Available from: Quill, 35 East Wacker Drive, Chicago, Illinois 60601, $10.00, sc $1.00, monthly. Lists general reference works with which journalists and journalism students should be familiar, as well as sources of local information. (JM)

Examines the positive and negative consequences of journalism faculty criticism of local news media, as evidenced from a survey of journalism school deans, faculty members, and newspaper editors. Suggests five things for journalism faculty to consider before initiating media criticism. (RL)

Describes the way that the Diagnostic English Test (DET), a writing skills laboratory, and a basic journalism course combine to monitor, correct, and improve journalism student writing ability while keeping journalism program standards at a consistent level. (RL)

Study finds a lower accuracy and higher error rate for science news coverage than for earlier studies of regular news coverage. (RB)

Describes the use of accuracy surveys as a means of making students aware of the need for detailed information when citing or quoting sources in news stories. (RB)

Concludes that scholars favor anonymous review of manuscripts submitted to scholarly journals and want suggestions from referees. Finds also that referees tend to place more importance on the theoretical importance of a manuscript than do scholars. (FL)

An effort was made in this study to determine whether the absence or presence of news film in a television news segment influences a believability or preference judgment made by a respondent when comparing a television report directly with a newspaper report of the same event. One hundred eight students at Temple University viewed one of two…

The 29 editorial board members of three communications journals were asked to indicate what criteria they used to evaluate and select the manuscripts submitted to their journals for publication. The 16 people who responded indicated six things that they require in manuscripts: a strong introduction that clearly and concisely states the conceptual…

An analysis of issue-oriented and event-oriented social issues stories in eight major daily newspapers revealed that 61.3 percent of all sentences analyzed were not attributed to a source. (GT)

Discusses pitfalls authors can avoid in their research to improve their chances for publication: careless writing; unspecified assumptions; undefined context; unanswerable questions; soft and/or fuzzy hypotheses; vague, undefined terms; inadequate samples; inappropriate use of students in conducting research; inappropriate conclusions; multiple…

Reports the results of a survey of 122 science journalists and 110 scientists regarding their attitudes toward science news coverage; notes that the attitudes of the two groups were remarkably similar. (GT)

A study examined the attitudes of scientists toward public information personnel and media coverage. Of 456 subjects (half social and behavioral scientists and half biological scientists) chosen randomly from the "American Men and Women of Science" reference books, 287 responded to the seven-page, two-part questionnaire. Part one contained 34…

Concludes that members of the Public Relations Society of America want to participate in company decisions and have clear concern for the public interest. (FL)