Consultant Robert Paterson shares some thoughts about public radio's New Realities forum, which takes place Monday and Tuesday in Washington, D.C. "For many who will attend, the issue is much more than the survival and health of public radio but the survival of the last large media space in America that can be trusted," he writes.

Minnesota Public Radio/American Public Media said yesterday it's creating a new Center for Innovation in Journalism, which will further develop its Public Insight Journalism system. APM's national programs are now starting to use PIJ after three years' development at MPR. In a Nieman Foundation report (PDF) last year, Michael Skoler, the MPR news exec who will direct the new center, described the system that uses Internet and database technologies to gather a large pool of volunteer news sources. MPR raised $2.25 million for the project in its capital campaign and topped the new wing of its St. Paul headquarters with a meeting room designed for in-person gatherings of PIJ sources. Skoler looks at the system's practical benefits for reporters in Current's May 1 issue.