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In a way, the overall decline in trust makes sense. News outlets have increased over the years -- many of us remember the days of three television channels and two daily newspapers -- and now people literally have millions of options. With so many choices, news consumers have become more discerning and skeptical. Meanwhile, the level of social discourse has amplified and coarsened.

Likewise, the results of the Social Capital study aren't all that surprising. It's easy to think of contributing factors: the SBI investigation of the Greensboro police department; City Council submitting to lie detector tests and accusing one of its own members of leaking a confidential document; the Truth and Reconciliation process; the firing of the county manager; the finger-pointing accusations of racism.

That's only from the past year.

These are divisive, emotionally-charged stories, and we have covered them aggressively. Too aggressively for some. Inevitably, a politician or another newspaper sling mud in our direction and suggest newspaper coverage is the problem. Shooting the messenger becomes an easy defense, but I believe most readers see through it.

Yet it has the effect of eroding trust. Skepticism of community institutions can be healthy; distrusting them isn't. It behooves those institutions to work harder to build a sense of belonging and connection.

We have introduced new features recently to do just that.

We added a consumer columnist, Tom Taylor, to help you solve problems. We added a second local columnist, Jeri Rowe, to write about the special people and places around here. We created more community publications that focus on life in your neighborhood.

We have emphasized keeping a closer eye on government, writing about veterans affairs well before Walter Reed made the news; shoddy tires on the buses that carry our children to school; and bureaucratic Homeland Security regulations that play havoc with the lives of some local residents.

If trust is built through the open exchange of ideas, we continue to expand the ways you can interact with us. We operate more than a dozen blogs, and we expect to add more in the coming weeks. Anyone can comment, challenge us and add information to stories we publish online. Supporting information for our stories -- and it could be video, audio or written documentation -- is also available online.

To measure our accuracy, we randomly send surveys to people quoted in our stories asking whether we portrayed them fairly. Last year, 157 surveys were returned, and all but 13 said we got it right. We plan to improve on that this year.

But news coverage isn't the only way we try to bolster community ties. Since 2000, the News & Record has returned almost $3 million to the region through donations and sponsorships to 96 agencies, including the United Way; United Arts Council; Kids Voting; One City, One Book; Reading Connections; the Salvation Army; the Greensboro Children's Museum; Community Theatre; the International Civil Rights Center; and the Shakespeare Festival.

We know that we must earn your trust every day by presenting a faithful, accurate portrayal of the community. We try to do that from the front page to the last. My request is that you let us know when we don't.

Back to the consultant who told us that many readers loved to hate us. "It's not necessarily a bad thing," he said. "It means that you provoke them, which is one thing newspapers are supposed to do, and that they read you."

In the end, our challenge is to fulfill the mission that our company's founder, Frank Batten, gave to us 30 years ago.

"A great newspaper is distinguished by the balance, fairness and authority of its reporting and editing. Such a newspaper searches as hard for strengths and accomplishment as for weakness and failure. Rather than demoralize its community, the great newspaper will, by honest and intelligent journalism, inspire people to do better."