Salon.com was once the example of intelligent online journalism. In my mind, they slipped from that pedestal shortly after doing to the American Republicans exactly what they’d been criticizing that party of doing to the Clinton and his Democrats.

Nevertheless, I find myself returning there, occasionally, to read thoughtful pieces like the first of two pieces on Netscape’s suit against Microsoft. That lead me to Andrew Leonard piece on Mozilla (a browser I’ve been happily using as my default for almost a year now).

At the end of Leonard’s story, I saw a glimmer of the solid journalism Salon was known for: a correction notice.

Though common in magazines and newspaper, the correction notice is rarely seen in the online world, and that is likely a result of time and cost.

While Web documents exist forever, they are dynamic documents which can be changed at any time. And because they are dynamic there’s no cost involved in fixing an error (in print, fixing errors can be monumentally expensive).

Does this mean online journalism being more or less accurate that its counterparts in the other media? It’s a thought I may pursue further because it raises some interesting issues—and it looks as though I have the time to kill.