Asking good questions should be an essential skill for journalists. But, what's a "good" question?

Canadian journalist John Sawatsky has spent years studying the questions reporters ask. Good questions, he says, have three qualities:

• They're open-ended.
• They're neutral.
• They're simple.

Think this is easy? Sawatsky, who trains journalists at ESPN these days, says about 20 percent of questions that journalists ask are non-questions. Remember the magic words for starting your questions:

• How?
• What?
• Why?

Covering Communities, a site for journalists, educators, students and citizen journalists, offers three PDF tip sheets on Interviewing: "Focus Your Interviews," "Tips for Managing Interviews" and "Follow-Up Questions." To access the resources, go to http://www.coveringcommunities.org/training/Interviewing.html.