The bond between newspapers and their readers - a bond woven from strands of trust, credibility, familiarity, community and thousands of other threads - continues to fray.

Frankly, some of the reasons for that can be blamed on those of us in the media. We have placed our credibility at risk in a series of high-profile embarrassments. The most recent of those is the CBS News flap over memos that reportedly discussed President Bush's service in the National Guard. CBS, of course, later said that it could not vouch for the authenticity of the memos. It was a nontraditional media source - Internet Web logs, "blogs," for short - that first questioned the memos.

In the wake of that CBS incident, a nationwide coalition of newspapers, including the Missoulian, went to the Internet to ask readers for their thoughts about media credibility - in particular, in matters of political coverage. In all, 39 newspapers e-mailed a series of questions to readers who had volunteered to be part of an Internet readers' group. More than 2.500 readers nationally responded. (For information on how to join the Readers Interactive Panel at the Missoulian, check out this site: www.missoulian.com/readers/talkback.php.)

You can read the results of the national survey, led by the Associated Press Managing Editors' National Credibility Roundtables Project, on-line at the Missoulian's Web site. (Use this Web address to access the report: www.missoulian.com/specials/apme.) I would have preferred to run the report in the pages of the Missoulian, but we won't have space, especially with the Nov. 2 election drawing near. Since I wanted you to be able to see the report before the election, posting it on our Web site was the next-best option.

As reported by Ryan Pitts and Ken Sands of the Spokane Spokesman-Review - the lead writers for the national project - the survey had some good news for those of us in the media: Some readers said that journalists are only human, and some errors were to be expected. (That's why it's important that newspapers and other media outlets are willing to good-naturedly correct their mistakes.) And, in general, local media outlets like the Missoulian are ranked as being more credible than national news outlets.

That's pretty much the end of the good news. Many more readers said that we have plenty of work ahead of us to try to win back the public trust. Some readers said the only way to do that was to wipe the slate clean: Fire all of us and start from scratch.

Other readers thought we needed to get back to basics: Cut way down on the use of anonymous sources. Be skeptical, but not hostile. Take time to verify. Understand what readers mean when they say they want "balance" in their coverage - but, as the series makes plain, even that notion of "balance" can be a tricky thing.

Another interesting finding from the survey: In terms of the presidential race, readers said they received their news from a wide variety of sources - network TV news, cable news, national publications, their hometown newspapers. But none of that news coverage, they said, made much of a difference on their decision on which candidate to back.

If any of this makes you curious about the full report, check it out at our Web site. The address again: http://www.missoulian.com/specials.apme.

Thanks for the letters.
We shattered our single-month record for publishing letters to the editor on Friday - with more than a week to go in the month. I think our previous record for letters published in a month was 220; by the time October is over, we'll have published close to 300.

We think this is wonderful. As I've noted in the past, other newspapers sometimes struggle to solicit letters to the editor. This rarely has been an issue in western Montana. It's great that our readers find value in sharing their opinions with the newspaper. As a result, the letters page becomes a true community forum, the place you go to discuss the issues of the day with your neighbors or maybe just to watch the fray.

Still, we've been overwhelmed by the deluge of letters we've received over the last six weeks, and we've tried to clear out as much space as we could for them. We have tried to run all of the letters that meet our standards (legible, 300 words or less, not libelous, timely, we can verify that you wrote it, etc.) in a first-come, first-served basis. We do not have a secret stash where we've suppressed letters that support one candidate or the other; that just doesn't happen.

However, we are running out of time. And, despite our best efforts to find as much space as possible for letters, we still have a backlog. We won't have enough time before the election to run all the letters. If you've waited until this week to pound out your election-themed letter, you may be too late.

But wait a week. When the election is over, trust me, there will be many other opportunities for you to join the community conversation that plays out six days a week on our opinion pages.

Mike McInally is editor of the Missoulian. You can reach him at mmcinally@missoulian.com or by calling 523-5250.