Publisher Detective

Just released: Publisher Detective

Try it for free for a limited time. Nine exercises to help searchers track down and evaluate publishers of online information. Helps in the hunt for credible news.

This replaces the flash version archived on our site.

https://21cif.com/tutorials/evaluation/publisher/publisher-1

Evaluating the Publisher Preview

Here's a free preview of the Evaluate the Publisher tutorial that is part of the WSI (Website Investigator) package.

If you can't determine who the author is, consider the publisher. They own the site and this can tell you something about the contents: whether they are endorsed or not by a reputable publisher.

An annual subscription gives you and your students access to all Information Fluency resources for one calendar year. More info.

https://21cif.com/wsi/training/publisher.html

Satanize Me?

A report of a secret McDonald's menu is going around the Internet. I learned of it today thanks to this DIGG post:

McDonald's Has A Secret Menu And Other Facts link

Digg's source is Lucky Peach, where Lucas Peterson gives the details, along with photos, of secret menu items:

• Sausage Egg Big MacMuffin
• Mash Brown
• Blankets in a Blankets
• The McLuminati
• “Derrida-Style”
• General Ro’s Chicken
• Mommie Dearest
• The Burmese Python
• The Captain Nemo
• “Diorama-Style”
• Satanize Me!         

Short of walking in to your local McDonald's and asking for one of these menu variations (under your breath), how could you really know for sure if a secret menu does or does not exist? Maybe you don't mind if the counter person gives you a blank stare. Or laughs--I'm sure someone has already tried this.

After all, other fast food places have secret menus, why not McDonalds? 

One place to start is with the author. Lucas Peterson (If you want to make sure you get the right Lucas Peterson, include "Lucky Peach" in the query.) Top results are his Twitter page: https://twitter.com/lucaspeterson, another piece he wrote in Lucky Peace entitled, An Official Complaint Against Oriental Ramen, his LinkedIn page, where he lists his occupation as eater, Lucky Peach, LA Weekly, Serious Eats, Flaunt Magazine, Film/TV.  So we gather he is a public figure with an interest in food topics that can sometimes be humorous.

Another place to go is Lucky Peach. What kind of publication is this? From skimming results, it's a
"cult indie magazine founded by chef David Chang and writer Peter Meehan" [link] about all things food. It is a "quarterly journal of food and writing. each issue focuses on a single theme, and explores that theme through essays, art, photography, and recipes." [link]. The style of the magazine is ad-driven with loud cartoons and other attention-grabbing stuff. So an article about a secret menu fits in, although no claims are made whether it's true or not.

So, a writer that can be serious (at least at times) and a magazine that can be serious (at times) have paired up and released this story. Is this one of their not-serious moments?

The investigation returns to those customers who have tried this. They should be able to verify whether any of the creations bulleted above actually exist (I personally believe any McDonalds can deliver on Mash Brown). Where can you find these people, these witnesses?

Try Twitter.

A search for #secretmenu (guessing that's been used) turns up hits for secret menus submitted by members. Down the list is an entry by Lucky Peach with a picture of Sausage Egg Big MacMuffin, captioned: "We like to have a little fun sometimes, too!" Not quite definitive, but a sign the article is more fun than serious.

What other evidence can you find--without actually going in and muttering, "Satanize me?" (Note: I suggest not actually trying this. Keep in mind: McDonalds crew members read the Internet--they might actually comply-- in which case it doesn't have to be an official secret menu, but an underground one.)

Change of Ownership

A group of frustrated students prompted a teacher to write:

I have struggled mightily to find a Publisher for Wingsupply.com.  Nothing I can find is accepted as the correct answer by the website.  My students are very frustrated as well.  Please advise how to find this information and also where to go for an answer key.

This makes a better--but harder--search than the original (found here under Who Owns It?: http://21cif.com/rkitp/challenge/evaluation/publisher.swf)

Here's my response:

I'm glad you wrote. Better than being frustrated! There's a lesson for students in this: when you can't find the information you want, try a different source--in this case you went to the author. Well done.

You probably found the right information. I just did the search and the store seems to have changed hands.  It used to be owned by a family. Now it's owned by a larger business. Here are the results from a domain name registry search using GoDaddy:  https://who.godaddy.com/  (this provides more detail than a Whois.net search)

Domain Name: WINGSUPPLY.COM
Registry Domain ID: 3379187_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN
Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.godaddy.com
Registrar URL: http://www.godaddy.com
Update Date: 2014-12-05 18:15:04
Creation Date: 1998-02-27 00:00:00
Registrar Registration Expiration Date: 2018-02-26 00:00:00
Registrar: GoDaddy.com, LLC
Registrar IANA ID: 146
Registrar Abuse Contact Email: abuse@godaddy.com
Registrar Abuse Contact Phone: +1.480-624-2505
Domain Status: clientTransferProhibited
Domain Status: clientUpdateProhibited
Domain Status: clientRenewProhibited
Domain Status: clientDeleteProhibited
Registry Registrant ID:
Registrant Name: John De Marco
Registrant Organization: Brandshopper, LP
Registrant Street: PO Box 20211
Registrant City: Lehigh Valley
Registrant State/Province: Pennsylvania
Registrant Postal Code: 18002
Registrant Country: United States
Registrant Phone: +1.6108375940
Registrant Phone Ext:
Registrant Fax:
Registrant Fax Ext:
Registrant Email: johnjdemarco@gmail.com

Aha, A new owner--I'll have to update the answer key!

If you go back a couple of years and look at the same site using archive.org, your students will see a different address for the store: 

https://web.archive.org/web/20120112100913/http://www.wingsupply.com/  Students could use archive.org to determine when the store changed ownership (it changed sometime this year).  It's also possible to find information about the change of ownership by querying 

wingsupply change ownership

Aren't you glad you asked?

New Release of Publisher Challenge

I spent some time this week revising and refreshing the Publisher Challenge, a tutorial to help learners track down the publishers of online information.

Periodic maintenance is needed due to link migration: users get those nasty 404 errors (which are not usually a dead end, but that's another challenge). In the case of the Publisher tutorial, designed in Action Script 2, I wanted to add the functionality of Action Script 3, and that required rebuilding the code from scratch. My apologies to iPad and iPhone users, but the tutorial is still Flash which you can't use.

In the tutorial you'll find three sections: a techniques practice page--methods you'll need to use to solve the challenges, a "find the publishers" page and an "investigate the publishers" page. Together, these require the type of investigation involved in determining whether content is trustworthy based on who published it. This fill-in-the-blank/click the appropriate button tutorial is paired with a MicroModule about the Publisher, to give background and explain why it's important to know about the publisher. That has also been refreshed.

Give them a try. Use them with students as part of a lesson on Web evaluation, the ownership of ideas, or one of these specific cases/themes you'll find in the tutorial: poetry publishing, gun laws or school health.

Publisher Challenge