging in these recent incidents have policies against paying for interviews, but they have asserted their payments were for such things as education, access to home movies, and other matters. In many media, payment for stories and access is common, but the practice isn't all that common among the larger, more traditional media.

What are your views on the subject?

The Yakima Herald-Republic has decided to introduce a registration system to identify those who provide public comments on its website.

"The system we established in 2008 to foster conversations between the newspaper's readers, our website's visitors and ourselves has too often resulted in ugly, nasty or meaningless dialogue," wrote editor Bob Crider.

It has suspended its comments for the time being and will have a new system in place by July. While the news organization recognizes that not demanding registration encourages debate involvement and provides page views, it has concluded that too many are saying things they wouldn't dare if identified.

What do you think?

A long-awaited report released Thursday on the future of media suggests a shift away from citizens to institutions and a serious decline in local reporting in the United States.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) report, written by former Newsweek and U.S. News and World Report journalist Steven Waldman, identifies a serious reduction in local reporting as the number of online news sources increases. It finds this situation dire and worries about the consequences of a weakened watchdog function.

Waldman's report, Information Needs of Communities, does not denigrate the arrival of digital; indeed, it celebrates its opportunities for the flow and exchange of information as never before. But it notes that gaps are emerging as organizations reduce their local expenditures and digital enterprises do not backfill what is lost.

Many recommendations are made to stimulate the environment for enterprising local reporting, including tax measures, regulatory changes and journalism school curriculum improvements.

In my early experience as an ombudsman, some of the most forceful writing I've seen in the field has come from National Public Radio's Alicia Shepard. She tackled recent NPR headaches as a true public representative.

Her term was extended a little to permit NPR more time to find a replacement, but now it's come to an end. Her final column praises the organization for having an ombudsman and for that ombudsman having the freedom necessary to communicate.

She has a handful of closing recommendations, too. Her successor is Edward Schumacher-Matos, formerly the ombudsman at the Miami Herald.