Scavenger links are fixed

The Hint and Answer links in the scavenger hunt should all work now. If they seem very slow, they're working. If they're not going to work you'll get an error message right away. Enjoy the hunt. Have a great Labor Day weekend.

Scavanger's broken!

Yep, those hint and answer links on the scavenger hunt aren't working -- not that you all need hints. I'll work on fixing them tomorrow. Meanwhile, feel free to dive right into finding the answers.

Online scavenger hunt

Most everyone knows how to use a search engine to find information on the Internet, but it takes a thoughtful, discriminating user to find trustworthy information that best answers a specific question. There is a tremendous amount of untrustworthy, or even malevolent, junk on the Internet. It's up to you to separate trash from treasure.

With that in mind, here is a five-question online scavenger hunt. Each question is accompanied by links to a hint and an answer, as well as a brief discussion of the quality of the source and how it might be attributed in a news story. Spend 10 minutes trying to answer the question before you hit the hint key. Work your way through the questions. Keep track of your approach, wrong turns and right ones. We'll talk about the answers, and the process of finding them, in class on Sept. 3.

Here are a couple of things to keep in mind on that treasure hunt:

Evaluate the source: Information is only as good as its source. If you don't know who is making a claim or presenting a fact on the Internet, consider that information false until you are satisfied that its origin is reputable. Sources with authority might include non-partisan government (.gov) sources, educational sources that strive to present objective information (.edu) and non-profit groups with a clear analytical mission (.org). Of course, there is plenty of partisan, misleading or just wrong information at .gov, .edu and .org sites, so think critically and evaluate the information you are finding.

Search strategically: Bill Dedman at Power Reporting.com has a helpful tutorial on how to maximize the efficiency and effectiveness of your Web search. Bill is also the inspiration for this localized scavenger hunt.

And now, your mission:

Scavenger Hunt

Q1. Match a name to a phone number. A tipster has passed on a terrific lead about a federal investigation of the president of the University of Montana. Caller ID tells you the tipster called from 406-721-0532. Without calling the number, find out: Whose phone number is that? Who are they and why might their identity matter? Hint. Answer.

Q2. Adjust for inflation. You have written a story reporting that construction of the dam at Milltown in 1907-08 cost about $400,000. Your editor wants to know how much that would be in today’s dollars. What’s your answer? Hint. Answer.

Q3. Check the law. A 15-year-old boy was hit and killed by a car in Missoula. He was struck while riding his bicycle on the sidewalk in a residential area. Was it legal for him to be riding on the sidewalk? Hint. Answer.

Q4. Background a business executive. Dennis R. Washington is a familiar name in Missoula but all you really know about him is that he has a football stadium named after him. Who is he? How old is he? What company or companies is he affiliated with? Make a family tree to help understand his companies. In what industry did he get his start? What types of work is he known for now? What is the profit trend for his company? Can you find information on Dennis Washington’s annual compensation? How much does he make? What basic bio information do you have on him? Hint. Answer.

Q5. Background an organization. Some groups have names that make them sound sympathetic to an issue they actually oppose. Others aren’t really groups at all. What and who does the group Americans for American Energy represent? Can you find another group whose name obscures their mission or who they represent? Hint. Answer.

Monday assignments recapped

We covered a lot in class today, so here's a recap of your assignments:

• Speech story. File a 150-word story on the speech I gave in class. Include a reference to, or quote from, a non-fiction artist famous for perfecting the art of hanging out. Be sure you format the story as outlined in an earlier post (and in class). Email it to me at nadia.white@umontana.edu. This is due by midnight tonight.

• Tackle the online scavenger hunt I'm about to post. It's only got five questions. It should take less than 10 minutes per question. Write up your answers and bring them to class Wednesday. We're going to talk about how good reporters separate trash from treasure on the Internet. This is due Wed. Sept. 3, in class, for discussion. I'll post the Scavenger Hunt as a separate post after this.

• Start working on Beat Report #1. This is due, printed out, in class, on Sept. 8. It should be excruciatingly complete. The format is of your choosing. Make these Beat Reporting useful to you.

Pictured above is the writer who perfected the art of hanging out. Thanks to NY Magazine for the photo.

Filing stories for Public Affairs Reporting

It's important to me that stories you submit have a consistent format. It can help you, too. If staring at a blank screen gives you writer's block, start every story by typing in your slugline, headline and byline. It gets the ball rolling.

Here's a run-through of the format I'd like you to use. I'll go over this in class Wednesday.

All stories should contain:
* A slugline (flush right) – LastName.StoryWord.DateCode (Eg.White/Format/82708)
* A headline (flush left)
* Your byline (flush left)

The datecode is just the month, date and year all run together: 82708. Aug. 27, 2008.

Spacing and margins
All stories should be double spaced with one-inch margins. That gives me room to write comments if I’m handling the print version.

Email or web posting stories
All stories that are submitted as email should use the slug in the subject line, eg. White/Format/82708. That tells me who is submitting the story and what the story is.

Posting a story, or the top of a story, as a comment on MizzooNews should look the same as a printed version.

Font and type size
Find a happy place between saving paper and taxing my eyes. Times New Roman, 10- or 11-point works.

Putting it all together
So the top of every story you file for this class should look like this:

White/Format/82708

Prof requires consistent formatting
By NADIA WHITE

Consistent story formatting helps keep stories straight. Prof. Nadia White told her Public Affairs Reporting class on Wednesday adherence to formatting guidelines would be taken into account when she is grading stories this semester.

Emails and stories that carry the correct formatting are easier to sort. “It prevents me from getting 16 stories all slugged ‘CopBrief,’” she said. This format identifies the reporter, subject and submission date. All this makes it less likely the story will get lost and more likely it will be accurately recorded in the grade book. (Except these lines would be double spaced.)

Thanks to Doug Savage for the chickens.

Welcome. Post your bio paragraphs here.

Welcome to MizzooNews, a blog for students of Nadia White's Public Affairs Reporting class at the University of Montana. This site is intended to facilitate discussion related to public interest news coverage in Missoula and the world .

We've kicked off the semester by getting to know a little bit about each other in class. (That's Jim interviewing Troy in the photo.) Following the example of Julie Sullivan's very short profile on the toothless Joe Peak, I've asked each of you to get to know one classmate a little bit better by writing a 350-word biography.

Take to heart William Strunk's tight-fisted approach to writing as relayed in Strunk and White's Elements of Style:

"Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer tmake all his centences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell."

For your first assignment, please submit the first two paragraphs of your student biography as a comment to this post. You do that by clicking on the word comment at the bottom of this post. Submit the complete 350-word biography to me at inbox.nwhite@gmail.com. Be sure you put a byline and submission date on the full bio you send to me. Your gmail post name can be whatever you'd like.

After you've posted your bio-graphs, please read through other posts. Is there a lead or a style of lead that grabs you? Is there information you find that as a reader you really expect to get in the first couple of paragraphs? Check back closer to class time and read as many leads as you can. Come to class ready to talk about how you feel about these leads.

See you Wednesday.

-- Nadia