Journalistic Exercises

As journalists, sometimes we have to test ourselves. I spent a little time working on Power Reporting's web treasure hunt this weekend, to gauge the extent of my research abilities.

I specifically took a look at questions 1 and 2 and the answer I found for No. 1 is $1,071,047.37. That would be Babe Ruth's $80,000 salary from 1931 -- adjusted for today's value -- according to the CPI inflation calculator.

Oddly enough, my answer was incorrect based on Power Reporting's assessment. They said the value was closer to $980,000.

Question 1 would have been difficult to answer if not for the hint, but question 2 is a walk in the park. Given the phone number 202-965-3515, all I had to do to find out whose number it was was plug the number into Google. The correct answer is Elsa Walsh of Washington, D.C.

In another realm, the swap image is an interesting journalistic tool. "The swap image action swaps one image for another by changing the SRC attribute of the image tag," according to Microsoft Dreamweaver's help page. I linked to it from this page of Kodi Barth's website. Barth is a professor of online journalism at the University of Connecticut.

As for the swap image, the second step says to enter a name into the "property inspector." I have no idea what that is, nor is it specified in the directions -- thus the rest of the process was quite difficult.

Step three makes it clear that multiple images can be swapped, which is a nice feature. Some of the problems I encountered following steps four through six included a lack of access to the "behaviors panel" and "actions pop-up menu" and struggles with the "plus" button, because it wasn't clear as to what I was supposed to be doing with that.

After a little help from my friends I was finally able to swap a few images of myself that I had saved on file. Quite a nifty little trick, too bad I failed to figure it out on my own. In addition, step nine details a very useful "preload images" option that allows for the prevention of downloading delays.

As we all know in today's world of netizens -- the faster the better. As for the swap image, potentially helpful, but essentially a big headache for me.