Don't miss this:
Jeff Jarvis has lots to say today about perception of the media, from the BBC to New Hampshire political commentators. This one post doesn't cover it all, scroll up and down. But this one has my favorite quote:

"...news is a conversation. It's not as if, once the oracle who owns the press or the broadcast tower speaks, we have heard the truth and can stop the search for it. Of course, we can't. It takes time and openness and curiosity and effort and a great deal of back and forth with contributions from many diverse sources and viewpoints adding onto each other to perhaps pile up to the truth. "

On this topic:
The Miami Herald has recently added several Reader Q&A columns produced by Herald writers. People like Dan Gillmor and Jeff Jarvis keep reminding us that 'News is a conversation'. The Herald is doing it. Congrats to all the Herald columnists who are doing this, and especially to Robert Steinback, who started it.

Research tool:
Via Genie Tyburski's TVC Alert, a link to Chris Sherman's review of new research software RocketDesktop. Here's an online tour of RocketDesktop. Looks like this software will not only organize all your news sources for searching and archiving results, but will also handle RSS feeds for reading your favorite blogs and other feeds. There's a free trial and a $29.95 annual fee.
I've not tried any research organizer tools yet, but there are wonderful things out there that many wouldn't be without. Of course, FURL, for organizing Web pages and URLS you want to refer back to, has been getting lots of attention in last few days. Today Sree Sreenivasan has more suggestions from readers.
AskSam has a great reputation for organizing projects, their latest newsletter mentions a library research requests database project. Some rely on tools like Clickgarden, NetSnippets, Cartagio, and lots more.
How do you decide which to try? I haven't. But Rocketdesktop, with its news aggregator function, might fill the bill, and FURL is tempting too.