Digital or not, the fact that an article or book has passed the filter of a reputable publisher provides useful evidence in estimating its quality.

Yep, the word for that is curating and it is a common and valuable activity. Art museums, for example, play a similar role. On the web brand-name blog collections (e.g. the Gawker stable) is also basically about the same thing -- in this particular case, though, I don't know if we're talking about quality... :-D