New Tools Documentation has changed with technology. The video that helped me debunk the legend in 1996 wouldn’t have been available from one of the team members if I’d tried doing that story 15 years earlier (though I still could have watched it by going to the archives of the TV station). And in the years since I used that video for verification, the availability of cellphones and security cameras has increased the amount and importance of video documentation. But the ease of digital video editing raises the importance of skepticism. And, of course, any video catches only part of the story. Technology has also changed how we find and deal with sources and information. As participants and witnesses to news events share their accounts in words, photos and videos on social media and blogs, journalists can more quickly find and connect with people who saw news unfold both by using digital search tools and other technologies, and by crowdsourcing. We can use new tools most effectively by employing them with those old questions: How do they know that? How else do they know that? That old cliché about checking out Mom’s love? I verified the source (the old Chicago City News Bureau) from multiple online sources: the Chicago Tribune7, AJR8 and The New York Times9. Even there, though, legend complicates verification. A 1999 Baltimore Sun10 article by Michael Pakenham said legend attributes the admonition to the bureau’s longtime night city editor, Arnold Dornfeld11 (as three of the articles linked above do), but “Dornie said it was another longtime editor there, Ed Eulenberg12, who actually said it first.” Your mother probably does love you, as she says. You can verify that by interviewing her friends and family, by digging up photos and videos where she shows or expresses her love. Find some letters or Facebook updates that express her affection. Document the gifts and actions that show her love. Then do the same thing on every article, every event and every project. 18