A common technique to aid in developing critical thinking skills is to suggest pertinent and key questions and recommend that readers engage in an internal dialogue to answer these questions. This approach can be used effectively in reading newspaper articles and will become more useful with practice. Twelve constructive questions that newspaper readers can ask themselves to help process information more skillfully are (1) What kind (genre) of journalism is it? (2) What kind of occurrence or event produced the news story? (3) In terms of traditional news values, why is this story in the paper? (4) Was this event created in order to get coverage? (5) What is the writer's background? (6) Is there obvious bias on the part of the writer of the article (or the writer of the headline)? (7) Is it possible to verify the information in the article? (8) What sources are used in the newspaper article? (9) What kind of play is given to the story? (10) What is omitted or left out? (11) How is the event framed? and (12) What are the "latent" values being transmitted by the news articles? If this kind of critical thinking could be applied by more people to the reading of newspapers, the result would be a less gullible and better informed public. (NKA)