Critical Thinking: What Do You Mean by That?

So what really constitutes critical thinking? I did some checking. According to the Center for Critical Thinking, it is (now, stay with me here):

The intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action.

Try shouting that to your reporter as she heads out the door on a challenging story.
Let's look more closely. Much of the work of critical thinking can be broken down more simply. One team of experts broke it down into 35 individual skills. Here are some of those 35 that have great meaning for journalists...