"For consumers of news and searchers of information, these are heady times," writes Steve Outing. "Most of us are adding new news sources to our information diet all the time." However, "there's a huge downside to this abundance: How as consumers do we know if we can trust what we read? How do we know if it's balanced, or serving someone's narrow agenda?" One new option is NewsTrust, "a social network model which uses the intellect of the masses to rate all manner of news content and news sources. ...

Based on the survey results of 300 public relations firms around the world, The Holmes Report estimates that the industry is "generating at least $7 billion in fee income annually, employing in excess of 50,000 people, and growing by at least 8.5 percent a year." The newsletter notes that 1,500 firms did not respond to the survey, which makes their estimate a "best guess." "The way in which most large communications holding companies have chosen to interpret Sarbanes-Oxley regulations makes it almost