Don Fry, of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies in Florida, distributed this list of questions that reporters should ask themselves when making decisions about use of anonymous sources. They brought hot debate from journalists attending a conference of Investigative Reporters and Editors.

Here are some basic writing guidelines from Skip Issacs, a former reporter, foreign and Washington correspondent, and editor for The Baltimore Sun.

The writer's basic tool is the sentence. But it, in turn, rests on an even more fundamental unit.

Reporters never will have enough time to work on all the story ideas or turn in absolutely perfectly polished prose on deadline. They might as well acknowledge that fact and pay more attention to the other factors in their work they can control.

Reporters and editors everywhere battle and complain over length of stories. Good reporters always gather more interesting and important information than they can use in their stories. Good editors always have more good stories, photographs and graphics than they have space. With space at a premium in news today, you need to make every word count in your stories. However long your editors let you write, you need to hone your ability to organize information and write tight stories that make every word count.