This audio snippet comes from the Saturday, Nov. 15, Better Watchdog Workshop in New Haven, Conn., where WTTG-Washington reporter Tisha Thompson shared tips on the art of the interview. When Tisha Thompson of WTTG in Washington, D.C., gets a call from a tipster who’s afraid to leave a name or phone number, she has a surefire way of staying in touch. Thompson suggests that the source set up an e-mail account with an alias on AOL, Google or another national provider. To help protect potential whistleblowers, she reminds them not to communicate with her from a work computer ... Read more ...

In Kansas, reporters often must wait for public records to be extracted from a salt mine. After a few years, records required to be retained are stored deep underground at a giant salt mine complex in Hutchinson. That’s one of the many tidbits we learned last weekend during a Watchdog Workshop at Wichita State University. More than 50 print and TV journalists attended the event, which also included hands-on training in using Excel spreadsheets. Here are a few tips from the workshop that you might find useful:

• Nothing in Kansas state law prevents someone in a closed meeting from ...

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