We often host visits by students, civic groups, church groups, etc. Today, we were visited by Jennifer Streun's first-grade class from Whittier Elementary School in Fircrest.

The first question from a student: Why is your building so big?

Page designer Carmen Dybdahl showed them how she moves photos and stories around a page on her computer as she decided how to present the news. And graphic artist Fred Matamoros showed them the magic he performs with illustrator programs and such.

And, of course, any visit requires a trip to the other side of the big building to see the presses. Even us old kids still sneak down there to see that every now and then.

If you're interested in arranging a visit for your class or group (or even individuals), contact Grace Ryan at 253-597-8632 or grace.ryan@thenewstribune.com.

One of the fun parts about this job is talking to the community about journalism. TNT readers love their paper and aren’t shy about questioning us and demanding improvements.

Sometimes we take our show on the road. Tuesday night, I led a presentation to about 100 folks at Chapel Hill Presbyterian Church in Gig Harbor. My wife, business reporter Kathleen Cooper, helped facilitate the exercise I created called “How to Build The Front Page.” We explained how the newsroom’s reporting and editing process works, including an explanation of the TNT's philosophy of local news first and other priorities that guide our decisions.

Then we distributed a list of nine stories and a packet of photographs to tables of 8-10 people each. The stories contain a mix of local, national and international topics covering such areas as the economy, crime, breaking news, war and a good-news feature. Each group had about 15 minutes to build its own front page of five stories, including selections for a lead (the one with the big bold headline) and a centerpiece (the one with the photo).

The point of this exercise is to show that news decisions are a human process, and different groups make different lists for different reasons — few of them more or less valid than the others. It’s a lot of fun, and it usually leads to laughs and thought-provoking discussion.

After the exercise, we took questions from the group about our readership and our business’ future — a topic that has made national news itself recently. The group was thoughtful and insightful about how people of a certain age read the paper and how times are changing.

We publish an invitation in the paper for readers to attend one of our afternoon news meetings, where we make the Page One decisions every day. You’re welcome to attend: Call Grace Ryan at 253-597-8632 to schedule a time. And if you’re interested in the road show, call about that too. We bring our own supplies and don’t have any groupies — yet.

Readers haven't actually asked that question yet, but I figured I'd mention this anyway:

We're having technical difficulties with the box at the top of our home page called "Latest from the wire." When it's operating properly, it's updated every 15 minutes. However, something broke and as a result we have two-week-old stories about the stock market and Sarah Palin residing in that spot.

Unfortunately, we can't fix it in-house. That piece of our Web site is controlled by a McClatchy office in Raleigh, N.C., (my hometown; go Wolfpack!). We've submitted a work order to have it fixed, but it's unclear how long that will take.

Update: A web tech in Raleigh responded. I have no idea what she's talking about (her e-mail reads like something out of "Dilbert"), but I gather they found a bug and hope to have it fixed Thursday or Friday.

What agency was Dino Rossi referring to last week when he accused it of "sheer incompetence"?

How much money have South Sound candidates for Congress raised?

Was Barack Obama telling the truth when he said John McCain doesn't know how to send an e-mail?

Find the answers to these and other questions on our new elections page. Here's what you'll find there:

* TNT stories about county and state campaigns, and McClatchy stories about federal campaigns.

* Recent headlines from our Political Buzz blog.

* The "Truth O' Meter," a joint effort by Congressional Quarterly and the St. Petersburg Times to assess the truthfulness of claims by the presidential campaigns.

* A link to the TNT voter guide, which lists 90 candidates' responses to our questionnaires.

* MapLight.org's campaign finance totals for the presidential race and state congressional races.

We hope you'll find this informative.

Beth Stone of Tacoma wrote to complain that we haven't written about the 6th Congressional District race (Norm Dicks' seat) in the news section yet.

I encourage the News Tribune to cover the 6th Congressional district race. The voters deserve to know what each of the candidates stand for.

To my knowledge, the News Tribune has mentioned the names of the 6th District challengers twice in the past two months – on June 8, on the listing of filers, and in the July 25, endorsement of the incumbent.

If the News Tribune has the privilege of telling us how to vote, shouldn’t it also assume the responsibility of informing us about the candidates’ views?

She goes on to tout the merits of one of the challengers.

I thought I'd share this with a broader audience since other readers might be wondering the same thing. Here's my reply to her:

Your concern about our congressional coverage got forwarded to me (I’m the news editor in charge of local political coverage). You’re right that not much has appeared in print yet. But that’s not to say we haven’t been busy.

We have four congressional districts in our circulation area (plus 11 legislative districts, the governor, the Supreme Court and county races). We can’t do it all, and we definitely can’t do it all right this minute. A reporter is working on a roundup of the races in the four congressional districts that will probably run this weekend.

Secondly, we just published our online voter guide over the weekend (it’ll stay there through the primary). Here’s a link.

Check out the 6th District page. It’s a lot of information – too much for us to get in the print edition before the primary. So we’ll refer readers to the online guide as often as possible.

Here is why it’s online only: After Filing Week in July June, we send questionnaires to more than 130 candidates. It takes two months to prepare the questionnaires, send them out and collect and publish the responses. It's an incredible amount of work. Until a couple of years ago, we just saved all of the responses for the 32-page guide we publish in October for the general election because of the amount of work involved in organizing and publishing it. But we managed to streamline and automate some of the work (thanks to Web programmer Aaron Ritchey), so now I can get it done right around the first of August, just in time for the primary. We figure online only is better than not at all.

Is it enough? No, of course not. It’ll never be enough. I just wanted you to know there’s a lot more going on than you can see.

TNT photographer Dean Koepfler posted a gallery of photos from Gov. Chris Gregoire's campaign appearance in Tacoma yesterday. The governor spent a couple of hours job-shadowing an in-home health care worker.

Since the photos are elsewhere on our Web site, here's a link to Dean's photos.

As a side note, we got this query today from a Republican activist in Pierce County: "In order to offer balance in your news reporting do you plan to give Dino Rossi the same coverage you gave Governor Gregoire in the article by Niki Sullivan?"

Was Rossi in T-town yesterday cleaning out a bed pan? No? Then I'm not sure how we're supposed to "balance" the story. Our core mission is to cover news in the South Sound (mainly, south King to north Thurston counties). Gregoire came to Tacoma and did something a bit unusual for a governor. That's a news story. Not a big one, but it's a story, which is why we put it on the front of our local section. If Rossi wants to do a job shadow in Pierce County, or do something else that's newsworthy (Tall Ships volunteer?), we'd make an effort to cover it.

Our goal is to cover either of the candidates when they make appearances in Pierce County (we'll also try to have a little coverage of the other eight candidates for governor). In today's media-and-politics climate, I expect we'll get more queries and criticism during the next few months. but keep this in mind: Pierce County is likely to be a battleground in the governor's race. In their 2004 contest, Rossi won it by 4 percentage points. I assume that means we'll have many more stories about Gregoire and Rossi visits to the South Sound between now and Nov. 4.

A final thought (because I can't resist): Darcy Burner's house burned down today. Since Dave Reichert's house is still standing, as far as I know, I don't anticipate "equal coverage" for him today.

I spent much of the past two days filling in for a reporter as the Reader Representative. I thought I'd share highlights from some of the more interesting calls and e-mails from TNT readers:

* A reader named Michelle says she got "a whopping $371" economic stimulus payment from the feds, and cautions that the media need to be careful to make sure the public understands individuals get up to $600. The way some media reports shorthand the issue, it makes it sound like everyone gets $600, she says. Good reminder, Michelle.

* A Vietnam vet complained that he hadn't heard whether we plan to cover a golf event on Friday for nearly 450 wounded and amputees from Iraq who are getting treatment at the American Lake Veterans Hospital. It sounds like quite a special event, and we do plan to cover it.

* Bill wants to know why Tacoma's reservoirs are so low. We're working on a story about that - and the relation to the incredibly deep snowpack. The story should run early next week.

* Bernadine wants to know if a message she got in an e-mail is true: Does Barack Obama really want to salute "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing" instead of the National Anthem because he feels the anthem conveys "a war-like message"? Answer: No. This is an urban legend debunked by snopes.com and factcheck.com, both of which determined that it was a satirical column written by an Arizona writer that's now being circulated as true.

* I helped a handful of readers find stories that were buried deep within our vast Web site. Said a reader named Loretta: "This is wonderful. I couldn't live without the TNT."

A couple of readers posted comments on the story about the attempt to chop down the only tree at Chambers Bay Golf Course. They wonder why we put it on the front page.

Lots of factors go into deciding what to put on the front page. The list includes - but isn't limited to - such categories as breaking news, impact, how many people it affects, a heartwarming tale, an appalling tale, local news and food groups (meaning, we try not to put three state government stories on the front page, or three military stories or three of any type of similar content).

But there's another category that I'd call the "Oh my gosh!" category. As in, "Oh my gosh, did you hear that someone tried to cut down the only tree at Chambers Bay?!"

That was the reaction throughout the newsroom yesterday as word of the vandalism spread. It's also the top story on our Web story today (in terms of page views), so that's often an indication that we picked a good one.

Several of us spent a fascinating four hours Thursday with 10 Russian journalists who are visiting the Puget Sound region to learn more about investigating corruption.

(Insert "they came to the right place" joke here.)

I came away with an appreciation for the tools that are available to American journalists. Despite the ridiculous number of exemptions to our public records and public meetings laws, our new friends from the Krasnoyarsk region in central Siberia don't have such luxuries. Bribes, harassment and intimidation are part of the way of life over there. The group we met Thursday is working to change that, so they had lots of questions about investigative journalism.

They chatted with Managing Editor Karen Peterson, crime/breaking news editor Randy McCarthy, investigative reporter Sean Robinson, and myself (Public Life editor, overseeing coverage of state and county government).

Their questions were starkly different than the queries we get on a daily basis from South Sound readers. They repeated some questions - saying, "we hear your 'official' answer, but what really happens?" - because they had a hard time believing our answers to questions like these:

* They wanted to know if government officials intimidate us into not publishing tough stories (nyet, they wouldn't dare).

* They asked if government officials retaliate against negative stories by sending in workplace inspectors (nyet, they don't).

* When we edit investigative stories, they wanted to know if we just edit for grammar or if we go deeper than that (our stories are edited for content, and investigative stories usually go through multiple drafts; reporters will tell you it's never fun).

* They asked if reporters must pay libel damages out of pocket (generally, nyet; but we haven't dealt with a libel suit in years because of all that careful editing).

* They asked if our laws give reporters more access to government records than regular citizens (nyet; while reporters certainly use the open-records law more than non-reporters, we all have the same access).

* They said the King County executive's office told them that if a reporter wrote something objectionable, they'd cut off that reporter's access to leaders (Ron Sims' office said WHAT???). We got a kick out of that, figuring that maybe Sims' office didn't realize the Russians were meeting with us too and would share that tidbit. We replied that various government officials have tried to cut us off before, but it doesn't work because there's usually another source who can tell us what's going on, and fighting with the press is rarely a good idea anyway.

The group's visit is part of a multicultural exchange funded by the U.S. government.

The Community Connections Program, managed by the Bureau for Europe and Eurasia at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and administered by World Learning, is designed to promote public diplomacy through the exchange of cultural ideas and values among participants, U.S. families and local community host organizations. It seeks to establish and strengthen links between U.S. communities and communities in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Ukraine.

The Russians spoke little English, so we relied on two hard-working translators, both of whom live in the South Sound. At one point, one of the Russian gents said to me in his thick accent, "Alaska is best state." I agreed that it's an amazing place, and I added that it has a fair amount of political corruption. He laughed and replied: "Old Russian tradition!"

After lunch at a Chinese buffet (they're sampling various cuisines) in Tacoma, we parted ways. They've already visited The Seattle Times, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and The Stranger. Their next stop was the glass museum.

We said goodbye through the translators. If I could have at the time, I would have told Natalia, Evgenia, Vladislav, Boris, Irina and the others: Udachi i khoroshego nastroeniya.

According to this site, that means "good luck and keep well."

Last year, the state Department of Ecology sent warning letters (the state calls them "education" letters) to some 20,000 people.

But the department refuses to give us the list of who got those letters. That doesn't seem right, does it?

Here's the issue: The Department of Ecology encourages the public to report people who litter. You may have seen the ads promoting the "Litter And It Will Hurt" campaign. You can call a hotline - 866-LITTER-1 (548-8371) - or fill out a form on the agency's Web site. Basically, if you see someone toss a cigarette butt (or anything else) out of a window, you note the vehicle license plate, description of the vehicle, date and time and location.

The state can’t issue a citation since a cop didn’t see it. But Ecology has an arrangement with another state agency, the Department of Licensing, to identify the owner of each license plate that's reported. Then Ecology mails that person a warning a letter that says, in effect, "a fellow citizen saw someone throw litter from a vehicle registered to you; if you’re ever caught in the act, you'll pay a $1,025 fine."

We believe the list of people who get that warning letter from the state should be a matter of public record. The state, after all, has taken an action, even though it's a warning and not an actual citation.

But Ecology won’t give us the names. The agency's public disclosure officer discussed my request with two assistant attorneys general who represent the agency, and they decided that the information is protected by the federal driver privacy law.

Here's what Ecology told us in response to our request:

=> Read more!

Every year, I get a kick out of producing the survey that lets readers choose the top stories of the year.

I go through archives and always have a "that happened this year?" moment while compiling the list.

Our Web folks posted this year's ballot on the home page today. Find it here.

The deadline to vote is noon on Dec. 27.

Check out the list, rank your top 10 and click "submit." We'll publish the results on Dec. 30 as part of a package reviewing the news of the year.

Unlike Pierce County, we won't make you wait hours for the result. And unlike King County, we won't change the result days after the polls close. (That sound you hear is an unamused county auditor ripping up my voter registration.)

Excerpts of editors' comments about today's paper during the morning news meeting:

There were interesting local stories on the front page about the county jail's health system and the missing pilot.

The wire story about the planned mob museum in Vegas was interesting. Jonathan Nesvig, a veteran wire editor who remembers EVERYTHING that's ever happened here, chipped in with a fun sidebar on Meyer Lansky's connections to Tacoma.

BIZ
Interesting page: WaMu layoffs, Krispy Kreme ice cream (?) and airline food.

SPORTS
Nice package by reporter Todd Milles and columnist John McGrath on WSU's new football coach.

SOUNDLIFE
Editors enjoyed Rosemary Ponnekanti's experience with a handbell choir. It's part of an occasional feature we run, called the Wary Neophyte, in which News Tribune staffers try something they've never done before.