News Now: Introduction, Books and Bookmarks

Note: Before reading this, please hit the play button on the video player to your right.

Our News Now class will explore hyperlocal news coverage of a community during Winter quarter 2010. Each week, we'll study a different aspect of online storytelling and how that translates to covering issues in a community.

We'll learn online storyteling tools in class through demonstration and short exercises. Some are Web-based applications (Delicious, Twitter, mapping, Wordpress), others are software packages (Soundslides, Final Cut Pro). We'll learn software basics in context of storytelling. It's NOT a software-training course.

We will combine our online skills and our reporting skills to generate content for sites that you will devote to covering a specific community. Those sites will feed into ChicagoStorytelling.com, the online studio for all of my journalism courses.

IMPORTANT: There are three books to purchase for the course: JournalismNext (by Mark Briggs, CQ Press), The 2009 Associated Press Stylebook and "Watch Your Words", (Second Edition, Author: Marda Dunsky, Rowman & Littlefield). If you don't already have them, please buy them at the DePaul University bookstore in the Loop (DePaul Center) or buy them online. Bring those reference books to every class meeting, along with a USB jump drive with at least 8 gigabytes of memory. You can buy a USB drive at any computer store or at Radio Shack at 14 E. Jackson.

Many of your readings will be online. I'll share them with you through the course syllabus, on Blackboard, on this blog or through my Delicious bookmarks.

As you can tell from this blog, I believe in teaching within the medium that we study. In other words, I don't ask any of you to produce work that I can't do myself.

News Now combines online skills with hyperlocal news coverage, two very hot topics in today's multimedia market. The skills you will learn in this class will prepare you to be competitive in today's marketplace.

For those of you who replied to my online skills survey in early November, thank you very much. For those of you who didn't, I know who you are.

Your feedback gives me a snapshot of your skill set and helps me tailor the class to shore up your weaknesses and build on your strengths.

Some of you have strong online skills, some of you do not. There will be something for everyone in this class: basic and advanced social media, Final Cut Pro/short video, mobile media, audio slideshows, podcasting, and much, much more. This class is a great opportunity to explore something new. So go for it.

But at the end of the day, it comes down to journalism and storytelling. All of the software skills in the world won't save a package with misspelled names and factual errors.

Over Winter break, look over some of the tools to the right of this post, bookmark this blog and these sites, as you will reference them often this quarter:

1. ChicagoStorytelling.com
Look at some of the multimedia projects, Q&A interviews with journalists and the October coverage of the Olympic announcement. Look at how we incorporate writing, photography, video and interactivity.

2. Mike's Delicious Bookmarks
Many of our course readings will appear here. Just search our course number: 502

3. Our Blackboard page, which will house primers, assignments, the syllabus, etc. I will begin to post content there after Christmas.

4. If you have a Twitter account, start following @journtoolbox and @chitownstories.

I'll talk about this on the first day of class, but I'll say it now: Attendance is mandatory for all classes and you must be on time. We meet in Room 1128, 14 E. Jackson at 5:45 p.m. on Thursdays. Deadlines must be met. Failure to do so will lower your grade.

Also, you'll be working in small groups, so part of your grade will cover your ability to work well with your teammates and your instructor/editor. No drama, no outbursts in class.

A good attitude is a must in generating online content. Most large multimedia packages are developed in a team environment.

Thanks again and see you next quarter.

Mike Reilley
Instructor, DePaul University
College of Communication
mreille1@depaul.edu
Twitter: @journtoolbox
Web site: http://www.journaliststoolbox.org

CNN: Cloud Computing Basics

It's a little silly and simplistic, but I enjoyed this CNN video on cloud computing. It's a great way to explain how services like Apple's Mobile Me work.

Journalists Using Facebook as a Reporting Tool

Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism recently conducted an Advanced Facebook for Journalists podcast on its BlogTalkRadio network.

The hour-long show covered several ways to use Facebook as a reporting tool, including using it as a "virtual research assistant," crowd sourcing, promoting a story or site and organizing your contacts into "friend lists" so you can tailor your posts to specific groups.

Read about the podcast here at Mashable.

Listen to the hour-long show on BlogTalkRadio.com. (Note: You may have to use your default audio player -- in my case, iTunes -- to listen to the podcast. There's a button on the audio player to do this.

One of the best, and most controversial, early uses of social media in breaking news was during the Virginia Tech campus shootings. Reporters used Facebook and MySpace searches to find bios of victims and contact friends and family members.

The Roanoke (Va.) Times used social media in its award-winning coverage of the story. And students and campus leaders used it as a way of discussing the incident and sharing ideas.

What Journalism Students Should Demand from J-Schools

I've long been a fan of Robert Niles at the Online Journalism Review, part of the Knight Digital Media Center and USC. Robert runs the amusement park safety site ThemeParkInsider.com and posts some great resources on his Twitter account, @robertniles.

And I really enjoyed his latest post to the Online Journalism Review called, Eight Things Journalism Students Should Demand from Journalism Schools.

At a time when the news industry is changing radically, students should expect the eight things Niles listed in his piece. They need mentors and role models, job contacts, the opportunities to explore linear and non-linear storytelling. They need a well-rounded liberal arts education, and journalism instructors who focus on the future of news ... and not relive the good old days.

We still must teach journalism fundamentals -- AP Style, accuracy, fairness, ethics, law, reporting and editing -- but we need to reach further and give them opportunities to grow as entrepreneurs, producers, backpack journalists and in other mediums.

As I often say in discussions with my friends still working in the industry: Adapt or perish.

And it's never been more relevant.

Viral Video and FOX Anchor's Flub

We're pretty sure FOX 5 New York anchor Ernie Anastos meant to say "plucking that chicken" or even "clucking that chicken" but something else went out over the air during a recent newscast. And you didn't have to be in the Big Apple to see it.

The live footage became an instant classic on YouTube, and Mashable reports that the video has already been seen by more than 800,000 people. It's been passed around Facebook, Twitter and even Chicago morning radio talk show hosts were talking about it Friday morning.

Here is the video, and be sure to watch the look on his co-anchor's face:

Chi-Town Daily News Blog Folds ... Or Does It?

Big news on the Chicago blog scene today: Chi-Town Daily News has folded ... maybe.

Editor Geoff Dougherty, a former Chicago Tribune reporter, said the organization, which received a Knight Foundation grant in 2007, ran out of cash. He said the blog will re-organize as a for-profit venture in a month. We'll see.

My take: Chi-Town Daily News was considered one of the better start-ups in the Chicago area. It's sad to see it go. But as we saw in the late 1990s, there is an end to grants and venture capital. Back then, venture capitalists expected a return on investment in five years. Now, your startup is lucky to have two years. Web 2.0 is on a business plan and profitability schedule, just as Web 1.0 was and Web 3.0 will be.

Chi-Town Daily News lasted four years, the last two thanks to the Knight grant and other money raised. It's important to note that Knight money also was invested in the hyperlocal site, Everyblock.com. Everyblock was purchased by MSNBC a few weeks ago.

Cool Tool: Convert Documents to .PDFs

I love finding new software that makes my life easier. Especially when it's free.

Jim Janossy, who teaches at DePaul University, shared a great resource with me this week: CutePDF. The free software allows you to convert a document into a .PDF by linking to a conversion tool through the "print" menu on your original document.

The software also is available in a "pro" version for $50, but I found that the freeware met all of my needs. There is nothing I despise more than scanning documents into a .PDF format, and this tool saves me a LOT of time converting documents. Give it a try.

And thanks again to Jim for sharing this great resource!

Raw Video Appeal

One of the things we talked about this summer at the Poynter Institute was the value of raw video footage. Footage that needs no voice over or explanation tied to it. We'll explore this throughout the quarter, but here are some examples of raw video that's been posted on YouTube:

1. Obama's election night celebration in Chicago's Grant Park: Shot with a camera phone, this is a great example of the value of raw video. It takes you there. In the crowd, in the trenches. The TV cameras on election night gave us the big picture, but this footage shows what it was like to be a part of the historic night.



2. Detroit City Council fights: Typically, a routine council meeting or speech doesn't make for great raw video. But this is an exception: when something so outrageous or odd behavior (remember news judgment standards).

Cool Twitter Conferences Tips

The Cool Twitter Conferences stopped in Chicago in August and panelists provided some great tips for journalists, social media gurus and marketers on how to use the service.

Teaching Social Media to Journalists

For mer than 12 years, I've been a strong believer in weaving online resources into a broad journalism curriculum.

Twitter and other social media tools should be implemented to every journalism class. I recently did this with an advanced sports reporting class I co-taught at Columbia College Chicago.

We created the web site Beyond the Game to showcase narrative storytelling, and linked off to each student's blog. We also created a Facebook group page to promote updates, and students were encouraged to post their packages on their Twitter feeds.

Here are some other creative ways to teach social media to journalists, based on a recent Poynter Institute live chat with Columbia professor and online guru Sree Sreenivasan:

• MuckRack's feed is an excellent way to see journalists in action on Twitter.
  
  
• Poynter's Ellyn Angelotti provides some great examples of how media outlets are effectively using Twitter.
  
  
• How students can avoid information overload on social media sites.
  
  
• Sree offers his own tips on Twitter.
  
  
• Mashable's Twitter guide covers the basics.
  
  
• Mashable also offers 10 ways j-schools are teaching social media.
  
  

Michael Jackson's Death and the Internet

I've long been an opponent of journalists using Wikipedia as a source for backgrounding people and issues they write about. (See a recent post on the topic.)

Exhibit A: CNN reported that a prankster posted false information on Michael Jackson's Wikipedia bio shortly after national media reported the pop star's death. The prankster wrote that Jackson was strangled by his brother, Tito, with a microphone cord.



Jackson's Wikipedia bio had more than 500 edits in 24 hours, some of the information accurate, some not. The site eventually had to block edits to the bio.

Advice I've always given student journalists: Use Wikipedia as a way of developing questions, not confirming answers. Go elsewhere to find the answers. But use Wikipedia carefully and sparingly. Because it's a wiki, anyone can post unconfirmed, false information to a bio. It's happened many times, and it has been picked up by the mainstream media.

And use the rule of three with any information you find. If you see a story or rumor, check it out with reliable sources. Internet-rumored deaths Jeff Goldblum, Harrison Ford and Sinbad in recent years all proved false once someone took the time to call a source close to the person.

Jackson's global appeal made the story the biggest Internet story ever in terms of traffic, surpassing even 9/11. But we need to factor in the fact that social media and mobile media attributed greatly to the surge of Jackson's traffic. Technology and news delivery platforms make a difference, as evidenced with this story.

The CNN story also reported that Google News, Twitter and celebrity gossip site TMZ had traffic issues after the story broke on Jackson's death.

Update: The Maynard Institute provided an in-depth analysis of the overwhelming coverage of Jackson's death.

Obama Calls on Blogger at Presser

President Obama caused a stir when he called on a Huffington Post blogger at a recent White House news conference.

This upset some established, traditional media covering the White House who suspected that the blogger was a plant and that the president knew the question in advance.

The Huffington Post and the White House both denied it.

Read more about it in this New York Times article.

Chicago's Online Entrepreneurs

Crain's Chicago Business had a great report on how some Chicago entrepreneurs are making Web-based projects work. Among the projects featured:

Adrian Holovaty's Everyblock.com;

Josh Karp's The Printed Blog;

and Brad Flora's Windy Citizen.

Social Media and the Iran Elections

Mashable and Breaking Tweets both have excellent timelines on the social media's coverage of the fighting in the streets after Iran's elections.

Newshour on PBS also had a great panel discussion about the role social media played in the coverage of the election protests, including censorship issues involving the Iranian government.

Google Search Tips on YouTube

Google posts some great instructional tools on its YouTube channel. I use this simple training video to help students better understand the different ways they can use Google search.

The first few tips are fairly basic, but later it shows how to use a timeline search for a research paper on green energy. It points out some great alternative techniques for expediting a general search. It's worth watching for a couple of minutes.

ConvoTrack Tool

I really like the new ConvoTrack tool, which allows users to track how a Web site is being mentioned in social network media such as Twitter, Reddit or Digg. It's really helpful to see how people are referring to a specific site and in what context. It's definitely worth bookmarking.

Beyond the Game Web Site: New Content

We just finished posting several new packages to the Beyond the Game Web site at Columbia College Chicago.

Packages include a stories on the closing of Driscoll Catholic High School; a feature on Chicago Slaughter player Chris Pisani, who overcame a hit-and-run accident to play pro football; a look at the economic impact on the American Le Mans Series auto racing circuit; a story and photo/audio slideshow on the Chicago Fire's crazy Section 8 fans and more.

The Advanced Sports Reporting students used Dreamweaver, raw HTML code, PhotoShop, SoundSlides, FinalCut Pro and Avid to produce the various packages.

The site also includes several broadcast packages on the Beyond the Game TV page.

You also can visit the Beyond the Game page on Facebook.

Journalists and Wikipedia

I've talked with students a lot about their use of Wikipedia. I've had some concerns with using the online encyclopedia as users can post any information they like to the entries. Media often cite Wikipedia as a source, yet have they fact-checked the information?

Sure enough, a college student in Ireland posted a fake quote to an entry about French composer Maurice Jarre as part of "an experiment." Sure enough, several UK media took the bait and published the fake quote as part of Jarre's obituary.

Steve Walling has built a great slideshow instructing journalists on how to use Wikipedia. I really like this piece of advice he offers: "WikiPedia should be the first place you look for information, not the last ... it should help you form questions for your story, not give you the answers."

Wikipedia for Journalists & Bloggers

View more presentations from StevenWalling.

The Masters New Media

When you think of The Masters, you think of Wood, Nicklaus and Palmer. Augusta National. Amen Corner. The rites of spring.

But over the years, The Masters has done a great job of weaving new media into the fabric of its event. It was among the first sports events of any kind to have a live scoreboard, launching one in 1996.

Since 2008, The Masters Web site is leverageing IBM's Many Eyes software to give you new ways to follow the event:

1) Data visualizations that allow you to track scores by hole, participants by country and follow eagles, birdies and bogeys, year-by-year, since 1946. The latter is a great fact-checking tool for any golf writer. The statistics are presented as charts and graphics to help readers understand the information.

2) Word trees and tag clouds, which have been popular on the Web the past year or so.

The site also has a blog, Twitter feed, Facebook fan page and a leaderboard widget that you can imbed on your blog.

Check them out at The Masters Web site.

Rocky Mountain News Obituary

The Rocky Mountain News closed its doors Friday, after nearly 150 years of publishing. Scripps was unable to sell the tabloid paper in Denver in a one-month deadline the corporation had set.

Online producers built this 20-minute video about the closing of the paper. It tells the story of what a newspaper means in a community, and to the people who produce it.

It asks a tough question: Can newspaper business models survive in the current economy? And why can't they at least function in some capacity, such as a smaller staff producing an online product? That's a model the Seattle Post-Intelligencer is considering, rather than closing its doors. Note: ABC News has an excellent online and video package on the current state of the newspaper industry.

The News' closing leaves the Post as Denver's only daily newspaper, with the Camera nearby in Boulder.

Juxtapose this story with an earlier blog post about how the San Francisco Examiner viewed Web publishing way back in 1981, when print still ruled the media industry. A lot has changed.


Final Edition from Matthew Roberts on Vimeo.

A Touch of Class

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel published this inspiring story from a recent high school basketball game. At a time when all we read about are stories on steroids, contract disputes and players gone bad, it's nice to read a piece like this.

It's a great story about sportsmanship and class. And it's another example of how sports can frame life in a way that everyone can relate to.

Look for these kinds of stories when you're reporting and covering your beats. Too often, they're missed.

Facebook Content: Who Owns What?

Update: Facebook has done an "about face" on its content policy since this was first posted. However, I'm leaving this entry posted because of the issue it addressed at the time.

CBS 2 Chicago interviewed some of our Columbia College Chicago Advanced Sports Reporting students on Monday night about the new Facebook content policy.

The policy change has some members nervous because they believe it would allow Facebook to use their content however it wants, even if the member deletes the material or cancels an account. Facebook has said otherwise, but I'm curious how it will actually use the content.

My concern is Facebook's perceived rights to sell content to third parties: My name, age, e-mail address, mailing address and other content that e-marketers would love to get their hands on.

As for what I post to Facebook, not much will change. Outside of my 8th-grade yearbook photo, there's not any incriminating information there. I joined a few humor groups and I'm a fan of a few TV shows and products. That's about as exciting as it gets.

As I've often warned students, friends and colleagues, don't post anything to a social networking site that you wouldn't want your boss, family member or parents to see. Common sense trumps all here.

It amazes me how many people post drunken pictures of themselves, disclose personal information and other material to these sites, and expect no consequences. Job placement firms and hiring managers say they comb these sites often, looking for information about potential job candidates.

Your posts are part of the portrait you paint of yourself. And the audience can be anyone -- a friend, potential employer, etc.

Just be careful what paint brush you use.

Taking Gooooooooaaaaaal! to Another Level

The Guardian newspaper has developed a great resource for Premier League soccer fans. And yes, there are a lot of soccer fans. And they're rabid.

The Guardian's Chalkboards tool is somewhat similar to ESPN’s GameCast, but takes interactivity several steps further.

The database-driven tool allows users to tailor what statistics they want from a specific team and organizes the data into an informational graphic. Users can track a specific player's shots on goal, successful goals, etc., then e-mail the graphics with other fans or imbed them in their blogs. This could be a great resource for settling bar bets.

I took the site for a spin, tracking passing by Manchester United's Cristiano Ronaldo in two 2008 matches against Newcastle United. Look at how much more active he was at home as compared to the road.

There are some problems with the site. It offers imbedded code to post your charts into a blog, but they sometimes don't work. That's why I had to link to the Ronaldo chart rather than imbed it into this blog.

Also, the database downloads are somewhat slow, but the reward is worth it once you've created the chart. You have to be a little patient with the tool as it processes requests. I expect this will improve in weeks to come.

Over the years, I have seen NBA and MLB scouts use similar software packages in charting shots, pitches, etc. for their reports. But this is the first time I’ve seen a publication offer an online, interactive tool that is this sophisticated.

It's worth checking out, even if you're not a soccer nut.

Footnote: The Poynter Institute recently wrote a great piece about this tool as well.

A-Rod Comes Clean ...

Because he really had no other choice, Alex Rodriguez admitted to ESPN's Peter Gammons that he used steroids. Too little, too late. A-Rod took a beating in the media over the weekend, including this headline in the New York Post.

Interesting, too, that he came to ESPN and not Sports Illustrated, which broke the story. A-Rod was well-coached for this interview, knowing exactly when to turn on the emotion. It will be interesting to see how he handles the New York and national media once Spring Training begins.

Online Video Downloads Hit Record Highs

ResourceShelf, a research site run by Gary Price and Shirl Kennedy, provides us with an interesting statistic from comScore Video Metrix about online video downloads in December 2008.

Online video downloads in the United States hit 14.3 billion in December 2008, an increase of 13 percent over the previous month.

YouTube downloads contributed largely to the surge.

The analysis doesn't go any deeper, but I'm speculating as to why we saw such a dramatic increase, especially coming off a November 2008 that included heavy election night downloads. What about December drove people to download so much video?

Newspapers on the Internet, 1981 ...

In 1981, I had a bad haircut, my first driver's license and was in a basic computing class at Lincoln (Neb.) Northeast High School. I was a year away from my first "home computer," a Commodore 64. And I wrote my school newspaper stories on a typewriter.

In 1981, KRON TV in San Francisco aired this news story about the Internet and its possible impact on daily newspapers. Now, almost 30 years later, it's kind of eerie to see a story like this, particularly the ending. It was a sign of things to come.

No Cheering in the Press Box ...

Sportswriter Larry Fitzgerald Sr. will be covering his son, Larry Fitzgerald Jr., in this weekend's Super Bowl. How can a parent not cheer for his son?

Rick Reilly of ESPN has one take.

Josh Levin of Slate takes another look.

New York Times Super Bowl Package

The New York Times has a great combination of multimedia and interactivity on its online sports section. The site features two staffers debating who will win the Super Bowl.

After viewing the video, readers are asked to vote for the "point or counterpoint" and results are shown. It's a lot of fun and is a great use of the web.

Give it a try.

A Piece of History ...

On the heels of MLK Day and Barack Obama's inauguration, I started wondering about what happened to MLK's "I Have a Dream" speech.

A friend of mine, a USC graduate, told me a great story about how former USC basketball coach George Raveling was handed a copy of the speech by King after leaving the stage. Raveling, 26 at the time, was doing some minor security detail near the stage.

Sure enough, ESPN's Outside the Lines has a great interview with Raveling about it. What a great job of looking behind the scenes at a great moment in history.

NBA All-Star New Media

Sports Illustrated's Scorecard section has an interesting feature this week on how NBA teams are using viral marketing to promote players for the All-Star Game and Slam Dunk Contest.

It started last year with Toronto forward Chris Bosh's hilarious impersonation of a used-car salesman in this YouTube video campaign.

This season, others have followed suit:

Amare Stoudemire's video includes celebrity endorsements from Beyonce, among others. There are several video shorts, but they lock the creativity of Bosh's video.

Devin Harris does a parody of George W. Bush's Iraq press conference complete with teammates throwing shoes at him. The quality's a little poor, but it's pretty funny.

Bucks rookie Joe Alexander campaigns for the dunk competition in a series of videos at SeeJoeDunk.com. This is one of the most creative uses of viral marketing I've seen with an athlete. It's done in the spirit of the ESPN "This is SportsCenter" ads without looking like a knockoff.

And Portland's Rudy Fernandez campaigns with some bilingual ballads. He raps in one and tries to sing in another. Overall, it's pretty weak.

College Basketball "Safe Lead" Calculator

Baseball statistics expert Bill James has built a great tool that calculates how "safe" a college basketball lead is at a specific point of a game. James wrote an article about it in the March 17, 2008 issue of Slate.

James explains the mathematical formula that determines the percentage of "safety" a lead has at a specific point of the game. While it doesn't take into consideration a team's personnel, injuries, style of play, etc., the research is based on thousands of games and the statistical probability (or improbability) that a team can come back from a deficit with the shot clock and amount of time remaining. It's a fun tool to play with.

Scroll halfway down the page to find the calculator.

Can Sports Writing Recapture Its Relevance?

Gary Andrew Poole has an excellent essay on the state of sports writing in the current Columbia Journalism Review.

It explores how much a sports reporter's job has changed since the days of Grantland Rice, Red Smith and Jim Murray. After all, you didn't read W.C. Heinz on a blog and Smith didn't have to chase rumors from a chat room.

It raises the question: Where have the storytelling skills gone in sports writing? Has the Web's instant gratification -- fantasy football fanatics, real-time stats and aim, ready, fact-check approach to sports news -- drown out some of the best writing? They are legitimate questions.

Give the essay a close read. It hits on a real issue facing today's sports journalists.

Preps Gone Wild

Steve Tucker of the Chicago Sun-Times had a great column about how unsubstantiated rumors on the Web, scouting services such as Rivals.com impact college recruiting.

The column outlines how rumors start about a prep player's "skills" (or who is recruiting them) can be quickly accepted as "fact." It's a great warning for young journalists: Don't accept a rumor generated online as fact. Like the saying goes: If your mother says she loves you, check it out.

And apparently you can't check with dad. One of Tucker's examples was about a family member who generated press releases and e-mails with untrue information about a potential football recruit. The scouting services said the kid had scholarship offers from schools such as Louisville and Boise State.

None of it was true.

Ricky Rubio: NBA Marketing Darling ...

But is Ricky ready?

There's no question that point guards are a precious commodity in today's NBA market. Just look at Steve Nash, Chris Paul, Deron Williams, Jason Kidd and Chicago Bulls rookie Derrick Rose.

Spain's Ricky Rubio is still a teenager, but he's become the darling of NBA scouts and international basketball fans. His highlight videos are all over YouTube. Fans draw comparison's to former NBA star "Pistol" Pete Maravich. The frail Rubio, 6-feet-4 and only 180 pounds, does look a lot like Maravich. And emulates the Pistol's legendary playing style with his flashy passes, dribbling and open-court freestyle play.

But if you watch Rubio closely, he's still a long, long way from being an NBA player, even though many project him as a lottery pick in the 2009 NBA Draft. He's looked strong in international play, including last summer's Olympic Games. But he still doesn't have the defensive skill and jump shot a point guard needs to play in the NBA.

Early buzz has Rubio projected as a marketing sensation with his flashy play, good looks and international appeal. The NBA loves the potential of expanding its European market, much like it has done with Yao Ming in China. See Ricky play. See Ricky sell: soda, shoes, socks, video games. Just wait.

But a team would be wise to develop Rubio slowly and let him grow both physically and mentally as a player. He could use a couple of years of international or college play, but he'll likely be drawn to the NBA's promise of financial security. Still, any team that drafts him should bring in a veteran point guard to tutor him and bring him along.

And for those of us who are old enough to remember Maravich, the Pistol had one heck of a jump shot to go with all those hot-dog moves. He was a prolific scorer, that's for sure.

NATA Sports Medicine Guide

As a sports reporter, you're always writing about injuries and sports medicine. But how do you explain complex medical procedures and describe an injury to a specific muscle, joint, organ, etc.? You don't need a degree in medicine.

One suggestion is to interview sports doctors and trainers skilled in the specific subject (knees, concussions, etc.) Another helpful resource is a free media guide from the National Athletic Trainers Association. Reporters jokingly call it the "know your knees" booklet.

A .PDF of the booklet is available on the NATA Web site. You'll have to scroll down to page 12 for the alphabetical list of medical terms. It'll help you understand the differences between ACLs, MCLs and PCLs.

And it will help you better explain it to your readers and viewers.

Business of Super Bowl Ads

Besides watching the game, one of the best parts of Super Bowl Sunday is viewing the commercials. This year, NBC is expected to charge more than $3 million for some 30-second spots for pre-game and during the game. One of the best Web sites for tracking ad-buying trends leading up to the game is SuperBowl-Ads.com. The site has clips of upcoming ads, history of Super Bowl advertising, polls, costs and lists of top advertisers.