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The Journalist’s Toolbox

Focusing on the “how” and “why” of digital reporting, this interactive

textbook equips readers with all the skills they need to succeed in today’s
multimedia reporting landscape.
The Journalist’s Toolbox is an extension of the JournalistsToolbox.ai website,
which provides links to tools, organized by beats and topics, as well as social
channels, a newsletter, and more than 95 training videos relevant to journalists.
This handbook offers a deep dive into these digital resources, explaining how
they can be manipulated to build multimedia stories online and in broadcast.
It covers all the basics of data journalism, fact-checking, using social media,
editing and ethics, as well as video, photo, and audio production and
storytelling. The book considers digital journalism from a global perspective,
including examples and interviews with journalists from around the world.
Packed full of hands-on exercises and insider tips, The Journalist’s Toolbox is
an essential companion for students of online/digital journalism, multimedia
storytelling and advanced reporting. This book will also make an ideal reference
for practicing journalists looking to hone their craft.
This book is supported by training videos, interactive charts and a pop-up
glossary of key terms which are available as part of an interactive e-book+ or
online for those using the print book.

Mike Reilley teaches data and digital journalism at the University of Illinois at
Chicago, USA. A former reporter at the Los Angeles Times and web producer
at the Chicago Tribune and WashingtonPost.com, Mike is an early adopter of
web and data technologies in journalism. He’s taught full-time for 20 years at
Northwestern, Arizona State, DePaul and UIC.

Mike founded the digital resources site JournalistsToolbox.org in 1996 and

currently operates a new AI-focused site, JournalistsToolbox.ai. He also consults
with newsrooms on digital tools and has trained thousands of journalists around
the world on Google News Initiative tools. He is co-author of the Routledge
textbook Data + Journalism with investigative reporter Samantha Sunne.

Mike and his students cover Chicago urban issues through data reporting on
RedLineProject.news. Mike speaks at dozens of journalism conferences and
has a large following on his @itsmikereilley Twitter account.
The Journalist’s Toolbox
A Guide to Digital Reporting and AI

Mike Reilley
Designed cover image: Illustration by Billy O’Keefe
First published 2024
by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
and by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
business
© 2024 Mike Reilley
The right of Mike Reilley to be identified as author of this work has
been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval
system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
ISBN: 978-1-032-46021-5 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-46020-8 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-43178-7 (ebk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-46022-2 (eBook+)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003431787
Typeset in Galliard
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Access the Support Material: www.routledge.com/9781032460208
To all of my mentors, especially Neil Chase, the late
Daryl Blue and the late Steve Buttry.
And to my mother-in-law, Angela, maker of
all things pasta . . .
– Mike
Contents

Acknowledgments viii

Introduction 1

1 Reporting, Writing and Editing 13

2 Searching the Web and Using AI in Research 44

3 Fact-Checking and Building Trust 65

4 Social Media 81

5 Data Journalism 114

6 Mobile Journalism 141

7 Multimedia: Podcasting | Audio | Photo Editing 169

8 Google Earth | Satellite Imagery 187

9 Artificial Intelligence | Productivity Tools 206

10 AI | Productivity Tools and Exercises 233

11 Digital Security | Advanced ChatGPT and

Data Visualization Exercises 255

Index277
Acknowledgments

There are many people who helped with the writing and publishing of this
book. Being an author can be challenging, but a great support team and
cooperation from many professional journalists made it much easier. I’m
grateful for my publisher, Routledge, and the fantastic team of Lizzie Cox and
Hannah McKeating, who helped me navigate this process once again. Their
patience, sound advice and quick responses helped make it a smooth one.
I also need to thank the many professional journalists and college professors
who contributed interviews and exercises: Victor Hernandez, chief content
officer at WBUR in Boston; USC professor Amara Aguilar; CUNY profes-
sor and Wonder Tools newsletter author Jeremy Caplan; Cincinnati Enquirer
reporter Patti Gallagher Newberry; University of Nebraska journalism profes-
sor Chris Graves; Samantha Sunne; and Tom Johnson of the Guardian US. All
are masters of their craft and offer innovative examples of how to use digital
tools to create incredible storytelling.
When I needed help on shooting and editing content for mobile, I went
to two of the best in the business: Robb Montgomery of the Smart Film
School and author of Mobile Journalism and Rob Layton, Assistant Profes-
sor of Mobile Journalism at Bond University on Australia’s Gold Coast.
They’re both doing innovative visual storytelling using apps on phones
and tablets.
Mackenzie Warren, former director of digital strategy at Gannett, lends
his expertise on the big picture: how digital tools figure into the storytell-
ing process and to properly implement them. Warren now oversees the local
news accelerator at his alma mater, Northwestern University’s Medill School
of Journalism, and offers insight on how to implement these tools at the
local level.
No journalism book would be complete without exploring the broadening
horizons of data storytelling. CBS 2 Chicago’s Elliott Ramos, the BBC’s John
Walton and Andy Boyle, a data contributor for the Chicago Sun-Times, pro-
vide tips and examples for practical applications. I’ll contribute several exer-
cises from my newsroom trainings so you’ll have work samples to show by the
time you finish the chapter.
 Acknowledgments ix

You may have noticed the wonderful book cover and illustrations, the
handiwork of longtime friend and collaborator Billy O’Keefe, who also helped
me design the Journalist’s Toolbox websites.
Another key player in the development of this book has been Zizi
­Papacharissi, the communication department chair at the University of Illinois-­
Chicago. Her guidance helped me not only with this textbook but also my first
book, Data + Journalism, which I coauthored with Sunne.
Introduction

The Journalist’s Toolbox and the Dawn of the Internet Era

There were no start-up incubators or “a-ha” moments when I founded Jour-
nalist’s Toolbox more than a quarter of a century ago.
It just sort of . . . happened. And over time, it evolved into the AI tools and
training hub it is today.
It started in 1996, when Professor Neil Chase invited me to teach some
“new media” labs at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.
I was only a year removed from graduate school at Medill and needed the
money, so I took him up on the offer.
I didn’t have much time on my hands. I was one of the founding editors
at ChicagoTribune.com back then, and we hard-coded web pages as content
management systems were only a twinkle in some developer’s eye. So, on
Tuesday evenings, I would trek to Evanston and teach print and broadcast
students how to build web pages, code and edit photos in Photoshop.
Later that year, I started teaching newswriting and reporting courses part-
time at Medill. Classroom management tools such as Blackboard and Desire-
2Learn didn’t exist in the 1990s, so I hard-coded a website that hosted my
course syllabi and other class materials. I posted it on the open web so anyone
could learn from them, not just my students.
One page on that site was named “Toolbox,” a list of 10 links to crime
databases, OpenSecrets.org, Congressional Quarterly and a few other sites
and databases that students could use for reporting news stories. I taught the
intrepid sophomores how to analyze crime data in spreadsheets to write sto-
ries, track how their home-state senators were voting in Washington and, more
importantly, how to use OpenSecrets to find what special interest groups were
making campaign contributions to the senators. It combined public records
and database reporting with the newest technology available at the time.
Over the next four years, that page of links grew to several hundred tools
as students returned from internships and shared resources they picked up in
newsrooms. I started searching for more resources in Yahoo and an upstart
search engine at the time called Google.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003431787-1
2 Introduction

Figure 0.1 Intro

Source: Illustration by Billy O’Keefe

By the time I left Medill for a WashingtonPost.com fellowship in 2000, the

single “Toolbox” page had grown to several pages with a few thousand links.
I moved the pages over to a free Yahoo GeoCities server – a place where many
people launched their first websites – and continued to update it. I added a
header graphic and called it “The Journalist’s Toolbox.”
At the Post, I noticed the site would appear on reporters’ screens from
time to time. Search engines were indexing it, and reporters, editors and news
librarians were bookmarking it after stumbling across the site in broad web
searches.
“Do more,” the reporters told me. “This saves us time.” That’s because the
site was doing something an algorithm could not: It was built by someone
who thought like a journalist. I had spent nearly a decade as a reporter, copy
editor and web producer at the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune and
the Post. I knew how to research stories. I knew how to find things online.
The site started to come together.
By 2002, the Toolbox was attracting several thousand visitors per month.
I bought the JournalistsToolbox.org and. com web addresses. I emailed the
links to hundreds of journalists around the world and asked them to share
it with their staff. By the end of the year, I contacted several journalism
 Introduction 3

organizations to see if they wanted to buy the site. Back then, there were no
start-up incubators or funding, and it was difficult to charge people to use the
site because secure credit card software was in its infancy, making it hard to
set up a paywall.
The American Press Institute (API) bought the site from me and agreed to
pay me monthly to update the site. After five years, API sold the site – and my
services as editor – to the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ).
So what started as an experiment for a rookie college journalism professor
has blossomed over the next two decades into an international brand. Today,
the Toolbox features links to thousands of resources.
SPJ defunded my JournalistsToolbox.org work in May 2023, ending my
27 years as that site’s editor. Since I own the Toolbox trademark, I launched
the new site, JournalistsToolbox.ai, with a focus on how journalists can use
artificial intelligence to improve workflow, debunk fake news and more.
Launched in June 2023, its sole purpose is to help journalists ethically and
effectively navigate the murky waters of AI. It offers more than 90 training vid-
eos on how to use digital tools. A twice-monthly newsletter shares resources
tips and tricks with more than 7,000 subscribers. My @itsmikereilley Twitter
account surpassed 50,000 followers by 2023.
***
So it only makes sense that The Journalist’s Toolbox would become a book.
Not just any book, but a handbook that journalism professors could use to
teach students starving for digital skills. And a handbook that provides pro-
fessional journalists guidance and examples of how to expand their digital
storytelling.

The Journalist’s Toolbox AI newsletter is published twice a month

and features tools, tips, tricks and training videos. Subscribe for free:
https://journaliststoolbox.substack.com.
The Journalist’s Toolbox AI YouTube channel features more than
95 training videos on tools for reporting, writing, data journalism,
mobile reporting, social media, fact-checking and more: https://bit.
ly/toolboxvid

***
4 Introduction

This book will explore how the Toolbox is being used by reporters and
editors all over the world. We’ll look at the evolution of digital journalism and
cover the key concepts and themes in the industry with mobile, social, eth-
ics/trust, artificial intelligence, multimedia, data and more. We’ll sprinkle in
anecdotes and examples of how simple, free tools can tell stories in new ways.
And we’ll hear from some industry experts about how those tools are used in
newsrooms.

A Cautionary Tale: It’s About the Journalism,

Not Just the Tools
Mackenzie Warren wore a variety of hats in 23 years working at Gannett news-
papers. Shortly before leaving for Northwestern’s Medill School to run its
local news accelerator program in early 2023, he oversaw digital training for
Gannett’s USA Today Network as a senior director.
At Gannett, Warren encouraged newsroom staffers to advance their
storytelling through interactive charts and maps, social media graphics,
data analysis, video and audio, etc. Not only did this improve the reader’s
online experience, it also increased the amount of time readers spent on the
websites.
It’s easy for journalists to learn a new tool or technique, then rush to use it
in a way that doesn’t advance the story. What good is an interactive map with
one or two pinpoints in it? Or a bar chart with no disparity in the data? Poor-
quality video and audio will turn a reader off quickly. None of it belongs in the
story just for the sake of it.
Warren warns to avoid “tool soup, which is trying to put a pinch of every-
thing into a story, for the sake of seeming thorough or well-rounded. Often
one single tool alone is enough to tell a story at a higher plane. It’s easy to go
overboard and overwhelm the reader.”
In other words, put the story first and foremost, then try to find the tools
to tell it.

Organizing Your Digital Life

For several years, I worked with Victor Hernandez, chief content officer at
WBUR in Boston, to train journalists at national conferences around the
country. We’d speak at NICAR, SPJ and other conventions about how to use
basic tools without breaking your budget or consuming too much time.
We heard common questions from our attendees: There are so many tools
on the market; which ones are the best for me? How can I find the time to
learn so many different tools? What tools can make me more efficient?
So during our talks, Hernandez always suggested journalists use this simple
approach when deciding what tools or mobile apps to use: (1) Pick, (2) Stick,
(3) Dig and (4) Dump.
 Introduction 5

Figure 0.2 Intro

Source: Illustration by Billy O’Keefe

Pick

Choose an app that you think would work well for you. Before downloading,
check the app’s reviews, privacy settings and what data it can gather and share
about you (more on that later in the book). If you think the app could be use-
ful and fill a specific need, download it. If not, move on.

Stick

Use the app once you download it. Get a feel for it. If you can use it in your daily
news coverage, go for it. If it’s more challenging to use, practice with it in your
free time or try it for personal use. In other words, “stick” with it for a while.

Dig

Really dig into what the tool can do. Give it at least two or three months.
Think: Is this tool or app saving me time? How is it enhancing my work, if at
all? If you don’t have a good answer for either question, it might be time to
move on to the next step.
6 Introduction

Dump

After three months, it might be time to part with the tool or app. They take
up space on your phone or computer, and if you’re not using it, why bother
to keep it on there? So delete it and make space for other apps and tools.
You can always download the app again later. Keep your logins handy, and
if it’s a paid account, make sure to end the subscription before you delete
the app.
Hernandez said he tries to “keep an open mind” when trying new tech in
his job at WBUR or just for himself.
“I am generally willing to test out something that comes highly recom-
mended and may offer value to my personal or professional life,” he said,
“especially if it’s a free app. At most, it’ll cost me 10 minutes.
“I’ll try just about anything once. But I regularly go through my toolkit to
clean out tech that has gone a while without any activity or perceived value.
Digital clutter is still clutter and I’d rather take back valuable storage that
could be applied to future downloads.”
He said it is sometimes helpful to look at the last used data for apps on your
smartphone.
“You might be surprised that you actually haven’t engaged with services
that are occupying valuable space on your device,” he said. “My personal expi-
ration date for lack of activity is three months. But your threshold may be
different.”
Jeremy Caplan teaches at the City University of New York’s (CUNY)
Newmark Graduate School of Journalism and writes a weekly newsletter
called “Wonder Tools.” When Caplan tinkers with the hundreds of pro-
ductivity and reporting tools he reviews each year, he examines four core
attributes:

• Quality. “Will this tool help me do better quality work than I could other-
wise, or will it will help others I serve – students, colleagues and readers?”
he said. “I also assess whether it will help me do different work – like cre-
ating a different kind of writing, multimedia or data analysis than I might
be able to easily do without it? For example, Descript is a valuable tool for
me because it allows me to do audio and video publishing and multimedia
editing I might not otherwise do.”
• Time. “I ask myself: does this save me time? Does it solve a problem I have
or reduce friction in my workflow? Time is precious, so I prize tools that
help me work more efficiently. Examples include Raycast and Alfred, appli-
cation launchers that reduce the amount of time it takes to do common
things on your computer.”
• Cost. “Subscription costs can quickly accumulate, given that I use dozens
of tools. And given that my students and readers may not be able to afford
many costly services, I keep an eye on costs.”
 Introduction 7

• Reliability. “Services rise and fall online. Remember Peach? Plurk? Jaiku?
Fridge? So I try to get a feel for how likely I think the tool is to stick
around, how committed its team is, and how strong its foundation.”

Caplan said he tries to use a tool a few times in multiple contexts to see how
useful it is in the long run, usually over a period of at least a few weeks. Unlike
some, he rarely deletes tools, because he envisions giving them another look
down the road.
“That’s how I end up with hundreds of apps on my phone and laptop, even
though I use only 10% of them frequently,” he said.

The Digital Graveyard

If you haven’t been there before, visit the website StartupGraveyard.io. The
site tracks failed startups and tech products and provides so-called “autopsy
reports” to help entrepreneurs avoid making the same mistakes.
“Thousands of technologies go belly up every year,” Hernandez said.
“Some of the once-bright technology stars that occupied valuable presence
in my toolkit over the years but have since faded include Google+, Periscope,
Videolicious, Mailbox, Vine, Path, Wildcard, Sunrise, Meerkat, Rdio, Sonar,
Tweetbot, Hyperlapse and Foursquare.”
Warren recalls the fanfare over MySpace, which News Corp. spent $580 mil-
lion to purchase nearly two decades ago.
“In 2006, it was one of the high-water marks in the world’s enthusiasm
for breakout stars among digital platforms,” he said. “MySpace had a bigger
audience than Google or Yahoo! Then came Facebook, which smashed it to
pieces.”

Figure 0.3 The Startup Graveyard

8 Introduction

Fast-forward to 2022, when the audio streaming chat app Clubhouse came
onto the scene and attracted large audiences . . . at first.
“At a micro level, when I think of all the alleged next-big-things, Clubhouse
symbolizes a lot of how hard it is to break the lock the big dogs like Meta,
Alphabet and Amazon have,” Warren said. “A lot of initial hype, some manu-
factured scarcity and then . . . kind of crickets.”
Storify.com was another tool that headed to the tech graveyard after enjoy-
ing great success – for a decade. Toasted by journalists, Storify was developed
by former Associated Press journalist Burt Herman when he was a Knight
Journalism Fellow at Stanford in 2009. His concept was simple: Create an
embeddable interface where journalists could pull from Twitter, Facebook,
Instagram and other social channels and add text and headlines to create
curated social media collections.
Storify allowed journalists to arrange social media posts chronologically or
as a narrative. So instead of doom scrolling or searching hashtags, the audience
could read social media for the first time as a story with context. It got to the
heart of what journalism does: select only the best information from a flood of
facts, and give the reader a well-rounded story.
My students and DePaul University and I were beta-testers for the tool
in 2009–2010 and continued using it after it launched on the full market.
We used it to cover breaking stories from the 2012 presidential election, the
NATO Summit in Chicago, local elections, feature stories and many more.

Figure 0.4 Storify social media curation tool

 Introduction 9

Herman’s Storify was lauded by news outlets all over the world for its abil-
ity to package social media posts in a more contextual way. Newsrooms used
it to cover violence and protests, crime and other breaking news stories. The
tool was purchased by LiveFyre in 2013, where it continued to thrive for sev-
eral more years until it was shuttered in May 2018. In its wake, a tool named
Wakelet has continued to fill the void for social media content curation.
Hernandez said “can’t-miss tech” comes and goes for journalists, and they
have to adapt as the industry changes. Many good apps and websites have
failed, not because they weren’t useful, but that they were mismanaged, strug-
gled to find a market foothold or had other issues.
“It’s been that way forever,” Hernandez said, “and there [is] no worse
feeling than when you fall in love with a technology solution and incorporate
parts of your life around it because it proves to be such a vital lynchpin for
adding utility to your life – only to see it acquired and shut down. Or it evolves
into something much different than you knew it to be, or the people behind it
stop maintaining it and it slowly dies.
“We wish we could get back all of the hours and perhaps dollars we’d
invested into making it work so well for us, and we can’t help but feel burned.”
In his newsroom, Hernandez cautions his staff not to get too fixated on
specific tools because of their proclivity to become obsolete. Tools come and
go, and technology only moves forward, not backward.
“The apps on our phone, the bookmarks on our browser, the peripheral
add-on equipment that adorn our gear – they all get replaced or simply moved
to the trash bin eventually,” he said.

Tools and Reporting

Digital tools and smartphone apps are never intended to replace boots-on-the-
ground field reporting. If anything, they enhance the reporting and editing
process and make journalists more productive. For example, a tool like Otter.
ai can transcribe a long interview in a matter of seconds, something that could
take hours back in the days of microcassette recorders. The service, which
offers up to 600 minutes of free transcription a month, is also cost-effective for
small newsrooms that can’t afford expensive manual transcription services or
that make the reporters do it themselves.
Search tools alone save reporters thousands of hours in research time.
What’s taken for granted today would have been a luxury half a century ago.
For example, one of the famous scenes in the movie “All the President’s Men”
shows Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein searching through thousands of
public records in the Library of Congress in the early 1970s as the camera
slowly pans out, telling us the reporters were working well into the night.
Today, that same records search could be done on the Library of Congress
website (loc.gov) in a matter of seconds.
The key is to make the tools work for you, not against you. Doom-scrolling
social media and noodling around on apps can be fun on your own time, but
are incredible time-wasters for journalists on the clock.
10 Introduction

AI Tools Are Game-Changers

Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools have existed for many years, but a flood of
new AI tools – ChatGPT-4, DALL-E, MidJourney, Google Bard and thou-
sands of others began to flood the market in late 2022 and early 2023.
This book will explore how AI tools are evolving, as well as legal and ethi-
cal issues that arise from them. They’re changing the workflow landscape for
journalists, particularly in smaller newsrooms that need automation to put
human resources elsewhere.
Caplan said journalists will capitalize on AI in five ways in the next few
years, building on prior experiments as the tech advances:

• Organizing. Reporters gather huge amounts of information, and AI will

increasingly help them find what they need using natural language queries.
Without having to manually file or tag notes, it’ll be easy to ask the system
to pull up all relevant quotes, facts and data related to a particular person,
topic or place without complex queries.
• Converting. AI can already help translate research and documents across
languages. It will go further in translating complexity by summarizing and
synthesizing the essential information. It will also help convert data into
preferred formats and convert images and video into text and audio for
assistive technology.
• Monitoring. Keeping tabs on government and corporate sites for changes
is already possible, but the capabilities in the realm of monitoring will grow
more robust, allowing reporters to monitor more subtle changes in envi-
ronmental and economic data over time. The monitoring may expand to
include noting changes in sound, light and water pollution, or even noting
changes in popular sentiment as measured by facial expressions shared on
social platforms.
• Analyzing. Reporters will use AI to take complex datasets and identify
outliers, and detect subtle patterns in data that might not have been oth-
erwise evident. AI may also be useful in the analysis of reader data. It may
be noted, for example, that readers of a particular newsletter have a much
greater interest in topic A than in topic B based on their open and click-
through patterns. This kind of analysis may be useful for the marketing and
monetization arms of news organizations.
• Presenting. AI will be helpful in generating charts, images, infographics
and even audio and video versions of stories to expand the reach and visual
impact of news – which you will learn to do in this book. AI may also aid
in the personalization of news, so that a reader can elect to receive story
summaries when busy or an audio version when commuting.

Teaching Digital Concepts, Not Just Tools

Digital trends are much more compelling for journalists than stand-alone
tools. They have real staying power that can last years and decades. As we
 Introduction 11

learned earlier in this Introduction, tools, especially apps, can be red-hot one
week and a deserted wasteland the next.
This textbook is targeted to college undergraduate and graduate students
and their instructors, as well as early to mid-career professionals seeking to
learn digital journalism skills. I’ve taught digital journalism skills to three gen-
erations of college students, and I use a tried-and-true approach: I teach jour-
nalism concepts, not tools.
For me, tools are a vehicle for journalists in their reporting, not a means to
an end. So when I teach, I use apps and other tools to expose students not just
to technology, but to great journalism lessons.
My students learn by doing. They publish on the website, The Red Line Pro-
ject (redlineproject.news), which I founded in 2012 while teaching at DePaul.
I combine old-school “shoe-leather reporting” – where students observe,
document, conduct interviews, etc., with “new school,” cutting-edge mobile
and digital storytelling techniques to produce data-driven and multimedia sto-
ries. Their stories are work samples that help them get internships and jobs.
I stress law and ethics in my tech-driven journalism classes. Students learn-
ing Photoshop must first study the National Press Photographers Association
Code of Ethics. They apply those ethics to photo editing (are we manipulating
the photo, or improving truth-telling of the image?) They also learn how to
fact-check images and deep-fake videos that may have been manipulated.

Figure 0.5 Intro RedLineProject.news home page during the 2023 Chicago mayoral
election
12 Introduction

Any student who has taken a class with me has a strong understanding of cop-
yright law, fair use and other legal issues that arise in journalism (libel, slander,
defenses, recording interviews, etc.) They also are taught how to protect themselves
if they are harassed online by trolls on social media or through other methods.
When teaching, sprinkle the ethics, editing and journalism into the software
lessons, and you have a captivated audience of students. Play a long slideshow
preaching ethics, and you lose your audience. My aforementioned approach
with Photoshop and ethics is a prime example of my approach: Teaching
strong journalism fundamentals in a modern way.
This approach proved beneficial at the start of the pandemic. After the out-
break, the University of Illinois Chicago moved all classes online through the
end of the 2020–2021 academic year. This left students to conduct interviews
over Zoom or Google Meet as much of the city was shut down. So rather
than publish Zoom video interviews – yawn! – I switched the students to
more audio-driven stories and taught them more audio editing, SoundCloud,
Headliner.app and other tools.
We also used Videoscribe to create whiteboard videos as we had little, if any,
B-roll available. We used those whiteboard videos to explain to readers how
mail-in voting worked for the 2020 election.
So whether you are teaching digital journalism, studying it or expanding
your tech skills as a professional journalist, I think you’ll find the lessons and
exercises in this book useful. Take advantage of the training videos, and you’ll
be building cutting-edge stories in no time.
I hope you enjoy reading this book as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Footnotes

Fast Company: The Once-Darling Social Service Storify Is Coming to an End: www.
fastcompany.com/40506878/why-the-once-darling-social-service-storify-is-
coming-to-an-end
The Journalist’s Toolbox AI Newsletter: https://journaliststoolbox.substack.com
The Journalist’s Toolbox AI YouTube Channel: https://bit.ly/toolboxvid
The Journalist’s Toolbox: www.journaliststoolbox.ai
Library of Congress Website: www.loc.gov
NPPA Code of Ethics: https://nppa.org/resources/code-ethics
The Red Line Project: https://redlineproject.news
The Red Line Project: 2020 Chicago Voters Guide: http://redlineproject.org/2020
votersguide.php
Startup Graveyard: https://startupgraveyard.io
Wonder Tools Newsletter: https://wondertools.substack.com
1 Reporting, Writing
and Editing

Key resources
iFOIA.org: https://ifoia.org
Our World in Data: https://ourworldindata.org
QuillBot: An AI-driven editing tool that paraphrases writing. https://quillbot.
com
Student Press Law Center Letter Generator: https://splc.org/lettergenerator
VisualPing: https://visualping.io
***
In the 1990s, Minneapolis Star-Tribune reporter Chris Graves spent a lot of
time with Minneapolis gang members and their families to get perspective
on the high number of murders in the city. People on the streets started call-
ing her “murder girl” and “Ms. Chris.” How they lived and what Graves saw
informed her reporting in countless ways.
“It provided a very different, rich and stark view of the violence on the
streets but also how often people were just trying to survive and get out
of the life,” she said. “I am more of a street reporter than anything, and so
I spent about 80–90 percent of my time out talking to people and knocking
on doors.”
Graves has sworn by a simple acronym during nearly three decades of cov-
ering the criminal justice beat for the Star-Tribune, the Cincinnati Enquirer
and the Lansing (Michigan) State Journal:
GOYAAKOD – Get Off Your Ass and Knock on Doors.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003431787-2
14 Reporting, Writing and Editing

“You talk to witnesses, suspects and crime victim survivors,” said Graves, a
Pulitzer Prize winner for her work on the Enquirer’s “Seven Days of Heroin”
project in 2017. “Not only does it make for richer, more meaningful and more
complete stories, it will also demonstrate hard work, which is valued by every
cop or investigator I have known.”
To be a good journalist, you have to get out in the field and report. Inter-
view people. Go to the scene of the crime, the public meeting or the event and
document what you see and hear. Your personal observation makes for better
descriptive writing and context in your stories. It helps you take the reader to
the forefront of breaking news. It takes them there, and builds trust with read-
ers and sources.
But field reporting comes with a technological twist, particularly with
mobile reporting tools. Reporters use technology to pull public records, ana-
lyze data, crowdsource on social media, shoot photos and video and post sto-
ries remotely from their phones.
An editor once told me the best tools a reporter has are the “two things
attached to your head – your ears.” Combine that with a pen, notebook,
smartphone and a few other apps and gadgets, and you can generate news
in ways we only dreamed of less than two decades ago. The tools we explore
in this book will complement the reporting, writing, editing and production
processes.
***

Working With Free Digital Tools

Mackenzie Warren, former director of digital strategy at Gannett, offers
young journalists four tips for working with free digital tools:

• Be a reporter first. This is the skill from which all else flows. Don’t
get caught up in the tools.
• Be a reader second. You know you spend 30 seconds or less on any-
thing you encounter online. Channel your own reading behaviors to
inform what you produce.
• Tell one story at a time, or make one comparison (X vs. Y axis)
at a time. If you have to explain what your tool is telling the reader,
you’ve made it more complicated than you need. Tools are there to
simplify, both for you and the reader.
 Reporting, Writing and Editing 15

• Quality over quantity. Just as you don’t need 50 photos to tell a

story when five will do, you don’t need endless maps, charts and
graphs on a single story. Be selective.

“At Gannett, we focused on tools that helped improve the reader experi-
ence for people at different places in the subscriber funnel,” Warren said.
“For example, search and social were high-priority tools for reaching sel-
dom- or first-time readers and welcoming them into the top of the fun-
nel. At the bottom, our most loyal, longtime, paying subscribers demand
depth and sophistication for the price of their subscription.
“Advanced data analysis tools that help make sense of complex,
­subscriber-only stories enhance the value of a subscription and improve
our retention at the bottom of the funnel.”

***

Getting Organized: Establish a Digital Workflow

Graves, now a professor of practice at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Col-
lege of Journalism and Mass Communications, said there’s no magic to setting
up a good reporting workflow. The process is tried and true: Research before
you go, and then research some more.
“I ask myself some basic questions before I go: What am I writing and
why?” she said. “What do I want or need to get from this source and when and
how are the best ways to do that?”
For longer stories, such as a murder case and trial that covered several years,
Graves keeps handy a high-level timeline and short bios of the key players she’s
writing about. Both can make for good sidebars to the main stories, but it also
keeps her focused and provides quick reference when writing updated stories
over a period of months or even years.
Graves keeps a couple files for magazine pieces – usually a spreadsheet of
each of her sources, their title, phone number and email, when she contacts
them and each time she follows-up. She also does this with longer daily pieces,
but keeps the information in a Google Doc.
To stay organized, she builds a separate folder for images, maps, data, records,
etc., so she can access them quickly either to embed in stories and as a reporting
resource. She uses her photos as reference when she’s writing – to take her back
to an area, to describe a scene or look closely at what she observed.
“I also almost always ask subjects to share their own photos so I can enhance
or enrich my stories,” she said. “I take photos or their photos and use them.”
Graves said she’s the first to admit she goes overboard with preparation
and planning for field reporting. She packs the trunk of her car with supplies
that can help her handle almost any situation while reporting in the field. She
16 Reporting, Writing and Editing

often travels with her University of Nebraska-Lincoln students when reporting

domestically and abroad.

What to Pack
First and foremost, Graves brings an iPhone equipped with a recording device
such as Otter.ai, either on the phone or laptop. For extremely important inter-
views, she brings a secondary recording device as backup for her iPhone in
case there’s a glitch or the battery runs out.
She also packs two Jackery external batteries to keep her devices fully
charged. At the very least, she says journalists should have a car phone charger
for both the laptop and phone. When reporting in more remote areas, she
keeps a small solar-panel generator in her car that can charge everything.
“This is overkill for some, but I have been saved more times than not while
on the road reporting,” she said. “I also carry an electrical strip that includes
USB ports in my car that can plug into the Jackery and my car’s battery if
I need more outlets.”
If recording for radio or a podcast, Graves suggests bringing a podcast
recording tool, such as a Marantz recorder. This is incredibly important if you
need clean sound for radio or podcasts, which you can almost never get with
Otter or an iPhone. She also packs SD cards or an external hard drive to back
up files; especially photo/video.
Graves also has the online AP Stylebook open on a laptop browser tab
next to the file where she’s writing, making it easy to look things up. She
also suggests carrying several different versions of notebooks: a small one
that fits in your back pocket (out of sight), a reporter’s notebook and a
Steno notebook. Make sure to bring several pencils and pens; pencils are
incredibly important in climates with a lot of rain and/or cold. Ink freezes
and smudges.
She recommends carrying a printed atlas or at least a map in case you’re in
a remote location where Google Maps doesn’t work.
To stay organized, Graves suggests using a Google Drive file-naming sys-
tem that makes sense for stories, photos and video. Be sure to check with edi-
tors for a specific naming system, but this is an example of a good one:

• Assignment_(Name)_Date_StorySlugNOTES
• Assignment_Names_(Dates)_Story slug

Another good field-reporting tip: Reporters covering disasters such as wildfires

often struggle to find Wi-Fi access and can find a good signal at a Starbucks,
even in the middle of the night when they’re closed. Starbucks leaves its Wi-Fi
on after hours and it’s accessible if you pull up in front or work outdoors at
a table outside the coffeehouse. It’s been tested many times over the years by
reporters who cannot boost a cell signal or get a hotspot to work.
***
 Reporting, Writing and Editing 17

Get the News in the Lead

As students at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Graves and I took an
Advanced Reporting class in the fall of 1987 with two professors: Al Pagel
and Dick Streckfuss. Their course was the make-or-break bootcamp class for
college juniors in the 1980s. If you survived, you moved on to internships and
glory. If you didn’t, it might be time to change your major.
Pagel was a short, fiery guy who had a striking resemblance and apprecia-
tion for Ernest Hemingway. Streckfuss, Pagel’s sidekick in the dual-lecturer
course, was tall, lean and could fill a room with his voice. Pagel was a writing
savant, a storyteller and former Miami Herald medical reporter. Streckfuss
had a firm grip on usage, style and the mechanics of writing a good news
story.
They were also pretty damn funny.
I sat across from Graves in the course, and marveled at how the two pro-
fessors inspired us to “write drunk and edit sober” – meaning we should take
twice the time to edit and rewrite our work than it took to write it in the first
place. It’s a process Graves and I follow more than three decades later.
One day, Pagel was making a passionate point about “getting the damn
news in the lead” of a story. To drive home this point, he asked Streckfuss to
stand on a table and hold his hands together over his head.
“He’s the bell tower,” Pagel said. “One if by land, two if by sea.”
Pagel went on to tell the story of Paul Revere, and how he broadcast the
news that the “redcoats are coming” from town to town during the Revolu-
tionary War. Revere was a good reporter. He got the news in the lead. Three
words. Concise, and to the point. He dropped the news and rode on to the
next town.
“Now imagine where this country would be,” Pagel said. “If Paul Revere
wrote news leads like some of you.”
Pagel began to gallop around the room like he was riding a horse. He rode
past Streckfuss, who was still on the table, and yelled, “I have some news” and
galloped out of the classroom.
Our class was rolling in laughter but the professors, in their own comical
way, had made their point: Get the damn news in the lead.
This is particularly true today, when writing for online, and especially
mobile, audiences that have precious seconds to skim an article to decide if
they want to read it.
That rule is one of nine that journalist and author Paul Bradshaw outlines
so eloquently in his blog post, “Nine Common Mistakes When Writing for
The Web and What to Do About Them.”

1. Getting straight to the most newsworthy, interesting piece of informa-

tion in your first paragraph. This was Streckfuss and Pagel’s point: Get to
the point. Anecdotal leads work well for long-form stories or news features,
but not for a breaking news piece. Focus your lead in 25–30 words. KISS:
Keep It Simple Sweetheart.
18 Reporting, Writing and Editing

2. Linking to your source whenever you refer to a piece of information/

fact. You’ve done all that research, now work it into the story by hotlink-
ing to it. Write what you know (reporting/interviews) and link to the rest
(background research).
3. Linking phrases, NOT putting in full URLs (e.g. “http://university.
ac.uk/report” instead of “a report.” Hotlinking is a challenge for some
journalists. Look for proper nouns, short phrases, descriptions and attribu-
tion as targets for hotlinks. Try to avoid linking an entire sentence; just four
to five words, maximum.
4. Indenting quotes by using the blockquote option. Have a great quote
from an interview? Highlight it in your story using the blockquote option
in your content management system. This is similar to a pullout quote in
newspapers and magazines.
5. Using brief paragraphs – starting a new one for each new point. I employ
the “1-Through-Five Rule” of paragraph writing: 1 idea, 2–3 sentences, 4–5
typed lines per paragraph. It reminds me to keep my paragraphs concise. This
is important for readers who are looking at your story on a mobile device.
Large blocks of text reduce the readers’ ability to retain the information.
6. Use a literal headline that makes sense in search results and includes
keywords that people might be looking for, NOT general or punny
headlines. Writing search engine-optimized (SEO) headlines can be a bit
boring. But writing a short one (75 characters or less) with keywords will
help drive traffic to your story. Structure them in a subject-verb-object (who
did what) and not a label or title.
7. Split up your article with subheadings. For longer stories, the subheads
help the reader identify key parts of the article and break up the blocks of
text. Listicle articles also do this well.
8. End your post with a call to action and/or indication of what infor-
mation is missing or what will happen next. This is key for audience
engagement. Ask them a question at the end of the article and show them
how to respond. Give them resources to find more information. Embed an
interactive chart or map. Give the reader something to do.
9. Embedding linked media such as tweets, Facebook updates, YouTube
videos, audio or images. Leverage your digital platform by doing what a
print publication cannot: be interactive. We’ll explore tools to do this in
several chapters of this book.

Great Reporting = Great Writing

Another lesson Graves and I learned from Pagel and Streckfuss: Great
reporting drives great writing. If you cannot research, pull public records,
interview sources and gather information, then your story won’t work. It
doesn’t matter how talented of a writer you are. If you cannot report, you
won’t have a story.
“This simply can not be overstated,” said Graves, reflecting on the class so
many years later. “It is as simple as it is complex: You can not write what you
do not know, what you have not heard, what you have not seen.
 Reporting, Writing and Editing 19

Figure 1.1 Chris Graves (right) reporting in the field

Source: Photo courtesy Meg Vogel

“Again, I could write chapters and chapters on this. If there is a secret sauce
to this work it is: Deep, rich, emphatic reporting that is so hard it sometimes
hurts. You can never know too much, you can never report too much.”
That’s why Graves lives by the “Get Off Your Ass and Knock on Doors”
approach. Sit with people and listen, see where and how they live. Have them
show you pictures and tell you their stories from their life.
“This is true of sources, too,” she said. “Go to the morgue, ask to watch an
autopsy. Spend a day in court or with probation officers on his rounds.
“I remember hanging out for a week or so with a child protection officer
[social worker] on her daily rounds just a few years ago. I had no idea the
amount of work and difficulties and situations they are in. I went with home-
less advocates when they were doing the homeless counts and then went
back again to talk to the homeless people to ask them their input on being
‘counted.’ ”

Covering Big Stories

In 2016, Graves began reporting on the Pike County (Ohio) mass killings for
the Enquirer. Among the stories she has filed over the years was a deep dive
into the investigation in November 2016. Since then, she has filed dozens of
stories about the killings, appeared on documentaries talking about it, started
writing a book and covered the trial in 2023.
Covering a major story over several years requires next-level organization.
Graves covered the trial by keeping a spreadsheet of who was testifying in
20 Reporting, Writing and Editing

order, with ages, key details of testimony and background with links to her
testimony files recorded and archived in Otter. At the end of the day, she
would set up her laptop with testimony of mostly key witnesses and capture an
audio file with transcripts from her Otter files. She would link that file to her
testimony spreadsheet.
Before the trial, she captured several key stories she wrote in 2016 and kept
them for quick reference in a Google Doc. Having that archive at her finger-
tips has proven valuable, she said.
***

Public Records Reporting

Graves also has to research and request public records as a reporter. Court
documents are public records, as are crime logs, zoning permits, nonprofit
Form 990 tax documents and millions of municipal, state and federal docu-
ments that reporters can use to strengthen their stories.
Government agencies, such as your state’s attorney general, EPA, secre-
tary of state and local municipalities, are in charge of caretaking these public
documents. The agencies have public information officers who are tasked with
helping anyone – reporters, attorneys, businesses, the general public – acquire
the public documents.
Typically, reporters will visit the agency’s website to see if the records have
been posted online. Some records are maintained in data portals, such as the
City of Chicago Data Portal. These portals are rich in data and stories. They
include shape files of bus and train routes, city council districts, police pre-
cincts, and other data that can be mapped. They house crime data dating
back decades. They also include more routine information that can help with
reporting: pothole repairs, restaurant inspections, towed vehicles, red-light
and speed camera locations, public health data and much more.
Most sites make it easy to download the files you need. Others put them
in HTML “tables” that require you to scrape them (see the training videos in
Chapter 5 to learn how to do that.)
But many government agencies aren’t cooperative, and won’t hand over the
records through a portal or through an email or call to the public informa-
tion officer. In that case, you’ll need to file a Freedom of Information Request
(FOI) with the agency. The process varies by country, even state, but most
U.S. agencies have 30 days to respond to the request. If denied, the journalist
can file an appeal or tweak the original request and refile it.
According to the U.S. National Archives, FOI (5 U.S.C. 552, as amended),
provides any person with the statutory right to request information from exec-
utive branch agencies of the U.S. government. This right of access is subject
to nine statutory FOI exemptions, which provide agencies the authority to
withhold records in whole or in part. FOI requesters may appeal any such
 Reporting, Writing and Editing 21

withholding, or other adverse decision, back to the agency, and may also file a
lawsuit to seek redress in federal court. Before going to court, requesters are
encouraged to contact the agency’s FOI Public Liaison at any time for assis-
tance, and to utilize mediation services offered by the Office of Government
Information Services (OGIS).
There are many FOI form letters available with a basic Google search. You
can download them as Word or Google documents and simply fill out the
form and send to the agency by either email or registered U.S. mail. But there
are some free websites that help reporters not only write the letters but track
them; iFOIA.org from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press is
one of the best, as well as the Student Press Law Center Public Records Letter
Generator.
Once you set up a free account on iFOIA.org, you can use several pulldown
menus to select the agency and letter you want to use. When filling out the let-
ter, be sure to be very specific about the records you want and in what format
you want them sent (Excel, Word, shapefile, etc.)

Triangulating journalistic sources: data, documents and human sources

Figure 1.2 
work in concert with one another when reporting a story
Source: Ilustration by Billy O’Keefe
22 Reporting, Writing and Editing

Be specific about the type of record you want, what dates the records cover
and what the topic is. Simply asking for “all of the mayor’s email correspond-
ence” is too broad. However, requesting the mayor’s emails over the past
three years discussing the public funding of a new bridge with the city’s chief
financial officer is more specific and gives the agency a better roadmap to find
the records. This typically cuts down on denials.
To get you started, here are some broad public records search por-
tals and other tools you can incorporate into your public records reporting
immediately.

Candid 990 Finder: https://candid.org/research-and-verify-nonprofits/990-

finder
Census Explorer: https://data.census.gov/cedsci/
You can use Census.gov, but I’ve found Explorer to be a great shortcut.
CensusReporter.org: https://censusreporter.org/
From IRE, Investigative Reporters and Editors. Best for pulling Census data
as it has been cleaned and is ready to use.
Data.gov: www.data.gov/
Search federal public records.
Data Portals.org: http://dataportals.org
Document Cloud: www.documentcloud.org/home
An all-in-one platform for storing public documents: upload, organize, ana-
lyze, annotate, search, and embed. In early 2023, it introduced “add-ons,”
tools that let you transcribe audio, monitor websites, extract personal iden-
tification information embedded in large files and peer through weak black-
out redactions.
FiveThirtyEight Data Lab Blog: http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/
Nate Silver’s team offers many cool datasets here and tips on how to find/
analyze them.

Google Dataset Search: https://toolbox.google.com/datasetsearch

This micro-search tool from Google searches only for data, and provides a
short background about the datasets provided by the organization or per-
son who produced it.
Google Pinpoint: https://journaliststudio.google.com/pinpoint/about
Organize and analyze large collections of documents. Search PDFs for key-
words, transcribe audio, extract text from images.
Guidestar.org: www.guidestar.org/Home.aspx
OpenPrism.ThomasLevine.com: http://openprism.thomaslevine.com/
Search data portals from all over the world with one keywords set.
 Reporting, Writing and Editing 23

Our World in Data: https://ourworldindata.org

Census, health, environment and other datasets from all over the world.
ProPublica Data Store: https://projects.propublica.org/data-store
ProPublica NonProfit Explorer: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits
SEC EDGAR Database: www.sec.gov/edgar/searchedgar/companysearch.html
Search this site to find quarterly and annual publicly traded companies.
USA Facts: https://usafacts.org/
A collection of government-gathered data on a wide range of topics, including
business data, from a non-partisan, non-profit organization.
US Data Portals: https://github.com/sunlightpolicy/opendata/blob/master
/USlocalopendataportals.csv
Violation Tracker: www.goodjobsfirst.org/violation-tracker
A wide-ranging database on corporate misconduct. Produced by the Corpo-
rate Research Project of Good Jobs First, it covers banking, consumer pro-
tection, false claims, environmental, wage and hour, safety, discrimination,
price-fixing, and other cases resolved by federal regulatory agencies and all
parts of the Justice Department since 2000 – plus cases from state AGs and
selected state regulatory agencies.
World Bank: Projects by Country: https://projects.worldbank.org/en/
projects-operations/project-country?lang=en&page=
Look up what countries are spending on COVID-19, development projects
and more. Click on the “documents” and “procurement” tabs once you’ve
selected the country, and download the PDFs.

You also can find datasets shared by many newsrooms, including the Washing-
ton Post, New York Times, Chicago Tribune and others. Most will link to the
datasets from stories and graphics, or post them on their Github pages.
***

Finding Expert Sources

One of the biggest challenges for young reporters is finding expert sources
to quote in stories. Over time, you’ll build out detailed lists of expert sources
as you do more stories and interviews. Some reporters turn to colleagues for
recommendations, or pull experts used in previous stories on the topic. But
quoting the same people over and over doesn’t serve your audience.
It’s particularly important to use a diverse group of experts in your stories
regardless of topic. Are you quoting mostly men? Women? What experiences
or ethnicities have you talked to for a story? Getting a good cross-section of
the community – not just with people you’re covering, but also the experts – is
the best way to reach a broader audience.
24 Reporting, Writing and Editing

Figure 1.3 Google Scholar search result for voter redistricting

Many newsrooms now track diversity in their coverage. They look at cross-
sections of the community, how they’re quoted, where they appear (stories/
photos) and that includes expert sources.
Always be sure to vet your expert sources. Read beyond their bio and search
their name. Have they been in trouble before? Are they being paid by a com-
pany to shape what they tell you (a common practice among medical experts)?
Search for them in Google Scholar, a micro-search site that searches two areas
of the web: academic journal article databases and case law. Where have they
been published, if at all?
Google Scholar also is good at finding new expert sources. Just select the
area you want to search by hitting the radio button underneath the search
field, then type in the keywords you want to search (topic or expert’s name).
You’ll find results to the right and filters on a sidebar down the left side. You
can filter by specific dates. You can bookmark articles by clicking the star but-
ton underneath them to add them to your library for later reference.
In the search results, the article author names are often linked to their bios
and contact information. Just contact the person for an interview. This is a
great way for young journalists to build an expert sources list.
Besides Scholar, here are some other databases you can use to find expert
sources:

AAJA Studio – AAPI Sources: https://aajastudio.org/

The Asian American Journalist Association’s curated directory offers news-
rooms a platform to connect with trusted AAPI media leaders, established
policy experts, academics and community leaders.
Coursera Expert Network: https://experts.coursera.org/
Connects journalists with experts from top universities.
 Reporting, Writing and Editing 25

DiverseSources.org: https://diversesources.org/
Database of experts features underrepresented voices and perspectives in sci-
ence, health and environment work.
ExpertFile: https://expertfile.com/experts
A journalist looking for credible sources can access this searchable directory of
experts in knowledge-based organizations in a curated network of experts
on over 30,000 unique topics.
Expertise Finder: https://expertisefinder.com/
Look up experts in various fields with this network.
NPR Diverse Sources Database: https://training.npr.org/sources/
Find experts from racial and ethnic groups underrepresented in the media.
Includes a featured “source of the week.”
People of Color Also Know Stuff: https://sites.google.com/view/pocexperts/
home
This online platform connects journalists with subject matter experts and peo-
ple of color who have stories to tell. POC uses customized matching to
connect journalists with a diverse pool of potential interviewees.
SciLine: www.sciline.org
An editorially independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit service for journalists and
scientists. Its goal is to help get more science into news stories. It connects
reporters quickly to scientific experts and validates evidence. It works with
scientists to amplify their expertise and help them give voice to the facts. It’s
fully funded by philanthropies, and everything it does is free.
Sources of Color: https://sourcesofcolor.com
Journalists, PR pros and diverse experts all in one place. This site is a partner-
ship with SPJ, PRSA and other organizations. The site is free for journalists
but charges PR pros.
Women’s Media Center SheSource: https://womensmediacenter.com/shesource/
An online database of media-experienced experts available for interviews in all
mediums.

***
26 Reporting, Writing and Editing

Journalist’s Toolbox: Find Diverse Expert Sources

Learn how to find experts using online databases to better source your
stories.
Diversity Tools and Experts: www.journaliststoolbox.org/category/
diversity-issues
Expert Source Databases: www.journaliststoolbox.org/category/expert-
sources
Video: Expert Databases: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tbq90HOz0R4
Video: How to Find Diverse Sources: www.youtube.com/watch?v=
18KrDA__0HY

***

Using Transcription Tools to Speed Reporting

As any reporter who used a tape recorder prior to 2007 will attest, one of the
best digital tools ever created has been the transcription apps and sites. Tools
such as Otter.ai, Descript and many others have saved reporters thousands of
hours transcribing interviews.
Graves finds Otter particularly helpful when transcribing interviews for
longer, in-depth stories where the interview could have been weeks earlier.
Her interviews typically last a long time, sometimes hours, and she approaches
interviews in a conversational way.
“I love to audio record my subjects to hear their voice again, the tenor and
timing, as well as to get their cadence down when I am quoting them,” Graves
said. “Hearing my interviews again is a way to ‘go back’ to the time and place
of an interview.”
Adam Rittenberg, an award-winning national college football writer for
ESPN.com and ESPN+ for more than 15 years, said Otter’s mobile app “has
been a game-changer for me.”
“I can record interviews and see a live transcription, and then refer back
quickly for quotes,” said Rittenberg, who works both on quick-turn daily sto-
ries and longer, in-depth pieces. “Although the transcriptions aren’t always
accurate, they provide a baseline and significantly reduce my time to identify
and use quotes for stories, especially on deadline.”
Rittenberg touched on one of the big drawbacks for using transcription
tools – accuracy. Reporters still need to take good notes and listen closely
to interviews as the transcription software sometimes misspells words, skips
words, etc.
Another drawback is security. Many of them offer free versions in exchange
for sharing your data with third-party sources. This is particularly troublesome
for investigative reporters who interview on-background sources or victims
 Reporting, Writing and Editing 27

of crimes. The potential of the person’s name or parts of the interview being
leaked are realities.
This issue was chronicled in a Feb. 16, 2022, Politico post titled “My ​​ jour-
ney down the rabbit hole of every journalist’s favorite app.” Reporter Phelim
Kine wrote, “We make privacy versus utility tradeoffs all the time with our tech.
We know Facebook sells our data, but we still post baby pictures. We allow
Google maps access to our location, even though we know it leaves an indel-
ible digital trail. And even savvy, skeptical journalists who take robust efforts
to protect sources have found themselves in the thrall of Otter, a transcription
app powered by artificial intelligence, and which has virtually eliminated the
once-painstaking task of writing up interview notes. That’s an overlooked vul-
nerability that puts data and sources at risk, say experts.”
Kine continued: “Otter and its competitors, which include Descript,
Rev, Temi and the U.K.-based Trint, are digital warehouses whose advan-
tages of speed and convenience are bracketed by what experts say can be lax
privacy and security protections that may endanger sensitive text and audio
data, the identities of reporters and the potentially vulnerable sources they
contact.”
Trint, Otter, Temi and Rev all claim compliance with all or part of the user
data protection and storage standards of the European Union’s flagship data
privacy law, the General Data Protection Regulation. But cybersecurity experts
say that the sharing of user data with third parties creates privacy and security
vulnerabilities.
Otter “shares your personal data with a whole host of people, including
mobile advertising tracking providers, so it strikes me that there’s an awful lot
of personal data and the potential for leakage of sources for journalists,” Paul
Rosenzweig, former deputy assistant secretary for policy in the Department of
Homeland Security, and founder of Red Branch Consulting, told Kine. “They
also quite clearly say that they respond to legal obligation [law enforcement
data requests], so any journalist who transcribes an interview with a confiden-
tial source and puts it up on Otter has got to live with the possibility that Otter
will wind up giving that transcript to the FBI.”
So the best advice for reporters using transcription tools: Proceed at your
own risk. The tools are fine for routine interviews, covering public meetings,
etc. But think twice before using them with sensitive stories and interview
subjects. In those cases, transcribe it the old-fashioned way – by playing the
audio back and retyping what is said.
“If I need to record sensitive information, I don’t use a cloud-based sys-
tem,” Graves said. “I use a recorder and then transcribe the parts that I need
later). Or I just use handwritten notes.”
Graves said transcription tools are helpful but can waste a ton of time. She
finds that taking physical notes still is a tried-and-true way to interview subjects –
especially in person.
“It is my first best editing on-the-fly approach,” she said. “It also signals to
my sources that I am working and we are not just talking. When they see me
28 Reporting, Writing and Editing

writing, they know I am engaging, listening and taking notes. I often only use
my transcripts to confirm context and check for accurate quotes – which is
what I find recording the best for these days.”
Graves requires her University of Nebraska-Lincoln journalism students to
use Otter.ai or another transcription when they are conducting all their inter-
views. She wants them to use it only to check quotes and for context when
they are writing. She also requires them to take handwritten notes. In her
more advanced reporting and writing courses, they are required to upload the
audio file, the transcript and their handwritten notes with full source name and
contact information.
“I spot check these files and use these files to fact-check their work when
I am grading,” she said. “I want to begin using the audio in my report-
ing classes as a tool on contextualizing quotes and best practices or using
examples of when interrupting a source can change the direction of an
interview.”
***

Transcription Without Tech

An old reporter’s trick for transcribing interviews: Unless you absolutely
have to, don’t transcribe the entire interview. Just transcribe some of
the key quotes you’ll need for the story. This is extremely important on
deadline stories such as sports, late meetings or election night.
But how do you do it? As you’re recording the interview, keep track
of the time code on the recorder. In your notebook, list the times when
an interesting quote starts or ends, and work forward or backward from
there.
This will save many hours of time with transcriptions. With experi-
ence, you’ll get better at flagging the strong quotes in your notes and
become even more efficient.

***

Using Otter.ai
Otter is considered the Ferrari of transcription tools for its accuracy, speed and
ease of use. It’s available as both a desktop tool and phone app, the latter is
popular with reporters working in the field.
The tool has a variety of pricing plans based on the number of minutes of
audio transcribed. At the time this book was published, Otter offered 600 free
minutes of transcription a month, more than enough for most reporters.
 Reporting, Writing and Editing 29

Figure 1.4 Otter.ai transcription of 2013 Barack Obama speech

The interface is simple once you log in to the desktop tool. There are
two buttons in the upper right corner of the interface: Record and Import.
Hit Record if you are recording it live; hit Import if you’re uploading a pre-
recorded audio file (it accepts several file types).
Otter’s machine learning recognizes different voices and will label them as
Speaker 1, 2, 3, etc., so it’s easy to transcribe a Q&A format interview. Once
the recording is done, you have to select Transcribe, wait a few minutes (sec-
onds if the interview is short) and your transcription will appear.
For a pre-recorded interview, just hit the Import button and upload it. In
the example below, I uploaded a speech President Barack Obama delivered on
gun control at Hyde Park High School in Chicago in 2013 (Figure 1.4). The
transcription was nearly flawless, even with name spellings. It even picked up
Obama’s habit of saying “um” as he transitions to new topics.
Even with a good transcription tool, a reporter and editor must go over
the text closely and edit for mistakes. Many transcription tools struggle with
accents, or confuse words such as to, two and too, as well as their, there and
they’re. The AI/machine learning have helped since the early days of apps like
Dragon Dictation, but mistakes still slip through. Take the time to edit care-
fully and save yourself trouble down the road.
***
30 Reporting, Writing and Editing

Videos: How to Use Transcription Tools

Learn how to use free and paid tools to transcribe audio interviews.
Descript: www.youtube.com/watch?v=JF_fEz0EcJk
Otter.ai and Google Docs Voice Typing: www.youtube.com/watch?v=
51Qexcb3dA8

***

Other Transcription Tools

There are many Otter competitors on the market. Zoom can transcribe inter-
views recorded over the computer and phone app with great accuracy.
Descript, a multipurpose video and audio editing tool, offers a strong audio
transcription tool . . . with a twist. With Descript, you can embed your tran-
scription into a story by an audio player with it. So readers can play the audio
and read through the transcription at the same time, similar to what National
Public Radio does with its in-house audio tools on its website.
Veteran business reporter Becky Yerak uses Voice Typing in Google Docs
when covering court hearings. She found it particularly helpful during a five-
week Boy Scouts bankruptcy hearing in early 2022. She used Voice Typing on
her desktop and laptop at home.
To use it, she typed in “docs.new” to her browser window, which imme-
diately opened a new Google Doc. Reporters find this useful when they need
to open a document quickly to take notes on an interview. The shortcut saves
time.
Once she opened the document, she went to the tools menu (Figure 1.5)
and selected “Voice typing” in the pulldown menu. That activates a micro-
phone icon to the left of the screen that reads “Click to speak.”
Voice Typing’s range is under six feet, so when Yerak hit the button to start,
she had to repeat what the subject was saying.
“I basically repeated in a loud clear voice what different participants, includ-
ing the judge and various lawyers and witnesses, were saying,” she said. “It
helps if and when the people speaking don’t speak too rapidly. If you’re using
it, you must repeat their words loudly and clearly to ensure the Google Voice
Typing feature picks them up.”
The accuracy, and the cleanup required, depends on the pace of the peo-
ple speaking, Yerak said, and how clearly you speak their words into your
computer.
“You really need to watch what is being typed when you speak so you can
jump in and fix any big errors or omissions in key parts of the hearing,” she
said. “Also, occasionally, the typing occasionally stops, so you need to reacti-
vate it. Overall, there is quite a bit of cleanup but I tend to repeat a lot of what
was said.”
 Reporting, Writing and Editing 31

Figure 1.5 Google Voice Typing

She said the tool saved her many hours of work while covering the mara-
thon hearing.
***

Editing Your Work and Writing Headlines

Copy editors and web producers are typically tasked with editing and writing
headlines for stories once the reporter files it. They also add keywords, meta-
data and other behind-the-scenes coding to make stories searchable. But with
shrinking newsroom budgets, many reporters must write their own headlines
and self-edit much of their work.
If you are editing your own story, it’s best to step away from it for a min-
ute, clear your head and then start the editing process. Begin by just reading
the story start to finish, without editing anything. Read it as the reader would
see it for the first time. Then make your editing pass, fixing grammar, AP
Style, punctuation, usage, spelling, etc. Make a second pass through for fact-
checking names, data and hotlinks. Run grammar and spellcheck. Write the
headline last, though some editors sometimes start headlines after their first
reading pass. It’s up to you.
For longer, non-deadline stories, some reporters and editors will print out
a story and edit it by hand. This obviously isn’t a good process for every story,
but it can be an effective approach for in-depth stories that need extra care.
Backlit screens often make eyes lazy, and editors can catch mistakes on paper
that they would mess up when editing on a screen.
There are many free tools on the market to help with editing and head-
line writing. For example, Thsrs: The Shorter Thesaurus (www.ironicsans.
com/thsrs) lets you type in a word such as “terminate” and it will give you
32 Reporting, Writing and Editing

Figure 1.6 Search result for shorter synonyms for terminate using Thsrs.com

synonyms, but only words that are shorter than the word you just typed in. In
this case, words such as “stop” and “cease” appear underneath the search field.
This tool is valuable for reporters stuck with writer’s block or for copy edi-
tors writing short, one-column headlines for print (need a shorter word for
“purchase” to make that headline fit? Try “buy.”) It’s also useful for digital
editors writing search engine optimized headlines – Google and other search
engines like short headlines – and for writing short titles on infographics,
charts and maps.

Headline Hero (www.headlinehero.io) is another free headline-writing tool for

editors. Its simple interface lets you paste story copy and settings (length,
keywords to include, type of headline, etc.) and it will generate some good
headline options for you. I don’t use this AI-driven tool all of the time, but
it’s an excellent option if you’re stuck.
Lose the Very (www.losethevery.com/#) is a great tool for editors to share
with new reporters that love to use “very” as an adjective or adverb in their
writing. Have them type the term into the interface and see what they get
in return.

AI tools: Editors are slowly beginning to use tools like ChatGPT for editing.
You must fact-check any AI-generated content for plagiarism, falsehoods, out-
dated information and biased or made-up information. Think of AI as making
suggestions: You can accept or reject them the same way you would grammar
check or spell check. Remember, AI should work for you, not vice versa. For
example, use ChatGPT to take a confusing paragraph and prompt it to “please
clarify this text.” The response sometimes clears up the author’s intended
meaning. There are more AI exercises in Chapters 9, 10 and 11.
Here are some more turnkey editing and reporting tools and techniques
you can implement into your workflow immediately:
 Reporting, Writing and Editing 33

Docs.new and Sheets.new

Need a new Google Sheet and don’t have time to hit the New button in
Google Drive? Just type “sheets.new” into the browser field and a new
sheet will open. This also works for docs.new for Google Docs and Draw-
ing.new for Google Drawing.
QuillBot: https://quillbot.com/
An AI-driven editing tool that paraphrases writing.
Travel Time Map: https://app.traveltime.com/
Estimates travel time by driving, walking, public transport, etc. Good for con-
firming timelines in investigative or crime stories.
VisualPing: https://visualping.io/
Track website updates. Enter a URL and it sends you an update when a
website has been updated. It gives you five free searches per month, then
switches to a tiered subscription model. Distill.io is another tool that
tracks website updates. Training video on VisualPing: www.youtube.com/
watch?v=EYnSXaMr8B8

Find more editing tools in this book’s Fact-Checking chapter addendum.

Chapter 1 Transcript: Headline Hero and Editing Tools

Everyone, welcome to another training. My name is Mike Reilley, the founder
of JournalistsToolbox.ai. This is a resource website with all kinds of differ-
ent AI tools in it. Everything from creating videos and images to data tools,
ChatGPT, plug-ins, all kinds of fun things. One of the sections in here is AI
writing and editing tools. In there you will find writing tools at the top and a
little lower on the page, you’ll find the editing tools, and prompt-writing tools
as well.
The editing tools are down here, and this is what we’re going to talk about
today. We’re going to work with some of the tools off of this webpage. So if
you go to JournalistsToolbox.ai, “journalists” plural, you’ll come to this page,
and just select a writing and editing tool. And you will have all the resources
you will ever need for writing and editing for the web.
Here’s our handout for today. You might want to hit the pause button to
open this up: bit.ly/ai editing tools. I’ve selected a handful of the tools right
here as well as the journals toolbox AI tools. If you want to hit pause here and
open up this document and then open up all these tools so you have every-
thing open and can use them all right, welcome back. You should now have
all these editing tools open. These are free tools. Some of them are freemium
accounts that have paid upgrades that we’ll look into in a minute. But most of
them are free tools that anybody can use on the web.
I’m going to give you a couple of exercises with these, and these are the sto-
ries I’ve got pasted below here. You also can use your own stories as well. So it
really doesn’t matter, but if you want to follow along, the first tool we’re going
34 Reporting, Writing and Editing

to work with is called Headline Hero. And I like this tool; it’s very simple to
use. You can paste your story in here. It is a little limited on the length of the
story you can fit in there. I’ve gotten a few hundred words in there.
It’s good for breaking news stories, and especially if you’re stuck on writing
a headline. It’s really good for SEO-driven headlines, if you keep the length
of the headline a little shorter up here. It’ll work a little better for print head-
lines if you take the maximum characters, you know, down to 30 to 60. You
know, you’re probably going to get a better print headline than you would if
you’re up pretty high here. This would be a very high-end SEO headline, very
long SEO headline. I’ve tried to keep my SEO headlines between, you know,
70 and maybe 85. Right in there, 70 to 90. You can select what words you
want to make sure that appear in the headline. You also can exclude words.
You can do it in the form of a question or a quote. I’m not big on that, but
especially with news stories. I don’t like gimmicky headlines, especially with
­straightforward news. But I can paste my story in here and select a couple of
keywords that I want included in the headline, typically proper nouns that
appear in the story. So here’s a practice story, and you can do this with one of
your own as well.
I’ve got this this little short story a student has been working on about the
Chicago Transit Authority, ridership on the buses and the El trains has been
waning since the start of the pandemic and continues to.
So I’ve just pasted that story in here. And I can go through, and I want
to have two words appear here: CTA, which is our abbreviation for Chicago
Transit Authority, and then also ridership. I’ll make sure those two appear, and
I could do other things too. I could include pandemic or COVID-19. And
here I can have it generate however many headlines you want if you just want
three or four or five as a maximum. So I’ve got the story in, I’m gonna give it
between 70 and 90 characters, a little shorter headline. Good SEO range, so
Google and other search engines don’t cut off the headline right in the middle.
Now hit generate.
And with any AI tool, consider this a suggestion. Don’t let it write the
headlines for you. But if you’re stuck, and you really need a little help and
need to think through it a bit. You can go through and do this exercise and
it’ll help you. Let’s see how they did here. They gave us five of them here. It’s
a nice little copy button here, and you just copy and paste out of it gives you
the character length went a little high with a little on the high end of our range
here, would like to have seen it give me something a little shorter, but I can
always take some words out.
This one here is pretty good: CTA’s post-pandemic struggles with ridership
and safety concerns continue to persist. As you read through the story, it’s got
quite a few of those issues in the story, which is pretty good one; this one’s
I think is a little off-base long-term impact. So you vet these and edit them
into what you want. You know you could still do some rewriting with it with
the headlines; you don’t have to take you know what did you put it gives you
but I would probably take this one and maybe tighten it just a little more.
Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
 CHAPTER XIV
ON THE TRAIL

Disappointment showed plainly on the faces of the three motor

boys. They looked at one another, and then at Mrs. Johnson, the
housekeeper. She could not mistake their feeling.
“I’m sorry,” Mrs. Johnson remarked. “If he had known you were
coming to see him, I’m sure he would have waited for you. But I
understood him to say, when he left here, that he was going to call
on you boys, and get you to go with him.”
“He did call on me,” explained Jerry, “but he left suddenly to make
a search for some specimens, and did not return. We supposed he
came back here.”
“No, he didn’t,” the housekeeper answered, “though he sent me a
letter in which he said he was going to the mountains, and for me
not to worry about him.
“But I always do that, when he’s off on one of his queer trips,”
went on Mrs. Johnson, with a sigh. “I never know what danger he
may get into. I don’t fuss so much when I know he is with you boys,
for I know you’ll sort of look after him. But when he’s by himself
he’d just as soon get wet through and never change his things from
one day to another. He is so thoughtless!
“And now it is such a queer search he is on. A two-tailed lizard! As
if there could be any such thing as that. Oh dear! I don’t know what
to do!”
“Well, the professor has found queerer things than two-tailed
lizards,” remarked Jerry, “so that part is all right. But I can’t
understand about his going away without saying a word to us. That’s
what makes it seem queer.”
“It sure does,” agreed Ned.
“Didn’t he want you to go with him?” Mrs. Johnson wanted to
know.
“He didn’t give us a chance to say,” was Bob’s answer. “He just—
disappeared.”
“Have you his address?” asked Jerry of the housekeeper.
“Yes, it’s Hurdtown, but you’ll wait a good while before you can
get an answer from there.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s miles away from a railroad, and in a lonely part of
the mountains. I have written once to the professor since he sent
me word where he was going, but I haven’t heard from him.”
“Hurdtown,” observed Jerry. “I wonder how we could get there?”
“Are you going after him?” the housekeeper wanted to know.
“I think so—yes,” replied Jerry. “I want to see him on important
business.”
“Oh, I’m so glad!” Mrs. Johnson cried. “He just needs you boys, I
know he does! I can’t understand his going away without you.
Please find him, and here—take these dry socks to him. I know he’ll
go about with wet feet.”
Jerry smiled as he took the socks, and then his face grew grave.
He was thinking of the yellow mud of the swamp, and wondering
what Professor Snodgrass would say when asked why he had told
Jerry it was worthless, and why, later, he had indorsed it as of great
value.
Mrs. Johnson brought out the professor’s letter. It was short, as
his epistles always were, and merely stated that he had gotten on
the track of a two-tailed lizard. He gave his address simply as
Hurdtown, Maine.
“Well, we’ll have to go after him!” decided Ned, “and the sooner
we start the better. I wonder where this place is, anyhow?”
“I looked it up on the map,” said the housekeeper eagerly. “I can
show it to you.”
Hurdtown appeared to be in the northern part of New England,
several hundred miles from Boston, and in a lonely section, poorly
supplied with railroad facilities.
“Yes, we could get there,” decided Jerry, looking at the map. “We
could best make it by road and river, as well as by some lake travel.
See,” he went on, tracing out a route with a pencil. “We could go up
that far in the auto, leave the car there, and make the rest of the
trip in the motor boat. That river would take us nearly to Hurdtown,
and we could finish up with a lake trip.”
“Shall we do it?” asked Bob.
“I’m willing, if you are,” assented Jerry. “I sure do want to have a
talk with the professor.”
“Well, it will be an all-right jaunt; merely as a trip,” said Ned
slowly, “and of course we’ll stand by you, Jerry. But I don’t see how
we’re going to do any water traveling—not with our motor boat,
anyhow. We can’t haul it along behind the auto very well.”
“No, but we could ship it on in advance, and have it waiting for us
at the head of Silver River. Then we can go down that to Lake
Mogan and so on to Hurdtown. It will be quite a trip, but maybe
we’ll enjoy it.”
“Enjoy it! I should say we would!” cried Bob. “We can take along a
lot of things to eat, and——”
He stopped as he saw his chums smiling at him. A flicker of
amusement also came into the face of Mrs. Johnson.
 “Well, I certainly will be glad if you boys can locate the professor,”
she said. “Tell him I was quite worried about him. But then I don’t
s’pose that will do any good—he’ll do just the same thing next time
—or worse. But you can send me word how he is when you find him,
and that’s more than he’d do. When he writes all he thinks about is
his bugs, and he’ll write and tell me how many of such-and-such an
insect he has. He gives them their Latin names, and he might just as
well talk Italian to me. But you boys will look after him; won’t you?”
“We sure will!” exclaimed Jerry. In spite of the feeling he had that
Dr. Snodgrass had not played fair with him, the tall lad could not
forget the affection he had for the absent-minded scientist.
“Well, if we’re going to make that long trip we’d better set about
it,” spoke Ned. “We’ll have to go home and make preparations, I
suppose.”
“Oh, sure!” broke in Bob. “It’ll take a lot of grub——”
“Can’t you think of anything else, Chunky?” asked Jerry, with a
smile. “Of course we’ll have to make some plans,” he went on, “and
arrange to ship the motor boat. We’d better get busy, I guess.”
They said good-bye to Mrs. Johnson, and, a little later, were on
their way back home in the auto. The visit to the professor’s house
had detained them somewhat, as Mrs. Johnson insisted that they
stay to dinner.
“We can’t make Cresville by night,” observed Ned, looking at his
watch, when they were on the road. Ned was at the wheel.
“No, we’ll stay at a hotel until morning, after we cover as much
ground as we care to,” decided Jerry. “No use taking any chances
with night travel.”
They had said nothing to Mrs. Johnson about their reasons for
wanting to see the professor, and to his original one, of merely
desiring an explanation about the yellow clay, Jerry had added
another.
 “Fellows,” he said, “I’m not so sure but what mother could claim
that she was fraudulently induced to sell that land. It wasn’t a
square deal, anyhow, and maybe the professor, unless he’s too
friendly with that Universal Plaster Company, could give evidence in
our favor.”
“What good would it do?” asked Bob.
“Why, if we could prove that the sale of the land was brought
about by fraud, the transfer would be set aside,” Jerry said. “Mother
could have her property again, and get a profit from the medicated
mud. I only hope it will turn out that way.”
“And you think the professor can help you?” asked Ned.
“He may be able to. I can’t believe that he’s gone back on me
altogether, though it does look so.”
Discussing this subject made the time pass quickly for the boys,
and soon they had arrived at a hotel where, once before, they had
put up over night.
“We’ll stay here,” decided Jerry, “and go on in the morning.”
At supper that evening Bob called Jerry’s attention to an
advertisement in the paper, extolling the virtues of the yellow clay
for rheumatism and other ills.
“Don’t take my appetite away, Chunky!” begged Jerry. “I don’t
want to think about it until I have to. And yet, with it all, I can’t
believe the professor has betrayed us.”
“Me either,” chimed in Ned.
Mrs. Hopkins, after some thought, consented to the plans of her
son and his chums.
“I know you will be careful,” she said, “though I have not much
hope that you will accomplish anything. I haven’t the least idea that
Professor Snodgrass is at fault. He is not that sort of a character.
There has been some mistake, I am sure. But the trip may do you
good, even if you don’t get my land back, Jerry,” and she smiled at
her impulsive son.
“Well, I’ll give the professor a chance to explain, anyhow,” the tall
lad remarked. “One funny thing about it is that he hasn’t sent for the
things he left here. I should think he’d want them. There are some
specimens, and his clothes. I wonder——”
Jerry was interrupted by a ring at the door. A servant came back
with a note.
“Great Scott!” cried Jerry, as he noted the writing on the envelope,
“it’s from Professor Snodgrass himself!”
“Maybe he’s coming back!” added Ned.
“Or maybe it’s an explanation,” said Bob.
But it was neither, as Jerry discovered when he opened it. It was
merely a request that the professor’s possessions at the Hopkins
house be sent to an address he gave.
“I am off after a two-tailed lizard,” the scientist wrote. “I’ll see you
boys later. No time to come and say good-bye.”
“Humph! He was in something of a hurry,” observed Jerry.
The note thus delivered was the one Professor Snodgrass had
written at the instigation of Fussel and his fellow conspirator, who
had used the scientist for their own ends. They had held back his
communication until it pleased them to have it delivered. They now
thought they had matters in their own hands. Of course Jerry and
his chums had no means of knowing this.
“Well, we’ll send his things, of course,” Jerry decided. “Or, rather,
we’ll take them to him ourselves. We can do it as quickly as they
would go to him by express. Come on, boys, let’s hustle and get on
the trail.”
The motor boat was sent by freight to the headwaters of Silver
River, and then the boys spent a few days getting their own outfit
ready to take with them in their auto.
 “Say, I wish you’d take me!” cried Andy Rush, when he heard
something of the prospective trip. “I’d help—do the cooking—bring
the water—rustle the wood—stand guard—Noddy Nixon might try
some of his funny tricks—I’d stand him off—take me along—I need a
vacation—I’ll pump up the tires—whoop!”
“You’ve got enough hot air—that’s sure—to pump up a dozen
tires, Andy,” said Jerry. “But it can’t be done!”
 CHAPTER XV
A STOWAWAY

“Well, are we all here?”

“Looks so—what there is of us.”
“And have we got everything?”
“Couldn’t take much more.”
It was Jerry who asked the questions, and Ned and Bob, in turn,
who answered them. The big automobile stood in the yard at the
side of the Hopkins homestead, stocked with the various things the
boys thought they would need on their tour to the mountains to find
Professor Snodgrass. In addition to their own outfit, they had with
them some of the things the scientist had left behind, when he so
unexpectedly departed.
Fortunately for the boys, the auto was an extra large one, capable
of carrying eight passengers, and as there were but three of them
they used the extra space to pack away their belongings.
In addition to extra clothing, and some provisions (you can easily
imagine who oversaw to the packing of them), the boys took a small
but complete camping outfit. There was a sleeping tent, a portable
stove and other things, for they had decided to take their meals in
the open when it was not convenient to go to a hotel over night.
It was possible, also, to sleep in the auto, in case too severe a
storm made the tent undesirable. The heavy canopy of the big car
would prove most effectual against rain.
The motor boys planned to make part of the trip in the auto, and
part in the boat. The latter, they hoped, would be waiting for them
on Silver River when they arrived.
“And we’ll have more fun aboard her than in the auto,” said Ned.
“There’s more room to spread yourself, and the traveling is easier.”
“We can sleep aboard very comfortably,” added Jerry.
“And it’s a good deal easier to cook,” remarked Bob, innocently
enough, whereat his chums burst into laughter.
“Oh, well, you don’t need to eat if you don’t want to, Ned!”
spluttered the stout lad, for his tormentor was poking him in the
ribs, under pretense of seeing how much fatter he had grown.
“Don’t let him worry you, Chunky,” consoled Jerry. “He’ll be glad
enough to sit up at the table when the gong rings. Now then, help
me get this trunk up on the rear,” for a trunk, containing some of the
things they would not need for a time, was to be put on the luggage
carrier of the auto.
“Well, boys, take care of yourselves,” cautioned Mrs. Hopkins, as
Jerry took his place at the wheel. The tall lad generally did the
steering for his chums.
“We’ll try to,” answered Ned.
“And, Jerry,” his mother went on, coming down the path to kiss
him good-bye, “don’t be too harsh with the professor, even if you
find he is against you.”
“All right, Momsey, I’ll try,” was his answer, after a moment of
thought.
“And it may be all a mistake,” she added. “I’m sure I hope it will
prove to be so.”
“I do, too,” added the tall lad. “All ready, fellows?”
“All right,” answered Ned, stowing away the last of his belongings.
“Let her go!” called Bob.
“We’ll go past you fellows’ houses so you can say good-bye,” Jerry
announced, as he turned the lever of the self-starter and the big car
moved slowly forward.
In turn, as they glided past their homes, Ned and Bob waved
farewells to their folks, and then, reaching the broad highway that
extended over the first part of their tour, Jerry opened the gasoline
throttle a bit wider. With a hum and a roar, the powerful engine took
up the burden, bearing the boys toward the mountains.
There had been busy times since they had come back from their
fruitless trip to see Professor Snodgrass. The preparations for the
trip occupied some time, and one day was spent in going to the
swamp where the taking out of the yellow clay was in progress.
Jerry did not wish to get into a conflict—verbal or otherwise—with
Fussel and his workmen, nor with Noddy Nixon, who, it appeared,
was still acting as assistant foreman. So the motor boys did not
approach very closely the scene of operations.
They could see, however, that a larger force of men was
employed, and that considerable of the yellow clay was being taken
out. It was being piled on narrow, flat-bottomed boats, that had
been made purposely to float along the little canals created when
the clay was cut out.
“They’re working on a big scale,” remarked Ned, as he stood
beside Jerry in the motor boat, watching the operations.
“Yes, and most of their work is being done on the land my mother
used to own,” replied the tall lad. “Well, maybe we’ll be able to get
our rights; but it looks doubtful.”
Noddy Nixon had strolled down to the fence that marked the limits
of the ownership of the Universal Plaster Company. But he had no
excuse for ordering away our friends, for which he was doubtless
sorry. Jerry, however, took care not to give him any chance to be
insulting, if nothing worse.
Then had come the packing up and the start.
On and on sped the auto, the boys talking of many matters, and
speculating as to what Professor Snodgrass would say when he saw
them.
“Here, you take the wheel a while, Ned, I’m tired,” requested
Jerry, after about an hour in the front seat. The car was stopped
while the transfer was being made, and when they were about ready
to proceed again Bob called:
“Hey! Wait a minute. I see some apples over in that field. Wait ’till
I get some.”
“Eating again!” cried Jerry, with a gesture of mock despair, for Bob
had been nibbling at something ever since they started.
Without waiting for assent the stout lad slipped over the fence and
he had his hands and pockets full of the apples before his chums
had ceased laughing long enough to object.
“They look dandy!” exulted Bob, as he climbed back over the rails.
“Have some, fellows; I guess I’m some little Willie when it comes to
gathering apples; eh?”
“I guess you are, son, but it’ll cost ye suthin’!” and to Bob’s
astonishment a tall, lanky farmer arose from where he had been
concealed in the tall grass near the fence, and laid a detaining hand
on the stout lad’s shoulder.
“Hey? What’s the matter? Let me go!” spluttered Bob, so surprised
that he dropped part of the fruit. Jerry and Ned, in the car, were
laughing at his plight.
“Oh, I’ll let ye go all right,” said the farmer, with a grin, “but
you’ve got to settle fust! I find this is the best way to collect,” he
went on. “Wait until they have the goods and then nab ’em. There
ain’t no way gittin’ away from that there!”
Truly it seemed so.
“How—how much do you want?” faltered Bob. He was caught red-
handed. He could not deny it. And the apple tree had seemed so
isolated—so far from any house.
 “Wa’al, son, them apples’ll cost ye about a dollar,” said the farmer
grimly. “Them’s my best Gravensteins, and right choice they be. Yep,
I guess about a dollar’ll square matters.”
“A dollar!” cried Bob. “Why, I haven’t got more’n a quart of your
old apples. A dollar a quart! Why, that’s thirty-two dollars a bushel!”
“Yep. Apples is kinder high this year,” went on the man, and,
whether it was intentional or not, he reached down and brought into
view an old shotgun.
“This is robbery!” protested Bob.
“Are you speakin’ of what you did?” inquired the farmer, with a
twinkle in his blue eyes. “If ye are I agree with ye!”
“A dollar!” spluttered Bob. “I’ll never pay it.”
“Wa’al, mebby ye’d ruther come along up to Squire Teeter’s, an’
have him value them apples,” said the farmer coolly.
“Oh, here’s your dollar!” cried Bob, handing over a crumpled bill.
“But it’s robbery.”
“Yep,” admitted the farmer coolly, as he pocketed the money.
“That’s what the folks around here calls takin’ other people’s things—
robbery.”
He sank down in the grass again, probably to wait for his next
victim, while Bob, under the laughing eyes of Jerry and Ned, made
his way to the auto. They started off, and Bob’s good nature came
back as he viewed the apples.
“Well, they look fine, anyhow,” he said.
He set his teeth into one—after an effort—and then he let out a
yell.
“Whew! Ouch! Good night!” he cried.
“What’s the matter?” asked Jerry.
“They’re as hard as rocks, and as sour as lemons!” cried Bob. “I’m
stung, all right! Those apples won’t be ripe until next winter. The old
skinflint! A dollar a quart! Whew!” and Bob threw the apples into the
road.
They stopped for lunch beneath a big shady maple tree, near a
cool spring bubbling out of a roadside hill.
“Bring that box under the back seat when you come,” called Ned
to Bob, who was handing out the eatables.
“What box?” demanded the stout youth.
“The one marked ‘cakes.’ I put in a tin of fancy ones.”
“Good,” cried Bob, who had a sweet tooth.
He reached under the seat, where Ned had told him, but a look of
surprise spread over Bob’s face, as he brought out an empty tin.
“They’re gone!” he cried.
“What’s gone?” asked Ned.
“The cakes!”
“They are? Then somebody’s eaten ’em! I’ll have a look!”
Ned ran toward the car, but, before he reached it, there was a
movement under the seat. The leather flap was lifted up and a voice
said, mildly enough:
“I ate the cake, fellows. I was hungry.”
“Andy Rush!” cried Jerry, as he saw the disheveled figure of the
small chap. “How in the world did you get there?”
“Oh, I stowed away,” replied Andy, as he crawled out. “Can’t I
come along, fellows? I’ll be good, and I’m awful hungry.”
 CHAPTER XVI
A HARD FALL

Jerry Hopkins hardly knew whether or not to be angry at the small

lad who had the assurance to stow himself away in the auto. Bob
looked at his tall chum as if to shape his own conduct by Jerry’s. Ned
was frankly angry.
“Well, you have got nerve, Andy Rush!” exclaimed Ned. “What do
you mean by slipping in on us this way; eh? What do you mean?”
“I—er—I, well, I just couldn’t help it,” burst out Andy, who seemed
to be in some difficulty as to what to say. “I wanted to come awfully
bad, and I was afraid you fellows wouldn’t let me if I asked you.”
“That’s the time you spoke the truth!” muttered Ned. “You sure
are right—we wouldn’t have let you.”
“And I thought maybe, if I came along anyhow, and you didn’t
find me until you had a good start, you’d let me stay rather than
take me home,” finished Andy.
“Take you home!” cried Ned. “Well, you sure have got nerve! Take
you home? Well, you’ll go home the best way you can. We’re not
going to turn around and take you back to your mother; you can
make up your mind to that!”
“You—you won’t leave me here; will you?” faltered Andy, looking
around apprehensively, for they were in a rather lonely
neighborhood.
“It’s as good a place as any,” grumbled Ned. “Stowaways can’t be
choosers.”
 Andy looked more frightened than ever. He was only a small chap,
and not very robust. His usual vivacious manner, and his rapid style
of talking seemed to have deserted him.
“Go on home!” exclaimed Ned. “We don’t want you!”
“Oh, don’t be mean,” urged Bob in a low tone to his chum.
“No, we can’t desert him this way, even if he did sneak in on us,”
added Jerry.
Andy took heart from this.
“I—I didn’t mean to do wrong,” he said eagerly. “I’m willing to pay
my way. I’ve got ’most five dollars saved up. You can have that!” and
he pulled some change from his pocket. “Don’t send me back!” he
pleaded. “Let me come along.”
A flicker of a smile lighted Ned’s face. I fancy those of you who
know the merchant’s son realize that this harsh attitude was only
assumed for the time being. Really Ned was very gentle, and he only
spoke that way on the impulse of the moment, and to make Andy
feel a proper sorrow for his escapade.
“You will let me stay; won’t you?” the small boy pleaded. “I—I’ll
do anything you say. I’ll help a lot—run all your errands for you—I’ll
get water for the auto—I’ll pump up the tires—I—I’ll put up the tent,
chop wood—whoop! I’ll do everything!” And Andy fairly yelled—a
return of his usual spirits.
“All right, if you want to work your passage,” agreed Ned, as
though a problem were solved. “I’ve no objections, if you’re willing
to help out,” and he winked at his chums. “But it won’t be easy,” he
warned Andy.
“Oh, I’m not looking for anything easy,” replied Andy quickly. “I’ll
do anything you tell me to.”
“All right, then get some wood and make a fire,” ordered Ned. “We
want to boil some coffee. Then hand me another of the boxes of the
cakes I put away. If it hadn’t been for them we wouldn’t have known
where you were. After that you can hunt up a spring and get a pail
of water. I guess the auto radiator needs filling; doesn’t it, Jerry?”
“Oh, be a bit easy with him,” pleaded fat Bob, who knew what it
was to keep pace with Ned’s demands.
“Keep still! It’ll do him good to hustle,” warned Ned to Chunky, as
Andy set off on his first errand, that of getting wood.
“But we don’t need a fire,” objected Jerry. “The coffee is hot in the
vacuum bottle.”
“I know it,” laughed Ned, “but Andy ought to do something to
work his passage, and that’s the only thing I can think of now. Let
him make a fire. And we really ought to put some water in the
radiator. Let him go.”
“All right,” agreed the tall lad. “Of course Andy had no right to
stow himself away, and he ought to have it rubbed in on him a little.
But don’t be too rough with him, Ned.”
“I won’t,” was the promise, but Ned winked at Bob.
If Andy thought he was to have a sinecure on his stolen jaunt with
the boys he was sadly mistaken. Ned particularly seemed to “have it
in for him” and invented new tasks constantly.
Some of them were errands that really needed to be done, and, to
the credit of Andy be it said, he did not once grumble. He might
have suspected he was being “worked,” when he was made to wash
the few dishes from lunch through two waters, a hasty rinse being
all that the boys usually indulged in. But Andy was “game” and the
dishes fairly shone when he restored them to the hamper.
But when, as they were traveling slowly along, looking for a good
place to camp for the night, Ned looked over, saw one of the tires
flat, and ordered Andy to get ready to pump it up, Jerry objected.
“You know he can’t pump it up—he isn’t strong enough,” the tall
lad said. “Besides, we have an air pump on the motor.”
“I know, but I just want to see what Andy will say.”
 Again the small lad was “game.”
“Where’s the pump?” he asked cheerfully, as the auto stopped. “I’ll
have it full of air in a jiffy,” and he seemed ready for the back-
breaking work.
“You’re all right!” declared Jerry, with a laugh. “I guess you can
belong, Andy. Never mind the hand pump. I’ll soon have the tire
fixed. We’ll have to put in a new inner tube, anyhow.”
And, while this was being done Andy explained how, after hearing
of the boys’ contemplated trip, he had made up his mind to go with
them. He knew his request would, most likely, be refused, so,
watching his chance, and being small, he managed to slip under the
seat, back of a pile of luggage.
“And I wouldn’t have come out when I did, only I was hungry,” he
finished. “I took the cakes because I couldn’t find anything else.”
“Well, since you’re here you might as well stay,” spoke Jerry. “We’ll
have to send some word to your folks, though.”
“You needn’t bother,” said Andy coolly. “I told ’em I was coming
with you, and they said it would be all right.”
“Well, you have your nerve with you, if nothing else!” exclaimed
Ned.
“Yes, and I’ve got my baggage, too!” cried the small lad, as he
reached into the cavity where he had made a place for himself and
pulled out a small bundle. “I brought some clothes along,” he said.
This took place shortly after Andy’s discovery. Then he had been
fed, the trip was resumed, and the puncture discovered. The
repaired tire was soon pumped up from the motor, and, after going
on a short distance farther a good camping site, near a spring of
clear, cold water, was reached.
“We’ll put up the sleeping tent, and use that,” decided Jerry as,
with Andy along, there would scarcely have been room in the car.
“And we’ll have a camp fire,” suggested Bob.
 “Andy will get the wood,” broke in Ned, with a wink at his chums.
“Sure!” assented the small lad, and, a little later they were eating
bacon and eggs, with fragrant coffee, around a merry blaze.
There was no need for haste on the trip, and the boys did not
speed their auto. They felt that Professor Snodgrass, even if he were
successful in finding the two-tailed lizard, would not return to his
home at once. He would, most likely, remain in the mountains in
search of other specimens. So the boys took their time. They
planned to be two days on the road in the auto, and about as much
longer in the boat, though this time could be cut down considerably
if there were need for it.
They camped, on the evening of their third day’s auto trip, at the
foot of a steep hill, the road having been cut through it, and high
banks rising on either side. So far, aside from tire troubles, and once
getting stuck in a bog, when they tried a short cut, the journey had
not been eventful.
Supper was gotten at a road-side blaze, and the boys were
stretched out in lazy comfort on the grass when Bob, who usually
showed little desire for unnecessary exercise, scrambled to his feet.
“What’s up?” asked Jerry, looking at his fat chum.
“I thought I saw some sort of a lizard in a hole up on the face of
that hill,” responded Bob. “Maybe it’s the two-tailed one the
professor wants. If it isn’t it may be some kind of a rare specimen.
I’ll see if I can get it for him,” and with that Bob started up the
incline.
“Come back—you’ll fall,” cried Ned, for the climb was not an easy
one.
“Oh, I can make it,” was the answer. “It’s some sort of a lizard
sure enough, but not a two-tailed one,” and Bob pointed to where a
wriggling object could be seen. His chums sat up watching him, but
they were not prepared for what followed.
 Bob reached for a shrub, growing on the side of the hill, intending
to pull himself up by it. But, as he grasped it, the shrub pulled loose,
and, an instant afterward, the stout lad toppled backward, turning
completely over, and rolled to the bottom of the hill. The others
could hear his head come in contact with a stone, and then poor
Bob rolled into a crumpled heap, and lay motionless.
 CHAPTER XVII
THE CELEBRATED DOCTOR

Jerry, Ned and Andy were on their feet together and in an instant.
Together, also, they started for the place where poor Bob lay.
“That was a nasty fall,” declared Ned as he raced onward.
“A hard one,” agreed Jerry.
“Is he dead, do you think?” Andy asked. “Maybe his neck is broken
—what’ll we do? Have to get a doctor—I’ll go—in the auto—poor
Bob! I wonder if he got the lizard?”
“Dry—up!” ordered Ned, pausing between the two words, and the
volatile Andy subsided.
Ned and Jerry leaned over their friend. He was unconscious, and,
as Jerry lifted him, a trickle of blood ran from the back of his head.
“Oh, his skull is fractured!” cried Andy, who shuddered at the sight
of the bright, crimson stream that spread over Jerry’s hand.
“Andy, if you don’t cut out that kind of talk I’ll boot you one!” cried
Ned, in exasperation. “Now you go get some water and something
for a bandage. Take one of my shirts if you can’t find anything else.
Hustle now!”
That was the best advice to give Andy. He needed something to
do to take his mind off the accident.
“Is he hurt badly, do you think?” asked Ned, as he helped Jerry
carry Bob to a grassy place.
“It’s hard to tell. I’ll have a look when I wash off his head. There’s
a bad cut, that’s evident.”
 They laid the stout lad, now sadly limp and white, on a soft place
in the grass. By this time Andy had come up with the water, and
some pieces of cloth, obtained by hastily tearing up the only extra
shirt he had brought along for himself.
Jerry soaked a rag in water, and carefully sponged away the
blood; but, as he did so, more spurted out from a long gash on the
scalp.
“I guess I’d better let it alone until it coagulates, or at least until a
doctor can look at it,” he said. “It will need sewing up, if I’m any
judge, and we’ll have to get help for that.”
Jerry and his chums knew something of rough and ready first aid
to the injured, but this was beyond their skill.
“What’ll we do?” asked Ned, rather helplessly.
“We’ll have to get a doctor,” said Jerry. “Let’s see, the last town we
passed through was Lynnhaven. It didn’t look as though it would
support a physician of any account, and the nearest doctor must live
a good ways out.”
“There’s quite a town just ahead of us,” suggested Ned. “I noticed
the last signboard we passed said it was eleven miles to it. There
ought to be a doctor there, and we could bring him to Bob in the
auto.”
“That’s what I’ll do!” cried Jerry. “You and Andy will have to stay
with Bob, Ned, while I go for help. You can put up the tent, and get
him under that, while I’m gone.”
“Shall we give him any medicine?” asked Ned, for they had
brought a few simple things with them, as they always did.
“No, I wouldn’t give him anything but water,” replied the tall lad.
“He’ll probably develop a fever, and the simpler the things he has,
the better for him, until the doctor sees him.
“Come on, Andy!” called Jerry to the small lad. “You’ve carried
water enough. Now you help Ned put up the tent, and make Bob as
comfortable as you can. I’m off.”
Jerry lost no time. Taking out of the auto the tent, and other
things he thought would be needed, he took his place at the wheel,
shoved over the lever of the self-starter, and was off in a cloud of
dust. For Jerry had determined not to observe any speed laws, save
as they concerned his own safety. He realized that his errand would
be excuse enough if he were stopped, and he did not think he would
be, as it was getting dusk.
“I ought to do the eleven miles in short order,” reflected Jerry, as
the car swung around a turn, almost skidding. “The only trouble will
be to find a doctor at home.”
But it was not to be all smooth sailing for Jerry. He had not
covered more than five of the eleven miles when the sky became
overcast, and a little later he was in the midst of a thunderstorm.
He did not mind this, however, as the canopy was up, and the
rain-shield protected him. Jerry switched on the electric lights, and
kept on, though he reduced his speed somewhat. He had to stop
once to get out at a cross-road and read the signs, and then, as luck
would have it, he took the wrong turn. It was not his fault, as the
old sign post leaned so that it was difficult for a stranger to
determine in which direction the hand pointed.
“Am I on the road to Brookville?” Jerry yelled at a passing farmer,
who sat huddled up in a horse blanket on the seat of his rickety
wagon.
“Whoa! Hey?” asked the man, one remark being addressed to his
horse, and the question to Jerry.
“I say, am I on the road to Brookville?”
“No, you’re headed for Deanhurst. You ought to have took the left
hand road a piece back to get to Brookville. Can’t you read the
signs?”
“I can, yes—when they’re right,” snapped Jerry, who was not in
the best of humor. “Thanks!” he called, as he waited for the other to
pass on, so that he might turn the car. It was no easy matter to get
the big machine headed the other way in the narrow road, but Jerry
finally managed it and then he sent the auto on at a fast clip,
passing the man who had given him the needed direction.
Jerry reached the decrepit sign post again, and this time made the
right turn. It grew darker and darker as he advanced, but the lights
on the car were powerful. The thunder and lightning had ceased,
but it still rained hard, and the roads were fast becoming puddles of
mud and water.
“I’m glad I have the car,” reflected Jerry. “A doctor won’t have the
excuse that he doesn’t want to take his horse out in the storm.”
It was fully night when Jerry reached Brookville, though had it not
been for the storm there would have been the glow of sunset to
dispel the gloom. The tall lad stopped at the first house he came to,
in order to inquire about a doctor, and was delighted to learn that a
physician lived about a mile down the road.
But his delight was turned to disappointment when he reached the
office, and learned that the medical man had been called out into
the country, on a case that would probably keep him all night.
“But he’s needed for an accident!” cried Jerry. “Is there any other
physician in town?”
“Yes,” he was informed. “Dr. Madison lives about two miles out, on
the State road.”
But Dr. Madison was not at home either, and his wife could not say
when he would return.
“Sometimes he is out until long after midnight,” she said. “His
patients are widely scattered.”
“What shall I do?” muttered Jerry, speaking more to himself than
to the doctor’s wife. He thought of poor Bob in the little tent, with
Andy and Ned keeping lonely vigil beside him.
 “I’m very sorry,” said the lady, when Jerry had told of the
circumstances, and the need of haste. “I heard there is a New York
doctor stopping at the hotel in the village. He came up here for a
rest, but perhaps he might go see your friend. I don’t know who the
doctor is, but I have heard my husband speak highly of him. He is
some sort of a specialist, so I understand.”
“I’ll try him!” decided Jerry desperately. “He can’t refuse to help us
out in this emergency.”
A little later his mud-spattered car drew up at the only hotel in the
village.
“Is there a physician stopping here?” asked Jerry of the hotel
clerk. The lad’s appearance indicated the need of haste, and alarm
and anxiety showed on his face.
“Yes, Dr. Wright is stopping here,” replied the man behind the
desk, “but I don’t know that he would like——”
“May I see him?” interrupted Jerry. “It’s a case of accident, and
he’s just got to come. Both the other doctors are out of town.”
As he spoke a tall, slim gentleman, in a well-fitting, dark suit came
from the dining-room to the hotel corridor. Beside him walked a
handsome young woman. The man showed interest in Jerry’s rather
loud remarks, and at the word “doctor” said:
“Is someone hurt?”
“Yes—my chum,” replied Jerry quickly. “He had a bad fall and his
skull may be fractured.”
“That is Dr. Wright,” the clerk informed Jerry, but the lad had
already guessed as much.
“Oh, can you come?” appealed Bob’s chum. “We’re afraid he’s
badly hurt. It was a fall!”
“Where is he?” asked Dr. Wright.
“About eleven miles from here.”
 The doctor involuntarily looked out at the raging storm.
“I have a car!” cried Jerry eagerly. “You won’t get a bit wet. I can
have you there in half an hour, and bring you back.”
The doctor smiled grimly at the lady beside him.
“I can’t seem to escape from it,” he remarked.
“No,” she answered with a gentle smile. “But perhaps you had
better go, even if you are on your vacation.”
“Oh, yes,” he assented, somewhat wearily. “I must go, of course,
as long as there is no one else. I’ll be with you directly, young man,”
he said to Jerry. “Just as soon as I can get on a coat, and pack my
bag.”
“I came out here to get rid of work,” he went on, “but I seem to
have it thrust upon me. But never mind.”
Jerry fidgetted about impatiently until the physician, wearing a
heavy raincoat, and carrying a black bag, descended from his room.
Then, eager to be in motion, Jerry led the way to the waiting car.
“That’s a fine auto you have,” observed Dr. Wright.
“Yes, it goes, too,” added Jerry. “I’ll soon have you there.”
Neither Jerry nor the physician spoke much on the trip. Each was
too busy with his own thoughts. Jerry sent the car ahead at even
greater speed than he had used coming out, for he knew the road
now. Soon, splashing through mud and water, now sliding on some
inclined highway, and again puffing up a hill, they came in sight of a
lighted tent beside the road.
“Oh, you are camping here!” exclaimed the doctor.
“Not exactly,” Jerry explained. “We are making a trip, and we have
a sleeping tent. My chum is in there with a friend.”
“Well, we’ll have a look at him.”
It was raining hard when the doctor and Jerry alighted, and the
small tent was not the best place in the world wherein to make an
examination. Andy had worked well, however, and had made Bob as
comfortable as possible. The latter was on an improvised bed, with
rubber blankets under him, and well covered. Fortunately the tent
was waterproof.
The doctor bent over Bob.
“Has he showed any signs of consciousness since he received the
hurt?” he asked.
“He moaned once or twice—that’s all,” answered Andy.
“Hum!” remarked the physician non-committally. “I’m afraid I can’t
do anything for him here. He ought to be at the hotel. Do you think
you can take him there in the auto?”
“We’ll have to,” said Jerry simply.
They made an improvised stretcher, and carried Bob through the
rain to the car. He was propped up in the tonneau, and then, the
tent being struck, Jerry, Andy and Ned, with the physician, took their
places in the car.
Jerry drove more slowly on the return trip, but it was made in
good time, and without accident. Bob was still unconscious when
carried into the hotel, and taken to a room that was hastily prepared
for him. The doctor took charge of matters now, and, somewhat to
Jerry’s surprise, the lady he had seen with the doctor appeared in
the garb of a trained nurse.
“You fellows are in luck,” remarked the hotel clerk, while Ned,
Andy and Jerry were waiting in the corridor for the result of the
doctor’s examination.
“I should say so!” agreed Jerry. “A doctor and a trained nurse
located at the same time. Is she the doctor’s nurse?”
“Yes, his head one, I believe. You know who Dr. Wright is; don’t
you?”
“Can’t say I do,” replied Jerry.
 “Why, he’s the greatest surgeon on brain diseases and head
injuries in the country!” exclaimed the admiring clerk. “He’s an
authority, and so much in demand that he can charge anything he
pleases. He gets anywhere from one to ten thousand dollars for an
operation.”
 CHAPTER XVIII
A CRY OF FIRE

Jerry looked sharply at Ned. The same thought was in the minds
of both—would they have money enough to pay the doctor, in case it
should be found that Bob was badly hurt, and needed a complicated
operation?
Then Jerry smiled. Of course, even though the skill of the
celebrated surgeon was required, he would not have to be paid at
once. And Bob’s father was wealthy. After all, there was no need for
worry, save as to Bob himself.
And this was soon dispelled, for Miss Payson, which, the clerk
said, was the name of the doctor’s head nurse, soon came down to
relieve the anxiety of the boys.
“How’s Bob?” Jerry asked her impulsively.
“All right,” she answered with a smile. “He has only a scalp
wound.”
“Then his skull isn’t fractured?” asked Andy, excitedly.
“Bless your heart, no! The doctor will soon have him very
comfortable, and then I’ll stay with him to-night.”
“Oh, but we can’t think of letting you do that!” cried Ned.
“Indeed!” and Miss Payson elevated her eyebrows, and smiled at
the eager lad. “I fancy you’ll have to,” she said. “Dr. Wright isn’t in
the habit of having his orders disobeyed, and he has told me to look
after the patient to-night.”
“Oh, but that’s too bad!” burst out Jerry. “Just when you are on
your vacation, too.”
 “Oh, well, it doesn’t so much matter,” said the nurse, genially. “As
long as we have taken the case we will see it through. That’s Dr.
Wright’s way.”
“Is it—is it serious?” asked Andy.
“Oh, not at all. You boys can stand harder bumps on the head
than you imagine. If concussion doesn’t develop your friend will be
up and about in a few days.”
“That’s good,” returned Jerry, for though there was no special
need for haste, still he wanted to get in touch with Professor
Snodgrass as soon as possible.
“Now I must go back,” said the nurse. “I just came down to relieve
your anxiety.”
“Thank you,” rejoined Jerry.
“Say, you fellows are in luck,” the clerk informed them when Miss
Payson was gone. “You’ve got a combination, in that nurse and
doctor, that many a millionaire would be glad to have.”
“Yes?” questioned Ned.
“Surest thing you know,” went on the hotel man. “Dr. Wright is a
specialist whom even European physicians are glad to consult.”
“Well, as long as we had to have someone, it might as well be the
best,” said Jerry. “Bob’s father can afford it, at any rate.”
“Maybe he won’t charge you so much, seeing he is on his
vacation,” suggested Andy.
“He’ll probably charge more,” declared the clerk. “Say, he earns
more by one operation than I do in a year.”
“But look how long it took him to study and qualify for the work
he does,” suggested Ned. “Is he only a specialist on injuries to the
head?”
“That’s what he takes up most,” the clerk informed the boys,
“though of course he must know about all kinds of doctoring.”
 Jerry and his chums decided to put up at the hotel for the night,
since it could not be told how long they would have to remain.
When they had been assigned to their rooms, and had seen to the
putting away of the auto in a garage connected with the hotel, they
sat in the lobby, waiting for Miss Payson to tell them how Bob was
progressing.
They soon received good news. The nurse approached them with
a smiling face, and said:
“He’s conscious now.”
“May we see him?” asked impulsive Andy.
“Oh, no, indeed! Not until morning,” was her quick answer. “He
needs rest and quiet. He had a bad fall, but not a serious one. He
will be lame and sore for a day or two. I’ll look after him.”
“Tell him we’re here, so he won’t worry,” suggested Jerry, and the
nurse promised.
“Well, boys, it isn’t as bad as I thought it would be,” said Dr.
Wright a little later, when he had laid aside his sick-room
habiliments, and joined them in the lobby. “It’s only a big cut. Let
me see, I don’t believe you told me who he is.”
“His name is Bob Baker,” said Jerry, “and if you will send your bill
to his father I know——”
“Tut! Tut!” interrupted the physician with a laugh. “This is no time
to talk about bills. I am only too glad that I was able to serve you in
the emergency. Any doctor would be. I was getting a bit out of
practice, anyhow. I haven’t had a patient in nearly a week,” and he
laughed genially.
Miss Payson remained with Bob all night, though he needed little
attention, for he slept heavily. In the morning he was much
improved; but Dr. Wright said he must not be moved for at least two
days, or until all danger of brain concussion was passed.
 “Did I get that lizard?” asked the stout lad when, in due time, he
was allowed to sit up in bed and receive his chums.
“We didn’t stop to look,” replied Jerry, with a laugh.
“Too bad,” said Bob slowly. “It might have been just what
Professor Snodgrass was looking for. I say, how long before we’re
going on with the trip?”
“Oh, you’ll soon be able to travel,” said Miss Payson with a smile.
“You boys are the most wonderful creatures in the world. You get
knocks that would almost kill a grown person, and you come up
smiling every time. I wish I were a boy.”
“I wish so, too!” exclaimed Bob with enthusiasm, for he and his
chums had taken a great liking to the young and pretty nurse. She
told them she had been with Dr. Wright for some time, and, when he
found he needed a vacation he insisted on taking her with him, in
addition to his sister and a man servant.
“I guess he must be pretty rich,” said Bob, when he was alone
with his chums. “Dad will have a steep bill on my account.”
“Don’t worry,” advised Ned.
“I’m not,” laughed the stout lad. “Dad is able to meet it, and I
guess he thinks I’m worth it—at least I hope so.”
Jerry was glad his mother did not have a heavy doctor’s bill to
meet, for, in the present state of Mrs. Hopkins’s finances, it would
have embarrassed her very much.
“But if I can only get back that clay land we’ll be all right,” said
Jerry.
He had spoken casually of the new medicated clay put out by the
Universal Plaster Company, and Dr. Wright had heard him.
“That certainly is wonderful stuff!” said the celebrated physician. “I
have tried it on some of my cases. It is a wonder no one ever
thought before of using it. It works like magic. There is a fortune in
it for the promoters.”
 Jerry did not tell the doctor that the clay came from land which
had once been owned by Mrs. Hopkins.
Bob was well enough, on the third day, to be up, and two days
later permission was given to him to travel, if too great a speed was
not maintained.
“You must go a bit slow with him at first,” Dr. Wright informed the
boys. “He is out of all danger, however, and I wish you good luck on
the rest of your trip. I have heard of Professor Snodgrass. He is a
wonderful scientist in his line.”
“Are you going to remain here long?” asked Jerry.
“Yes, I shall stay until I get thoroughly rested. It is a quiet place,
just what I need, and I don’t imagine I shall have any more
emergency calls,” and the great doctor smiled.
He little realized, nor did the boys, how soon they would have
need of his services again.
Bearing in mind the injunction of the physician as to speed, Jerry
did not try to make fast time in the auto, once they were under way
again. They had said good-bye to Dr. Wright and his friends at the
hotel, and again were headed toward the mountains. Two days more
of leisurely travel would bring them to Silver River, where they
expected to take to the motor boat and in it sail up Lake Mogan to
where Professor Snodgrass was camping, and looking for the two-
tailed lizard.
Without further incident, or accident, they came, one evening, to
the town of Waydell, at the head of the river. It was to this place
they had shipped the boat, and they had received, en route, a postal
from the man they had engaged to put it in the water for them, the
postal stating that the craft had arrived safely, and would be waiting
for them.
“Let’s go down and have a look at her,” suggested Jerry, after their
supper at the hotel, where they arranged to leave their auto until
they came cruising back.
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