The breathless coverage of every post, sketch and fart of the Trump trial in New York has cable news in a lather these days. Without cameras being allowed in the courtroom, but still having all sorts of time to fill, television has seemingly turned everything about this thing into the Zapruder film. In his return to “The Daily Show,” Jon Stewart used his Monday opening to castigate these folks for their approach to “news” in this situation:
Stewart has long said he’s not a news journalist, so it might be easy to dismiss his critique as arrogance mixed with humor. That’s why we dug out today’s throwback post from four years ago, when Jim Lehrer died to make the same case for us.
Below is a brief tribute to Lehrer upon his death as well as a recap of his “rules” that really should guide our work in a time in which it seems like every shiny object can distract us and minutia can rule the news cycle.
Jim Lehrer’s rules matter now more than ever
Jim Lehrer, a journalist’s journalist to the core, died Thursday (Jan. 23, 2020) at the age of 85. He spent decades of his life covering politics, corporations, international affairs and more, and yet had the none of the pretense associated with the greatness he encountered or the epic stories he conveyed:
Jim was calm and careful in moments of crisis, as demonstrated by his coverage of the September 11 terrorist attacks.
“I’m Jim Lehrer. Terrorists used hijacked airliners to kill Americans on this, September 11, 2001,” Jim reported on national television. “Another day of infamy for the United States of America.”’
Lehrer essentially retired about a decade ago, and he did his work on public television, so it’s likely few folks under a certain age would remember much about him. Truth be told, he was really just a name and a standard to me for much of my life: A symbol of straightforward reporting and a talent to which one should aspire in the field.
However, among the many obituaries written on this titan of news, I came across Jim Lehrer’s Rules, guiding principles he used that can and should continue to influence generations of media students to come. (The world in general would probably be a nicer place, too, if non-media folks kept an eye on these things as well.)
These may seem quaint in the era of “Screaming Head” journalism, opinion-as-fact reporting, “sources say” coverage and a general sense that members of the general public have the IQ of a salad bar. However, with very limited quibbling, I could clearly defend each of these as something worth striving toward in our field.
Jim Lehrer’s Rules
Do nothing I cannot defend.
Cover, write and present every story with the care I would want if the story were about me.
Assume there is at least one other side or version to every story.
Assume the viewer is as smart and caring and good a person as I am.
Assume the same about all people on whom I report.
Assume personal lives are a private matter until a legitimate turn in the story absolutely mandates otherwise.
Carefully separate opinion and analysis from straight news stories and clearly label everything
Do not use anonymous sources or blind quotes except on rare and monumental occasions. No one should be allowed to attack another anonymously.
A print of artist Phil Hands’ cartoon on free speech hangs on the wall of my office, with a nice message from this incredibly talented person. I think this message matters now more than ever.
Zoom in: Tensions at Columbia bubbled over last week after university president Minouche Shafik called in the NYPD to disband a pro-Palestinian encampment at the center of campus.
The University of Michigan said it would draft a new policy on punishable disruptive behavior following a pro-Palestinian protest at its convocation.
The University of Southern California canceled its valedictorian’s commencement speech, citing safety concerns that the student called a “campaign of racist hatred.”
Stanford University banned overnight camping in February to end an encampment populated by dueling pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli tents, citing student safety, extreme weather and rodents.
FIRST-AMENDMENT BASICS: The First Amendment to the Constitution allows for freedom of expression in a number of ways, including speech, press and assembly. State actors (meaning public officials, public organizations or otherwise government-ish people or groups) cannot step in and deny these rights without some exceptional circumstances.
The law requires a risk of “imminent lawless action” or “clear and present danger” to exist for the government prohibit these kinds of expressions. Examples of this kind of risk include things like inciting a crowd to destroy property or chanting “We are going to kill the chancellor” during a march. That’s why yelling “Mike Pence is a traitor” isn’t the same as yelling “Hang Mike Pence” during the Jan. 6 incident in Washington, D.C.
In some cases, the law can allow for restrictions based on the time, place and manner of the expression, but it also states that the restrictions must be content neutral. In other words, if the mayor of your town refuses to allow a “Pro-Vegetable” march at 5 a.m. because it would be disruptive to the sleeping habits of the citizens, that mayor can’t then allow a “Pro-Beef” march to occur at 5 a.m.
KEY FREAKOUT POINT: This is what happens when the vaguely educated (Congress) asks questions of the overly educated (Ivy League university administrators) and fear is a driving force in the discussion.
Congress, trying to make a point, asked if “calling for the genocide of Jews” violated the campus speech codes and neither of these esteemed educators could find a coherent answer. (As these are both private institutions, they get more leeway about what can and can’t happen on their campus than do public institutions. More on that later.)
What happened next was what always happens next at a time like this: More administrators get called to answer similar questions under a totally disingenuous guise by people who have no interest other than “pwning” these folks.
Thus, to avoid being the next university egghead on the chopping block, these folks force everything 180-degrees in the opposite direction, to the point where saying “bless you” is somehow a hanging offense. Fear drives the silencing of certain voices that people worry might not be as popular as others. The goal is to “run clock” for a while, in hopes that everything will just calm down once the kids find a new TikTok challenge or something.
Words are scary, particularly when you are being accused of certain things. Nobody likes being accused of antisemitism, Islamophobia, homophobia, racism, sexism and other such things. Certain words carry with them a permanent stain, and that can be terrifying enough to make people do or not do certain things. I often think back to this clip from “Apt Pupil” in that regard:
REALITY CHECK: As much as it would be great if we could all just get along about everything, that’s not the way life works. This is why we have laws in place to deal with what can and can’t happen when people feel the need to disagree.
The law is clear on how speech and assembly work: Unless you can demonstrate that whatever these people are saying or wherever they are going will lead to lawless action, they have the right to say what they want to say and go where they want to go. The law isn’t here to protect popular speech, but ALL speech.
DOCTOR OF PAPER HOT TAKE: Everyone has a level at which they think a line should be drawn when it comes to speech being problematic, but quite literally, the cure for bad speech isn’t speech suppression. It’s MORE speech. It’s also been clear that there are always risks that unpopular speech may lead to violence, but we have laws to deal with that violence once it actually occurs. Stopping speech because it might end poorly has the same internal logic as the traffic cop who pulls over the Corvette driver because the car “looks like it could go fast.”
The administrators of these schools need to have stronger intestinal fortitude when it comes to supporting free speech, even if it’s going to be wildly unpopular or allow some senator from Bumbledirt, Wyoming to call them all sorts of names on the Senate floor.
Yes, it sucks when you have to deal with difficult situations, but standing for principles is supposed to be administrators’ resting pulse. If you think having people say mean stuff about you on Twitter/X is rough, read this piece by David Goldberger, a Jewish attorney who represented the Nazis in the Skokie case. Members of Jewish Defense League showed up at Goldberger’s office with baseball bats trying to beat the hell out of him. The rabbi at his parents’ synagogue gave a speech denouncing Goldberger personally for taking the case. He was threatened and called a self-loathing Jew for his troubles and yet in retrospect, he remains as stalwart in his beliefs as ever:
To this day, I have no doubt that the ACLU’s commitment to equal rights for all is a backbone of our democracy — no matter how offensive our clients are. Chipping away at this commitment will open the door to the erosion of the First Amendment as a bulwark against rule by tyrants.
In short, if you want your free speech, you have to be willing to stand up for everyone else’s speech as well.
THE RATIONALE: TikTok has more than 170 million U.S. users and government officials are worried that the Chinese government could access these users’ data via the app and create threats to national security. Both ByteDance and the Chinese government have downplayed these worries, but experts in the fields of international relations and technology have said pretty much any Chinese tech company operates under “a cloud of suspicion.”
CATCHING UP: If you are somehow completely unaware of TikTok, or have been kind of doing the “Oh, yeah, TikTok” thing when your kids or grandkids talk about it, here’s what the NY Times calls “The Basic Human Explanation of TikTok.”
WHY PEOPLE ARE FREAKING OUT: This is a simple one to explain: Habit and money.
In terms of habit, you have 170 million people in the U.S., spending an average of between 58 minutes per day and 95 minutes a day on this thing, depending on how you slice the data. If you look at any data set, you’ll notice some lighter and heavier users, but the scarier thing is the increase of usage in terms of overall users and overall use. In 2019, users averaged about 27 minutes a day and there were only about 27 million U.S. users.
Cigarettes would have been proud of that kind of habit formation…
As for money, this thing is a goldmine for ByteDance, which has seen exponential growth in less than five years. Selling it would be financially unwise, especially if it’s forced to do so, as nothing drives down a price like every buyer know you’re over a barrel and HAVE TO sell.
WHY MEDIA PEOPLE SHOULDN’T BE FREAKING OUT: As news journalists, PR professionals and advertising folks, we tend to see a lot of media shifting on a regular basis. If we wanted our lives to be nothing but smooth sailing and stable situations, we’d have taken a job in something less stressful, like defusing land mines. The point is, we’ve seen a lot of changes to the media landscape, let alone the social media landscape, over the course of our careers, so if the ban happens, we’re actually in pretty good shape to deal with it.
One of my students did a great localization story for our reporting class on this issue, and she talked to people who run a Digital Marketing Clinic at UWO about a potential ban. The people there had already expected this and had worked with clients to avoid any messaging interruptions a ban would cause. In addition, the director of the organization gave two really good bits of advice that most of us follow:
Diversify your approach to reaching your audience so that one platform can’t hold you hostage.
Build up your own platforms and connect with your audience through things you control
I imagine that most other quality organizations and agencies that connect people to audiences through media channels have also approached life in this fashion.
DOCTOR OF PAPER HOT TAKE: This situation isn’t likely to end up with a ban because everyone is making too much money for that to happen. If TikTok weren’t so profitable, ByteDance wouldn’t be fighting so hard to keep it. If advertisers and influencers weren’t making a living on this thing, they’d be less worried about it going away. This is going to be like a game of “Chicken” for the next couple months until some sort of compromise is hammered out. What that is remains to be seen, but nobody kills the golden goose if they’re smart enough to realize it’s got a lot more golden eggs to lay.
Even if TikTok gets banned, life on social media will adapt and progress as it always has. Over the course of multiple textbooks in which I’ve had to incorporate social media trends, I’ve seen the landscape radically change in terms of platform supremacy. Each time I do an update, I save the social media chapter for the very, very end and then pray to St. Jude that nothing insane happens between me sending the chapter and the book hitting the press.
Here’s the perfect example: When I wrote “Dynamics of News Reporting and Writing,” I had to pitch two sample chapters and the folks at Sage told me to make one of them the social media chapter. I protested, arguing that stuff was changing so quickly, it would likely need a massive overhaul before the book would press. They argued that if I didn’t SHOW potential adopters a full social media chapter they wouldn’t believe it was going to be there, and thus show less interested in the book. So, I wrote up what was “cutting-edge stuff” at the time, only to have to fully rewrite the chapter FOUR TIMES between that draft and the final version.
We were ON THE PRESS when Twitter decided to move from 140 characters to 280 characters, sending me into a panicking dervish of phone calls and emails. We ended up having to pull the book back and have me patch holes in the social media chapter to fix that.
Fast forward three years and the number of platforms that were in that first edition that were laughably absent from that second edition included:
YikYak
Storify
Vine
Periscope
Ping
Google Buzz
Meerkat
Digg
And that doesn’t include the stuff that changed, like Twitter shifting to more content, Instagram Reels and other such things. Each time I go to revise an edition, I find myself looking at the social media chapter like when I look back at photos of my childhood in which my parents dressed me in the worst the 1970s had to offer: “Holy cow… I totally forgot about that…”
When Twitter became X and then became an Elon-Musk-fever-dream-hellscape, other stuff like BlueSky and Threads emerged in an attempt to fill the void. When Vine died, everyone wondered where we’d get our 10-second videos of fun. TikTok answered that question. As is the case with most of social media, products will continue to enter the arena with a goal of meeting users’ needs in a way that previous products haven’t or have ceased to do.
DISCUSSION STARTER: Of all the arguments people are making about a potential TikTok ban, which one makes the most sense to you? Is it an issue of free speech? Is it a financial concern about lost revenue for content creators? Is it an issue of governmental overreach? Is it the “keep your paws off my stuff” point of view? Or is there something else? (Or, if you favor a ban, why?)
Me to kids who use AI to cheat: “What I do have are a very particular set of skills, skills I have acquired over a very long career, skills that make me a nightmare for people like you…”
I often wonder when I’m reading some of the essay work I get these days that is clearly written by generative artificial intelligence if my students are lazy and stupid or if they think I am.
Truth be told, I usually don’t have a lot of problems in this area because AI has yet to master the art of writing for the media, as it has clearly and repeatedly demonstrated. However, from time to time, I have a class that requires a reflection paper or personal essay, and suddenly, the students who couldn’t find a coherent sentence with a searchlight and a posse have managed to put Shakespeare to shame.
In one case, I found about 20 percent of the kids had completely or mostly written their ETHICS assignment using artificial intelligence programs. The irony on that is so thick, you couldn’t cut through it with a chainsaw.
In another case, I gave students a 1-1.5 page, typed, double-spaced reflection paper before each test that is there to do nothing but make them think about what we covered in the chunk of the class leading up to the test. I did this so that the kids who suck at multiple choice could have a chance to express themselves and to also defray the overall impact of each test.
The prompt was laughably simple. Tell me briefly:
What we covered that you already knew before you took the class
What we covered that you didn’t know before you took the class
What we touched on that you would want to know more about.
That’s it. If you can fog a mirror, it’s almost a guaranteed B+. If you can write a word or two in the mirror fog with your finger, it’s practically an A.
Caught at least one kid AI-ing it, through basic common sense, journalistic skepticism and checking through multiple detection programs. I’ve gotten to the point that I can almost tell exactly WHICH program they used to write it.
And, yes, it’s really quite upsetting. (I’d use other words to describe my feelings on this, but Sage is trying to sell a book or two here.)
As friends and colleagues have told me that this kind of thing is “rampant” on their campuses as well, I figured I’d break out this throwback post on why cheating in journalism (especially in terms of AI stuff) is a really, really bad idea:
4 Self-Serving Reasons Not to Cheat in a Journalism Course
At the beginning of each semester, most professors I know give some version of the “Don’t Cheat” lecture. We explain the university policies about cheating and how we can make your life so miserable that you will wish you had never been born. We outline the logical reasoning behind avoiding unethical behavior and try to guilt you into acting right.
And right about now is where we start to notice that none of that really sunk in for some of our students.
Somewhere between midterms and finals week is where I tend to find whatever cheating I’m likely to notice over the span of a semester. It’s always the same: The student who couldn’t write a sentence with a subject and a verb is suddenly putting Bob Woodward to shame. The kid who spent the last two weeks in our “draft” sessions with nothing done suddenly produces a magnum opus in two days. The story I get from a student that seems shockingly familiar for some reason, mainly because his roommate turned in the same thing last semester.
It’s also the same when the students are confronted. They go through all five stages of grief in about three minutes: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. (Or, in at least one case, a note from a parent that told me “The family lawyer will be in touch.) It’s gotten so bad that I keep tissues hidden in my office for that exact moment when a student suddenly realizes there is no way out and tears begin flowing. (For the record, men cry as much or more than women do when the stuff hits the fan like this.)
Since journalism is always about telling people “What’s in it for me?”, consider these four self-serving reasons why you shouldn’t cheat, least of all in a journalism course:
You have much worse odds of getting away with it: Students have come up with so many great ways of cheating on various tests, projects, quizzes and assignments, it gives me hope for the future in terms of innovation. There are the water bottle labels with the answers printed on them. There is the “phone/texting” thing that students have developed over the years. There are “cheat sheets” and “crib notes” written in places that defy logic.
Many journalism classes, however, are performance based and skill structured, so it’s not about memorizing things and regurgitating them, so those tricks don’t always apply. Instead, students tend to plagiarize from published material, use stuff from sources that don’t exist or otherwise “improvise” their ways around their writing assignments and tests.
Here’s the problem with that: Journalists and journalism professors (a.k.a. former journalists) are naturally suspicious, so they have a harder time believing that you managed to track down the governor for a sit-down interview on deadline. They are trained researchers, so they know how to fact check and verify stuff through a number of platforms beyond “TurnItIn.” They usually have connections with sources in the area, so it’s not a stretch to imagine them calling up a city council rep, a high school football coach or an administrator and asking, “Hey, did you have an interview with someone in my course and say XYZ?”
The whole purpose of being a journalist is to dig past the BS veneer that people show us and get to the heart of the truth.
We live for this. And trust me, our ability to dig is better than your ability to hide at this point in your career.
You really piss us off and trust us, you don’t want that: When journalists dig into something, we are like a dog with a Frisbee: We just don’t let go. Most of the time, when someone lies to us, we are desperate to dig even deeper to determine how bad this is and what else that person might be lying about.
We will be bound and determined to dig into EVERY, SINGLE, OTHER thing you have EVER written for us and see if there is ANYTHING you did that fits this pattern of plagiarism. We will talk to colleagues about you to see if you were in their classes and see if they had any inclination that you might not be producing work that is on the level. We will look to see what penalties are available and how far this can all go.
The reason is that we operate in a field where trust is earned and all you have is your reputation. If you throw that all away over a crappy assignment in a single college course, what’s going to happen when you get out in the field? Even more, if you go out there with a degree from our institution and people know you had us as professors, how will that reflect on us when you do something this pathologically stupid on the job? Those kinds of thoughts keep a lot of us up at night, not out of fear but out of anger. We are not about to let our field slide into the Dumpster (or further into the Dumpster) because you cheated when you felt “overwhelmed” by your six extracurricular activities and the death of your goldfish. In most cases, professors will be far more forgiving if you essentially tell them everything up front when you can’t complete an assignment. If you cheat, we have a burning desire to make sure you don’t get away with it.
Two degrees of separation: The concept of “Six Degrees of Separation” explains that we are all somehow connected to every other person on Earth through no more than six links. In the field of journalism, however, that linkage is a lot shorter.
I have done no definitive work on this, but if I had to guess, I’d say those of us in journalism are probably operating within two or three degrees. Case in point happened this weekend at the college media convention I attended: I was reviewing a student newspaper from Florida when I mentioned that I had a number of former students working in the state. One of the students said that she was in frequent contact with an editor of a particular newspaper. I recognized the name immediately as one of my former students and did the old “humblebrag” thing about it. “Really?” the student asked, her eyes lighting up. “Could you tell her you met me and that I’m really interested in the paper?” She was a smart kid and I liked what I had read in her stories I was critiquing, so I said sure. I dashed off a simple email to my former student about this woman and moved on with life. Today, I got this message back:
Vince,
Small world!
We are considering her for a spring internship. Your recommendation just put her at the top of list.
Hope you are doing well.
I honestly don’t know if my email helped or if maybe the editor was trying to make me feel good about myself, but the underlying point remains: In the most random place and set of circumstances possible in journalism, I was linked to two people in the field like that. This kind of connection is invaluable in our field if the word on the street about you is good. If you plagiarize and get caught, the word on the street spreads as well and, simply put, everybody in this field seems to know everybody else somehow. The “A” you got on that plagiarized assignment better be worth knowing that you will never get a job because everywhere you go, someone will know someone who knows about it.
You will never really recover: My dad was fond of telling me that if I ever planned to steal something, I shouldn’t steal a candy bar from a store. Instead, I should steal the whole store, as in when the owner came back the next day, all that was left would be a basement and some wires sticking out of the ground. The reason Dad had for this was simple: If you steal something, no matter how big or small, you’re a thief. If you’re going to steal and ruin your life, you might as well do it for something that matters.
Obviously, his point wasn’t that I should go big or go home, but rather that if I took that path of thievery, I’d never be able to recover everything I lost because of the stupid choice I made. The same is true in plagiarism, cheating and more.
The famous cases are always the ones your professors roll out for you during the semester: Stephen Glass, the wunderkind of the New Republic, who falsified dozens of stories before being forced out in disgrace. He is now a graduate of law school who still can’t practice law because of his prior transgressions. Jayson Blair, the rising star at the New York Times, who supposedly broke stories about the D.C. sniper case, turned out to be a serial liar. He now lives in Virginia and said he knows he could never go back to journalism because of the trust he broke. Janet Cooke, who wrote a compelling tale of an 8-year-old heroin addict name Jimmy, returned the Pulitzer Prize she won after it turned out she made him up. Today, as the story linked above notes, she lives in the U.S. and works in a field not associated with writing.
Beyond those “big names” are the day-in, day-out foul ups that cost people everything. I was on an ethics panel last week when one of my fellow panelists told a story of a student who made things up or plagiarized content. His name was so clearly bad in the field, he ended up legally changing it.
I still have the “ethical agreement” one of our writers signed at the student paper shortly before he made up an entire softball story. We only caught him because someone on the sports desk was roommates with a guy who was dating a softball player and she mentioned it in passing. I have no idea what ever happened to that guy after we fired him, but I do pull out that agreement from time to time and show students. His name is etched in their minds as a cautionary tale.
Interestingly for me, I find that this kind of stuff happens most with my upper-level classes. Freshmen and sophomores screw up occasionally by bumping into a problem when they don’t know any better. However, it’s the seniors who are getting ready to graduate that actively cheat. Why? My theories vary.
Look, we all get it. Everyone in journalism has felt the pressure at one point in time. Deadline is approaching, we get caught short and we figure, “If I can just cut this corner this one time, I’ll survive.” The truth is, it’s not worth it. If you screw up that assignment, the worst that happens to you is that you fail that one piece or that one test. If you cheat on that assignment, everything gets so much worse.
I’ve had some interesting back-and-forths with folks online about what journalism is or what journalists should be doing. For some people, if we’re not engaging every day in watchdog journalism that demonstrates a seriousness to the craft, we’re failing.
For others, it’s about how to get out of a rut where we seem to be telling the same story to an increasingly disinterested audience. Important content gets lost among the random string of click-bait and cat TikToks, they argued, because people don’t “get it” when it comes to the value of news.
For me, everything goes back to the basic rules of audience-centricity and storytelling. A great story will grab and hold readers when it is told well by skilled craftspeople in media.
When it comes to audience-centricity, it comes back to answering two questions:
What happened?
Why should I (as the reader) care?
The problem with professors and journalists in that regard is that we sometimes fail to connect on these basic elements, something that came through to me in a story I recently retold.
As part of my job at UW-Oshkosh, I get to be a Team Fellow for our volleyball team. The gig is great: I volunteer to serve as a homework helper, a college-range life coach and basically an ear for anything the athletes feel they need that they can’t get from the other resources available to them on campus. Some times, like last week, I end up helping out by talking to recruits they bring around, which is where this story kind of starts.
I know almost nothing about volleyball, even after seven years of trying, but the kid who was being recruited was a libero, so I told the kid the one story about a libero that I knew.
When Zoe was in grade school, she wanted to play volleyball. The sport, generally speaking, is dominated by giants who play above the net on offense and defense, so my lilliputian child was going to be at a disadvantage, something she found completely deflating.
Around that time, I took her to a UWO game and she got to watch Rachel Gardner, the team’s fireplug of a libero. She was having an amazing game, throwing her body all over the place with reckless abandon.
Rachel Gardner, my kid’s volleyball hero.
“Do you see Rachel out there?” I asked Zoe.
“Yes,” Zoe said. “She’s the BEST PLAYER on the court!”
“What else?”
“She’s small like me!”
After the game, the team did an autograph and meet-and-greet session with the fans. I’d run into Rachel earlier that week and explained the whole “Zoe is short” situation and told her how much she’d love a picture after the game. Rachel said she’d love to.
When Rachel saw us in line, she asked, “Are you Zoe? Come on around in back here!”
Rachel gave her a big hug, we took a couple pictures and we essentially made my kid smile for a week.
Later that month, my mom, Amy and Zoe went to the American Writers Museum in Chicago to hear Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor do a reading of her book and sign copies of her children’s book for kids. Only children were allowed to meet the justice and get pictures, which Zoe was more than happy to do. It was an amazing night for everyone involved.
An impressive resume, no doubt, but did she average more than 5 digs per set her senior year?
Fast forward to the next holiday gathering of our family where we were all talking about the cool things we’d gotten to do over the past year. I then told Zoe, “Why don’t you tell everyone about the really cool experience you had recently?”
“Yeah!” she said. “I got to meet RACHEL GARDNER! She’s a libero on the volleyball team, and she’s small like me and she’s -”
I interrupted, “Um… I meant the time you and nana and mama went to Chicago for that reading…”
“Oh, yeah,” she said. “There was a judge lady who was nice. Anyway, Rachel gave me a hug and we took a picture…” And on and on it went.
In thinking about it from an adult’s perspective, meeting one of the nine people responsible for our nation’s highest legal opinions would have been an epic moment. Even more, Justice Sotomayor was the first Latina appointed to the Supreme Court and only the third woman to ever hold a spot on it.
To my kid, she was just a “nice judge lady.” Now, on the other hand, Rachel Gardner was something to truly behold: A small, tough, amazing student athlete who gave Zoe something to which she could aspire. In short (sorry for the pun), it was so much easier for her to grasp the “what happened” (I met Rachel Gardner, volleyball superstar) and why it mattered (She’s doing something I care about in a way that I can’t right now, but I could if I worked hard enough).
In conceptualizing audience-centricity through the eyes of a child, you learn to figure out that what WE as journalists think is SUPPOSED to be important isn’t always what IS important to the audience we serve. Learning to meet the audience where it lives is crucial in making sure we connect with the readers and viewers in a relevant and useful way.
Even more, it puts a larger impetus on us as media professionals to better explain the answer to that second question. I don’t know if telling Zoe everything this incredible woman did in terms of shattering glass ceilings and shaping juris prudence would have helped the justice measure up to a libero in her eyes. That said, I think it might have helped her think about Sonia Sotomayor as a bit more than a “nice judge lady.”
My chair at UWO had this and another newspaper framed on the wall of his office until he retired. Of all the things he’d seen at the L.A. Times and N.Y. Times, this was the topic he looked at on a daily basis.
THE LEAD: O.J. Simpson, a former NFL running back, convicted felon and focal point of a double-murder acquittal, died last week at age 76. In 1995, he was found not guilty of murdering his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend, Ronald Goldman, but was later found civilly liable for their deaths.
MAJOR CAVEAT NUMBER 1: I’m not using this post to re-litigate anything related to the trial(s), his subsequent legal issues or the issues related to race, fame, justice or social structure in society. The goal here is to try to place Simpson and those moments into some sort of context for a generation of students for whom Simpson is as timely as the Teapot Dome Scandal and show them why the trial resonates to today.
MAJOR CAVEAT NUMBER 2: If you think there are additional pieces missing that fit that paradigm I’m using in Caveat Number 1, please feel free to put them in the comments below.
Now… On with the show…
BASIC O.J. BACKGROUND: Simpson was a star NFL running back for the Buffalo Bills and San Francisco 49ers. He became the first player to rush for 2,000 yards in a season and was inducted into the hall of fame in 1985. His professional life extended beyond football, as he did acting work in television and film, as well as serving as a football broadcaster. Above all else, he was a sought-after celebrity endorser, having done commercials for a variety of products and services, particularly at a time in which people of color did not receive many opportunities in this area. Simpson himself often noted his ability to “transcend race,” as he would say, “I’m not Black. I’m O.J.”
BASIC BACKGROUND ON THE MURDER TRIAL: On June 12, 1994, Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were stabbed to death at Brown Simpson’s condominium. Simpson became the focal point of the investigation. On June 17, Simpson was charged with the killings and was supposed to turn himself in to police, but that didn’t happen. In one of the most famous low-speed car chases in history, Simpson rode in the back seat of a white Ford Bronco as his friend Al Cowlings drove down the freeway, pursued by a dozen squad cars.
The trial spanned 11 months in which the prosecution presented evidence of Simpson’s guilt, including blood found in his car, a bloody glove found near the scene, shoes Simpson was known to wear and more. The “Dream Team” defense often hammered the evidence as being tainted or mishandled. In addition, the defense lawyers presented a significant narrative that both specific racist officers and a racist criminal justice system framed Simpson for this crime, which they stated he did not commit.
On Oct. 3, 1995, the jury returned a not guilty verdict against Simpson in both killings.
THE FRAMES OF O.J.: The media coverage of his cases related to those deaths was among the most intense of anything before or since. The issue was framed in a variety of ways, depending on the media lens used to view it and the underlying personal experiences that shaped people’s lives. Some frames were of a man who beat the justice system due to his fame and personal wealth. Others framed it as an issue of a racist criminal justice system, once again trying to railroad a person of color. Still others framed it as another case in which domestic violence was overshadowed by other frames, demonstrating once again that women were second-class citizens.
WHY SHOULD STUDENTS WHO WEREN’T EVEN BORN AT THAT POINT CARE: In a lot of ways, the Simpson trial was a “you had to be there” thing for a generation of people. It’s the same way that people of my parents’ age talked about the protests of the 1960s and my grandparents’ generation talked about the Great Depression. No matter how much you learn about the topic after the fact, it’s not the same thing. That said, there are key things that this case did that impact current media students to this day:
Fame as an interest element: Simpson’s fame was obviously a key element to what made this case as big as it was. (As Chris Rock famously said in one of his comedy routines, “If O.J. drove a bus, he wouldn’t even be O.J. He’d be Orenthal the bus-driving murderer.”) That said, the spotlight of the trial shifted people into that “name-recognition lead” zone of media coverage. Marcia Clark, Christopher Darden, Mark Fuhrman, Judge Lance Ito, Kato Kaelin, Robert Kardashian, Alan Dershowitz, Johnnie Cochran and more became household names. (Even 30 years after the trial, those names came to mind immediately for me.) Marcia Clark could cure cancer and Lance Ito could do a country album that knocks Taylor Swift out of the top spot of the charts, but their obituaries will still lead with the O.J. trial. Fame is something we still pay attention to, but what makes someone famous both then (during a pre-digital revolution) and now (in the age of internet stars) is something to consider.
Real-time broadcast coverage launches the “true crime” obsession: Other cases had allowed cameras and video coverage before, and even a few famous ones had drawn national attention, like the Pamela Smart case. However, just like MySpace and Friendster predated Facebook, these precursors to the Simpson trial couldn’t hold a candle to the overall coverage this received on a day-in, day-out basis. For almost a year, the country was transfixed. If ever there was a “Patient Zero” for court cases as television drama and true crime becoming a prominent form of entertainment, this was it.
Opinions become news: Broadcasters having an opinion was nothing new, but this case became a benchmark for what we constantly see today when it comes to “big news.” As Alex Weprin noted in the Hollywood Reporter, this trial basically established the formula for journalists using bluster to become famous and media networks using opinionated blather to draw viewers. It’s often easier to give an opinion about something than it is to do research, conduct interviews and rely on facts, which is why we see so much more opinion than we do in-depth journalism. However, as is usually the case, we need to keep our eye on the ball when it comes to providing our audiences valuable content instead of junk food.
The Race Card: Throughout the trial, the prosecutors accused the defense of “playing The Race Card” to overcome what they saw as obvious factual information. The defense argued that you couldn’t talk about anything in this case without talking about race, particularly in relationship to the racist history of the criminal justice system. Det. Mark Fuhrman’s testimony was particularly on point here, in that he repeatedly denied having any racial animus, only to be confronted with recordings of himself using “the N-word” repeatedly. Coverage of the verdict showed a divided America: White people watching were stunned or enraged at the verdict while Black people were shown celebrating. The analysis of this issue to this day remains a case of how race shaped the overarching views of society and how it still does. Journalists to this day need to understand the underpinnings of social and cultural history as it relates to the people and communities they cover. As much as it’s easy to grab a “Side A” and “Side B” and be done, that’s not going to work in situations where these long-festering wounds exist. (SIDE NOTE: I remember working on the student newspaper as the city editor when the verdict broke. I mentioned to a friend of mine who is Black that it seemed pretty obvious to me that he did it, in spite of the verdict. He responded, “Well, it was pretty obvious to me that Rodney King got his ass kicked by a bunch of cops, but that didn’t go our way, either.”)
The Ratings Monster: Media outlets have always measured things like circulation, audience share, market share and so forth in an attempt to track how well they are “grabbing eyeballs.” However, the Simpson case was like mainlining adrenaline in terms of how to get people to watch. According to ratings data, more than 150 million people watched the verdict live. To put that in perspective, that’s approximately EIGHT TIMES as many people who watched the Women’s NCAA championship game this year. The problem with getting a high that big is that you spend a lot of time chasing it in all the wrong ways. The question of what is good for our audience and what they are willing to watch/read to help us make our numbers look good has become a divergent one.
DISCUSSION STARTER: Take a look at how the obituaries of O.J. Simpson frame him. In terms of content ordering, where are the various elements of his life mentioned and do you agree with their overall approach? Which ones do you feel do the best job of telling the story in a solid, journalistic fashion and which ones do you think veer too much into opinion and hyperbole? What other issues do you see covered as part of his death and do you see them as being more or less relevant than they might have been at the time of his murder trial?
I wanted to break this out again because this year has been an epic dumpster fire for a lot of my fellow faculty here at UWO (and I’m sure elsewhere). The furloughs, the cuts, the overloads and more just seem to have taken a toll on us here.
I don’t think I’m alone in saying that I feel like I’m failing my students in some ways, given that I’m teaching out of my area of expertise, the number of kids I’m teaching has doubled from this time last year and I’m troubled by the massive uncertainties that face us here regarding academic reorganization.
The one thing I’ve got going for me? This mint jar:
The jar was a gift from our program assistant, Cindy, who retired this year. The jar sat on her desk and whenever kids (or I) needed a refresh or a moment of zen, we would stop by, grab a mint and talk a bit. (I probably owe her about $23,205.32 worth of mints by this point in life.)
Kids started noticing it on my desk this semester and started swinging by in between classes to grab a mint. Word got around that they could also crash in the office for a bit and talk about whatever was troubling them: A class that sucked, an internship that wasn’t getting back to them, a parent who didn’t understand why they didn’t have a job already lined up for after graduation… or whatever.
Without that jar, they probably wouldn’t come in and I wouldn’t get a chance to take their temperature on how life was treating them or take the opportunity to give them a bit of positive reinforcement. I realized that those moment were among the best moments of my day. Maybe I wasn’t curing cancer or saving the planet or preventing the downfall of democracy, but those pick-me-ups mattered. I also realized maybe I wasn’t doing as terribly at all of this as I felt like I was.
In looking back at this post, I realized that I was asking most of these questions on many of those mint stops. I’m sure a lot of you out there are asking them, too. With or without the mints.
5 questions good professors will never stop asking their students
A student showed up at my office around 7:30 this morning with a case of Diet Coke and a thank you card.
“I wanted to give you something to say thank you for being the best part of my semester,” she said. “You really gave all of us such a great experience.”
I was grateful she felt that way, but truth be told, it sure as hell didn’t feel like I was giving anyone a great experience. It was less like “Top Gun” excellence and more like, “Sully landing the plane on the Hudson RIver” survival. I found it a miracle that we made it this far and that nobody lost a limb in the process.
I know a lot of us in education feel like this year flat-out kicked our asses and that maybe our students aren’t getting the best out of us because of it. In an attempt to close off this year of weirdness, I found myself struggling for answers. After about a dozen attempts to write this piece, I decided that it’s less about what we know and demonstrate to our students that matters, but rather what we want to know and how we want to serve them that matters.
With that in mind, here are five questions I think good professors ask of their students, no matter the situation or how long it has been since we shared a classroom together:
ARE YOU OK?
I think most of us have asked this question at least 30 times a day over the past 18 months and really wanted to know the actual answer every single time.
Students often enter our offices with one specific need: A question about a test, a concern about a grade or a request for some sort of special dispensation on an upcoming deadline. However, great professors can see that there is usually something else going on underneath the surface as students mentally flail about like the feet of a duck that seemingly moves smoothly across a lake. There is a job that is overworking them, there is a family member who is leaning on them or there is a roommate who is sapping them of their will to live.
The regular people in their lives give them the “regular people” advice about what to do or how to cope or why they just need to suck it up. Professors tend to have a completely different angle on things because we’ve been around the block more times than a moron with a stuck turn signal.
In the game of life, Mom and Dad see their child as a piece on the board, moving toward a goal. Friends see fellow game-players who are trying to make it through unscathed. Professors not only see the whole board, but also every game that has ever been played in front of them over years or decades. We know not only what each move will do, but the six moves that can come after that initial choice that will allow us to better predict success or failure.
Still, tapping that resource can be tough for students who often thing we have more important things to do than help them with whatever is problematic in their lives. That’s why even just opening the door a little bit with “Are you OK?” can make a world of difference.
WHAT CAN I DO TO HELP?
Professors who care put themselves out there for students because without those students, our lives would be pretty dull and relatively meaningless. Helping other people has been baked into who I am since I was a kid. If someone is working on a project, I have been taught to grab a hammer or paint brush and put myself to work. If someone is struggling, you offer assistance in whatever way you can. You don’t wait for someone to ask for help. You ask how you can make things better.
In classes, sometimes the help is easy stuff like, “Can you read my lead and see if I’m on the right track?” or “I’m not sure what I’m supposed to take next semester. Can you look over my schedule?” Around this time of year, the help can be a little more taxing, but still pretty normal, like serving as a reference, writing a letter of recommendation or reassuring a parent that, yes, Johnny or Janie will get a job and, no, he or she won’t be living in your basement forever.
I have found some of the best moments in life come from helping my students, even when it had nothing to do with this semester’s class. I’ve taught students how to change their own oil and swap their car’s battery. I’ve fixed cars for kids who were about to get shafted by some greasy weasel at a 10-minute auto repair joint. Amy and I have brought freezer-ready dinners to students who just had babies and were overwhelmed with the responsibilities of being new parents. We’ve shared tips and given some kid-equipment to these folks as well. (That vibrating baby chair is a lifesaver some days, quite literally, one student told me.)
I’ve answered questions like, “How do you refinish a piece of furniture?” and “Can you tell me how bail bonds work?” (That one was a little dicey…) I’ve moved furniture and edited cover letters. None of it was a chore and thinking back on it makes me happy because these folks trusted me with whatever it was that needed doing.
The funny thing about this question? I find that once I ask it of a kid, I tend not to need to ask it again. After the first time, they’re the ones asking, “Could you help me with something?”
DO YOU KNOW HOW PROUD I AM OF YOU?
In the early phases, I tend to ask it on the simple stuff: You asked for help. You figured out how to properly attribute a quote. You got your first story published in student media. You got an internship at a place that NEVER gives internships to people from your school.
Once you graduate, you never stop being one of “my kids” and I don’t think I’m the only professor who feels that way about our connections with “our kids.” I watch from afar as you take jobs, move up the ladder and become leaders in the field. I see you start your own businesses, fight for social justice and make a name for yourselves. I’m proud to tell people, “I taught that kid!” when you show up in the newspaper (most times… Stay out of the police blotter…) or you are broadcasting on radio or TV. I am thrilled to let people know about your accomplishments and your awards and your growth as a professional.
However, you don’t have to do any of that stuff and I am still ridiculously proud of you. I’m proud of my students who have the courage to work through their mental health issues. I’m proud of my students who courageously battle cancer or overcome sicknesses and persevere. I’m proud of you for making amazing life choices to get married or to have kids or to go a completely different way. I’m proud that you are who you are and that you can stand on your own two feet and say, “This is who I am. Take it or leave it.”
When our paths first cross, so many of the students seem like newborn deer: gangly, gawky and awkward as they try to stand on wobbly legs in a world that seems far too fast for them. Somehow they learn to steady themselves and improve their overall presence. They get stronger and faster and better as they learn from doing things right and even more from doing things wrong. We’re there to guide them, but they have to do this on their own, otherwise, they’ll never be strong enough to make it when we’re not around.
When they actually put the pieces together, it’s something amazing to behold.
And it’s worth letting them know what a big deal that is.
WILL THAT MAKE YOU HAPPY?
The people who enter my class tend to have a lot of questions. If they stick with me for the rest of the degree, they tend to have even more. I’m not sure if this means I inspire them to think critically and question their surroundings, or if I’m just confusing the crap out of them.
However, most of the questions they ask are geared toward a tangible outcome: “What do I need to know for the test?” “Is it worth it to double major?” “Will this help me get a job?” “Is the salary for this job enough to keep me alive?”
These are all the questions we’ve been trained to ask in the college setting and they all make sense: You want to pass the class, graduate, get hired and earn enough to survive. The one thing that we tend not to think about in a real concrete way is if what we are doing will make us happy. Going through school always seems to feel like this scene from “School Ties:”
It took a long time for me to figure this out, but most of what makes life worth living and jobs worth taking is the degree to which you actually like what you’re doing. Dad always told me that if you find a job you love, you’ll never really work a day in your life. It’s mostly true, in that I have found that not every day is an Academy Award-winning performance and there are some days that are a lot better than others. However, when something makes me happy, I look forward to doing it. When something doesn’t, I tend to avoid it or do a half-assed job at it.
Students often tell me that they want to go to law school or grad school or start their own business or change majors or a million other things. The thing I immediately want to know is, “Do you think this will make you happy? If the answer is yes, plan well, hedge against failure and work like hell at it. If the answer is no, think again about why you want to do this at all.”
A lot of things that might make you happy aren’t going to be the smartest of choices, (“I want to start my own company where I blow bong hits in the lungs of people’s pets and post the videos on YouTube…”) which is where those other caveats come in. Still, we tend to consider the importance of happiness in inverse proportion to all the other things that are far less important than if we will really like what we’re getting ourselves into.
YOU KNOW I’M ALWAYS HERE IF YOU NEED ME, RIGHT?
I have now spent more of my life teaching college than I have not being a college teacher, and it doesn’t matter where I taught you or how long ago it was, you’re never really going to get rid of me.
The best part of my life is hearing back from students who have long since stopped needing my help on a test, my advice about an internship or my signature on a course override card. They have written more stories, covered more events, taught more classes, run more organizations and probably make more money than I ever have. However, when they really do need something, I’m thrilled to death when they show up in a chat or an email
A former student who is in her 40s sent me an email a few weeks back, asking if I’d support her effort to take a job at a big-name university. She has a doctorate, advising credentials that are amazing, a record as an elected public official and a lot more, so she needs me in the same way a Kardashian needs more publicity. However, I told her I was more than happy to do whatever she needed: Serve as a reference, write a letter or drive somewhere and talk to those people about why they’d be stupid not to hire her.
Another student got in touch a few years back when a source was threatening to sue him. I found the threat ridiculous and that his employer wasn’t doing more to support this kid, so I dug around and found some legal help that not only got the source to back off, but pushed the media outlet to leave the story alone.
I’ve refinished furniture for them as wedding gifts. I’ve seen their kids grow up in pictures and videos they post on social media. I’ve offered them condolences and heartfelt messages when they lose a parent or a loved one.
I’ve bought T-shirts and doodads from students who have started their own businesses. I’ve bought Girl Scout cookies from the children of former students, only pausing to think, “How in the hell are you old enough to have a kid who’s a Girl Scout?” (No matter how old they get or how esteemed they are, my students are eternally trapped in my mind’s eye somewhere between the ages of 18 and 22, showing up for an 8 a.m. bleary eyed and likely hungover.)
I’ve lit holy candles in my church for students recovering from cancer. I’ve prayed for all of them at one time or another, just because I figured they needed it.
Before we part company any time we connect, I always try to remember to let them know, “If you ever need me, you know I’m here for you, right?” I mean it every time and I know I’m not the only professor who feels this way.
If there’s one thing I hope they all know, it’s that the answer to this particular question should always be “Yes.”
One of the things students have told me they find difficult is finding stories outside of the typical news grind. If the police aren’t arresting someone, if the teams aren’t playing games, if important people aren’t giving speeches or if governmental groups aren’t having meetings, well… Now what do we do for content?
We’ve talked a lot about this in a variety of ways before, but one of the best ways to find stories is to stop looking for them as stories. Instead, just open up your mind to wonder and open up your eyes to the small things that you can see all around you.
This concept came to mind when a story from ESPN about the condition called “cauliflower ear” popped up randomly in my news feed. The condition has long existed among athletes involved in contact sports, such as boxing, wrestling and martial arts, but this author started with a basic question: “What do people who have it think about it and why?”
What follows is a deep dive into the “beautiful and grotesque honor of cauliflower ear.” The writer starts with a narrative thread about an MMA fighter whose goal since the age of 8 was to get one of these “badges of honor.” It then discusses the history, the medical condition, the attitudes people in sports have about it and the reasons why it is truly that honorific talisman for so many people these days.
The story reminded me of Malcolm Gladwell’s epic feature, “The Ketchup Conundrum.” The story started with an observation Gladwell made while walking through the grocery store’s condiment aisle: We’ve got like 912 kinds of mustard in here, but really only one type of ketchup. Why?
What followed was about 5,000 words that broke down the history of ketchup, the rationale of how kids came to love it, the psychological satisfaction that only a specific ketchup can provide and why everything else is just viewed as a pretender or a “sauce” instead of another form of ketchup.
In both cases, the concept started small and with a simple observation. The level to which the story grew was directly correlated to the writer’s interest in every aspect of the topic and the wild level of curiosity that comes from child-like wonder.
(In just looking at these two topics, I thought about two weird things like that right off the bat: Beauty marks/freckles and ramen. I wondered about how beauty marks form, grow and are in some cases good and others not so much. I also wondered how one type of ramen (Maruchan) became kind of like the McDonald’s hamburger of the ramen world here in the states. Plus I know that there are tons of ramen restaurants etc. blowing up as well.)
If you are having trouble coming up with stories, a lot of simple observations and general moments of wonder can get you on the path to something deeper than you ever imagined. Give it a shot and see what happens.
THE LEAD: As part of the launch of the “Exploring Mass Communication” textbook, I was asked to sit down with some folks at Sage and discuss my thoughts about the field of media. These included things like where we are, where we started and what matters now.
I also talked about the importance of critical thinking, the value in being a “non-denominational skeptic” and the way in which diversity, equity and inclusion are vital in media today.
THE CATCH: Clearly, this is part of the book roll out, so there will be a few minor “book plugs” in here, but I did my best to avoid full-on book pimping. Still, I listened back to the info in here and found that it might be more helpful to folks than not, so I’m posting it.
THE VOICES IN YOUR HEAD: When I was speaking at a convention one year, a student came up to me and said, “My professor uses your book for our class, so I wanted to hear you speak. When I read your stuff, I imagine how I think you would sound because it feels like you’re talking to me instead of writing. You sound just like the voice in my head.”
I told the kid, “I hear voices in my head, too. Don’t worry too much about it until the start arguing with each other.”
We then both had a good laugh about it.
So, if you always wanted to know if the voice you imagine coming out of me is the same as the voice that actually comes out of me, hop on below:
Here is the link to podcast one, where we talk about the evolution of mass com, the state of mass com today and the importance of being a “non-denominational skeptic.”
Here is the link to podcast two, where we discuss the importance of diversity, equity and inclusion, as well as how we integrate that into my Exploring Mass Com text.
Hope they are helpful or enjoyable or maybe even both!
There are many ways to convince people to come around to your way of thinking when you are writing a column. You can offer facts, you can present solid analogies or you can find ways to empathize with your readers.
In reading through a lot of contest entries, from both college and professional publications, I’ve found there appears to be a little less of those options and a little more hostility lately.
Consider the following opening to a column I read as part of a contest I judged over the break. I pulled the name of the paper and the byline in an attempt to avoid publicly shaming the author:
Over the past few weeks, I have written several columns talking about things like the “Barbie” movie and Taylor Swift. Some of you may be begging for something that’s a little less surface level, and I hear you.
Unfortunately for you, I make the rules here, and I will once again be talking about something shallow. You want something different on the opinion page? Join (PAPER’S NAME) and write your own column.
I feel bathed in the warmth of the writer after that, and I’m just desperate to hear what comes next…
Another piece opened with this salvo:
I don’t care what you do. I don’t care if you eat at (RESTAURANT). I don’t care if you shop at (STORE). I don’t care if you wear (ITEM OF CLOTHING). I don’t care if you listen to (ARTIST).
Right… Just like your mom doesn’t care if you ever call on her birthday…
Truth be told, opinion writing is part art, part science and even the best columnists swing and miss. I know that because George Hesselberg, who spent decades at the Wisconsin State Journal writing amazing columns in ways I will never come close to, said that even he remembers writing “a few stinkers.”
George also noted, “Everyone thinks it is easy. It isn’t.”
If you are college student in an opinion-writing class or student media columnist who is DESPERATE to become the next big-name column writer, consider these rules to help you along:
Rule 1- You’re not writing for yourself.
The first and worst mistake most columnists write is that something happens to them and they feel that they need to share it with the world.
When you feel this urge, back away from the keyboard, go take a nap and come back to writing when this urge has passed.
Column writing is not group therapy. The goal in giving you a column isn’t to help with your self esteem and make you glad you shared. The goal of a column is to engage the readers and give THEM something to think about, something to learn or something to do.
In other words, it’s not about you. It’s about them. If what you’re writing doesn’t have a direct tie to the audience or doesn’t in some way involve your readers, you’ve failed before you get off the starting line.
Rule 2 – Know your audience
Getting to know the people for whom you write means first learning rule #1. Once you realize that you need to write for somebody else, you need to figure out who they are. Don’t assume they are “all exactly like me,” which is what one particularly arrogant columnist told me. Even if she were very similar to many people, she can’t assume that they all share her issues and concerns.
Markets defined in various ways. You have geographic interests (what’s going on around campus this weekend), demographic interests (what can you do if you’re under 21; what’s the college scene look like) and psychographics (interests, activities etc.). If you can figure out what your audience is, where it is and what it likes/dislikes, you’ve got a pretty good handle on to whom you are speaking with your columns.
Rule 3 – Stay local
Great columnists for “national media outlets” get a pass to write whatever they want in many cases. I’m not saying it’s a good idea, but it’s what they do. The reason is that they’ve done this job long enough and well enough to have sources on these big issues and thus they can serve as an influencer of opinions.
That’s not most of us or our publication. Think of it like the scene from Bull Durham where they discover fungus on Tim Robbins’ shower shoes.
If the purpose of a column is to reach an audience and get them to do something, chances are you’ll have much better success in doing this if you look around you and talk about things happening in your own backyard.
Yes, you want to write about why the NFL should avoid a lockout or why Joe Biden should annex Puerto Rico, but remember rule 1. You’re not writing for you. You’re writing for your readers. The chances are pretty good that our president isn’t going to hold a press briefing today and say, “My fellow Americans, I had committed to a hands-off approach in relation to the fighting in Ukraine. However, in reading Carl Smith’s column in the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh’s Advance-Titan, I have learned the errors of my ways…”
You can, however, influence local policy. The best column ever from that perspective was a scathing piece on why the university suddenly started charging a “cup fee” for water at the student eateries. The university had no real answer. Prices hadn’t changed, water was still plentiful and they just figured no one would notice or care. They were wrong and they changed back after the editorial and subsequent online uproar about it.
Seems small and insignificant, but it was something the readers cared about. Thus it mattered.
Rule 4 – Don’t become part of the noise
When it comes “the big issues,” there are going to be about 20 percent of the people who will agree with you, 20 percent who don’t agree with you and the middle 60 percent who will say, “Well, I don’t care. I’m going to TikTok.” Unless you have something particularly important to add to the discussion, don’t just add to the noise on these things.
Issues like abortion, gun control and more are important and tough issues. However, piping in with “Here’s MY take on this…” adds nothing to the sum of human knowledge. It also violates rule number 1. If you’ve got something that REALLY adds to the discussion or some way of REALLY tying it to your audience in a way that most mainstream media don’t, that’s fine.
Here’s what I’m talking about: I have a thing against movie reviews in college papers. I can get this stuff online from 1,002 other sources, so why would I read it here and care about what you think?
Well, I was critiquing a paper from a religious based school and I noted that they did movie reviews, but from a very audience-centric angle: They talked about issues of sex and violence in the films and to what degree people of their faith would find these acceptable or not. That’s something the folks at Rotten Tomatoes aren’t going to hit on and that made it valuable to their readers.
Same thing with “the big issues.” If they’re building a massive memorial wall to something in Washington, D.C. and you’re in Idaho, you’re probably not adding much to the discussion. However, if the issue of gun control comes up and your campus has just made it legal to carry a concealed weapon on campus, you’ve got a reason to write.
Rule 5 – Don’t write beyond your own level of competence
Wanting to do something and being able to do something are two completely different things. When my kid was 3, she wanted to go ice skating so I took her. Half way through, she was skittering toward the speed skaters and my wife wasn’t fast enough to catch up with her. I was going to be the hero, so I skated fast, and caught up. The kid cut in front of me and it was either maul my own kid or take a header. I took the header and wound up with a bleeding black eye that swelled shut and a shoulder injury that took six months of physical therapy to overcome.
The point is, I went beyond what I was competent enough to handle. And I paid the price.
If you don’t know what you are talking about, don’t talk about it. If you have an interest in something, research the hell out of it before you write about it. Don’t just look for things that support your point or things that seem like they’re in your area.
A columnist is supposed to be an expert on a topic, so make yourself that expert before you go after that topic. You’re not just trying to talk about something. You’re trying to convince people of something. Your charm isn’t enough to make that happen.
A quick example of how a free AI program can make something ridiculous look like a religious oil painting. The prompt? “Jesus Christ Rides A Unicorn.” (And, yes, based on the background here, apparently there is a unicorn for you in heaven, if you behave yourself…)
The White House on Thursday morning released its first government-wide policy aimed at mitigating the risks of artificial intelligence (AI), requiring agencies to take further action to report the use of AI and address risks the technology may pose.
Federal agencies will be required to designate a chief AI officer, report how they use AI and add safeguards as part of the White House memo.
The policies include a requirement that governmental offices list what they use AI for, how important it is and to what degree those uses create “safety-impacting and rights-impacting” risks. It is completely unclear if these regulations will do anything, helpful OR harmful, as we continue to muddle through life with AI programs.
ISSUES WITH AI: You can’t throw a rock at anything these days without it likely hitting something to do with AI. Or maybe even something generated with AI.
As is the case with most technological advances, the early days of generative AI are becoming an insane wild west, in which their appear to be no limits to what people can do with it. As the law tries to catch up and corral this chaos, a lot of things are happening in the public regarding that people have trouble coming to grips with.
Catherine, Princess of Wales, was out of the public eye, leading to wild speculation as to what happened to her. In an attempt to quell the concerns, the Royal Family released a family photo, which was later determined to be an AI concoction. She then filmed a video spot, in which she revealed she was dealing with a cancer diagnosis. Naturally, this is now under AI suspicion.
The situation has become even worse for non-famous folks, as schools are now grappling with AI being used to create nude deep-fake photos of kids and teachers. That’s right: Some kid at your school could grab one of your photos from a social media post and do something sexually disgusting with it for their own gratification without your knowledge. As a parent, that terrifies me. As the ugliest bald Wookie in Wisconsin, I feel relatively safe.
SO WHY NOT BAN IT? The AI genie is already out of the bottle, so a ban is unlikely to work, even if we wanted to do so. As experts in the field note, not only has AI been around for a long time, but we have gotten used to what it can do for us:
It automates tasks: If you like the idea of having a spellchecker, a digital calculator and a computer program that can build lines of code in a hurry, you want to keep AI around for a while. The artificial intelligence model is basically one in which machines do things that were once only thought of as being capable in the human mind. A full ban removes all that and trying to draw a specific line between important function and disgusting crap isn’t easy.
It personalizes content: The whole reason you get what you want online and why those “suggested purchases” actually are things you’d buy comes down to AI. The systems get to “know us” and then find ways of matching us with other things we might like. (In writing that sentence, I’m both amazed and profoundly creeped out…) Who you connect with online, what suggestions you get for places to eat and what cute puppies are available for adoption in your area often comes down to AI’s understanding of you.
It expands our knowledge: AI can do things we can only imagine, which gives us the chance to figure out all sorts of answers to problems that were once beyond our reach. Sure, medical advances and such might be a bit further away even with AI, but people in the field of electrical work are already seeing amazing opportunities.
These and other opportunities are on the horizon, so long as we can get people to stop making nude photos of each other for a few minutes and do something useful with this tech.
DISCUSSION STARTER: How aware are you of what generative AI can do? Have you experimented with any of the image creators or text creators out there? What has your experience been, in terms of quality and outcomes?
What kinds of limits do you think are necessary for people to co-exist with AI content? How would you go about enforcing them within the confines of the laws of the land as they stand now?
