Advanced Reporting

How to write about sports when you don’t know anything about sports

Here’s an email request I got that inspired today’s post on sports journalism:
I’m now requiring that all of my students write at least two sports-related stories this semester. I figure if they all have to write a crime story and a meeting story and an issue story, that they should know the basics of writing a sports story.
I’m not asking for game stories (short shelf-life anyway) or analysis, but I have some students who are freaking out like I told them calculus was required.
So, how about a post about writing sports when you know nothing about sports?
The idea of writing about something you know nothing about can be terrifying, especially something like sports, where the readers are so well-versed in and so passionate for the topic. Rather than letting this kind of thing freeze you in your tracks, here are a few things to think about as you work the problem and put yourself in a better position to succeed:
KNOWING NOTHING IS PAR FOR THE COURSE:  I get that the idea of covering a topic that you know nothing about can be jarring and anxiety provoking. That said, you need to start with the fact that you probably don’t know squat about most things you’ll cover initially.
Do you know how the city council reads, debates, amends and finally votes on a proposal?
Do you know stagflation can create financial concerns for businesses in your coverage area?
Do you know how a school decides what curriculum will be taught at a particular level or who decides if students meet the standards of that curriculum?
Probably not, at least not right off the cuff, so don’t worry so much about not knowing anything about sports more than you would anything else. Realizing that should cut your anxiety by one-third.
RESEARCH YOUR TOPIC: The whole idea of reporting before you write is to learn as much as possible about whatever it is you’re going to write about before you have to write about it. Sports isn’t any different than anything else you’ll have to write about, in the broadest sense, so you should begin covering sports the way you begin to cover anything else.
Figure out what the topic is you have to cover, do some internet searches on that topic, dig into the previous stories other smart people have done on the topic and form some questions on that topic based on what you’ve learned. Then, go to smart people who are involved in that topic and ask the questions you have, get some answers and start piecing your story together.
Don’t endow sports with some sort of mystical power just because it’s different or because thousands of people show up dressed like the people who play it, scream their heads off every minute of the game and drink beer in the parking lot. It’s the same as anything else you cover, so research the hell out of it and feel more grounded in the topic. Don’t let the “it’s sports” excuse allow you to under-prepare.
FIND THINGS YOU LIKE IN A FIELD YOU DON’T: It’s tough to write about something you don’t like. As someone who had to cover governmental issues for short periods of time in my career, I can say for sure that good writing does not grow from abject hatred of the topic. To make this kind of situation better, you need to look for the diamond in the cesspool and polish it up for the good of humankind.
You can’t hate everything you might be forced to deal with. (OK, I guess you could, but if that’s the case, change your major and go into business. At least you’ll make some good money on the deal…) There have to be at least a few topics, story types or intriguing moments you’ve experienced somewhere in your reportorial journey, so go there and do some digging.
You hate sports? Fine. Look for someone to profile and try to figure out why this person has dedicated themselves to something you completely don’t understand. Write a story about that person in a way that helps your audience (and maybe even you) connect to the sport on that emotional level.
Or, look for other stories that surround sports that fit into things you do care about.
  • Like money? Look into the costs of sports, the financial benefits/drawbacks of sports being located in certain areas and not in others or the money spent on keeping up fields/courts/arenas. Look at what jobs pop up AROUND sports like the people who have to clean the place up after Joe Nutzofan decides to eat 12 pounds of nachos and barf all over the place, the folks who run the ticket booths/entrance gates and the people who run the technology for the stadium/arena/whatever.
  • Like science and medicine? Look into the advances in technology that make shoes/uniforms/socks/whatever better than they used to be. Look at the surgical repairs that athletes frequently undergo and how they work. Dig into the world of performance enhancing drugs that are illegal or the health plans and team diet structures that are legal.
  • Like history? Dig into the past to find out what happened at your school in terms of athletics 20, 30, 50 or 100 years ago. Did you have any superstar athletes that people have forgotten? Did a team do something amazing and an anniversary is coming up? Do people have stories about a long-gone superfan who used to do some outlandish stuff while the games were going on? What about “where are they now?” features on people who were the top dogs and big wigs of the day?
  • Like psych? Get into the head of an athlete who is at the top of their game. What makes this person tick? What makes this person push themself beyond what others can do? Get into the mind of the recovering athlete. What’s life like after a major surgery or health scare? How do they come to trust their body again? Get into the mind of people entering their final year of sports. Few will get to move on to “the pros” so what is going on with them now as they enter that final phase? Dig into coaches or refs. How do these people do what they do and why do they do it?
  • Like weird stuff? Sports is nothing but weird stuff. Figure out who is the mascot and what the point of this is. Look at some weird sports that people don’t think about as sports like spikeball, pickleball or even noodling. As they used to say about ESPN8 The OCHO: If it’s almost a sport, we’ve got it here.

SHADOW A REPORTER: If none of this works for you, you can always figure out sports by following someone around who knows sports. As a student journalist at a college or university, you likely have student media outlets out there like a newspaper, magazine, TV station, radio station or digital media operation. The reporters in these places who cover sports have an interest in the area and are likely working on the same kinds of projects and schedules you are. This makes them a perfect resource.

Find one of them and ask if you can follow them around while they do their work. Treat it like a personality profile: Use the time with them to gather some observation of what it is they do and then ask questions like an interview for that profile to learn more about what you’re seeing.

The chances are pretty good that you’ll pick up on some of the things they do to cover the topic well. It’s also likely that the reporter will be happy to help you, given that you’re both going through the same kinds of things as student media professionals. At the end of your shadowing, you probably will have enough to scrape together a couple ideas you won’t hate in the field of sports to pass your class.

Or, better yet, you might actually start to like sports.

Throwback Thursday: It’s not our fault you’re bad at this: Law and ethics and “accidentally” public information

In honor of Constitution Day (Sept. 17), I dug up this look at the law from a few years back. This was written shortly after the Parkland shooting, when the courts ruled that the school district had to provide certain documents to journalists. The administrators did, but redacted certain information, which they had a right to do. However, they didn’t redact things PROPERLY, which gave the journalists the ability to see what they tried to hide, and boy… was that some serious stuff.

What I didn’t know at the time was that shortly after we published this, I’d find myself working with a former student in a similar set of circumstances. Alex Nemec had written about a professor who was removed from his classroom on the first day. He then sought records associated with that incident, a legal battle that end up just below the state’s Supreme Court. When the court dust finally settled, he got them, but the redactions were screwed up. What followed was a lot of the same things that happened here in terms of legal wranglings, but Nemec eventually prevailed.

This is one of the main reasons I always despise people who belittle student newspapers as “kids playing journalists.” Truth be told, journalists of all stripes and experience levels can find themselves dealing with the same kinds of serious legal issue.

Happy Constitution Day (tomorrow…)

Vince
(a.k.a. The Doctor of Paper)

—-

It’s not our fault you’re bad at this: Law and ethics and “accidentally” public information

Journalists often use open records requests to shed light on things public officials would prefer remain secret. Courts often seek to balance the public’s right to know against individual privacy rights in determining which documents merit public scrutiny and which ones should be kept out of the public eye.

In some cases, courts or public information officials will try to “split the baby” on the release of documents through a process known as information redaction. For example, if a document contains information that meets the standard of public information, but it also includes information that should clearly remain private, record keepers can “black out” those private parts before releasing the documents. Here’s an example of what that might look like:

redact

In the “old days, the copying and redacting process was often done with a thick, black marker and a photocopier. Now, since many of the documents are kept and shared digitally, records keepers use PDFs and some Adobe editing tools to do the redactions, which is what led to a clash between the Broward school district and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

The paper requested documents pertaining to the school district’s interactions with Nikolas Cruz, the former Marjory Stoneman Douglas student, who killed 17 people at the school in February. The courts ruled that the documents should be released, but that certain information needed to be redacted, which the district thought it did.

However, when reporters downloaded the files and pasted the information into a word-processing file, they found that all of the redacted information was visible. They also found that the information in the documents painted a much different picture of Cruz and the school district than the public officials had put forth. Seeing this information as valuable and in the public interest, the Sun-Sentinel published it. The judge who ordered the release of the documents was not pleased about this, as she demonstrated in a hearing to determine if the reporters should be held in contempt of court: 

Scherer was not swayed. She threatened to restrict what the media can report, a practice known as prior restraint.

“From now on if I have to specifically write word for word exactly what you are and are not permitted to print – and I have to take the papers myself and redact them with a Sharpie … then I’ll do that,” she said.

At this point, let’s unpack a few things you might find useful or at least amusing:

  • The statement Judge Elizabeth Scherer issued about writing “word for word exactly what you are and are not permitted to print” is a bit scary and more than a bit unconstitutional. The courts cannot dictate content to the press in this fashion. It’s barely legal for your high school principal to do this, and that’s only through gross misinterpretation of one of the worst court cases in media law history.

 

  • In the video, the judge berates the publication for manipulating the documents by downloading them and then pasting them into another program, saying she had “never heard of such a thing.” Scherer is 42 years old, so computers have been around for much of her lifetime. It’s not like she’s Sen. Strom Thurmond, who lived to be 101 and once referred to a microphone as “the machine.” I have no idea how she never had to use a PDF before. In any case, just because you don’t understand how something works, it doesn’t follow it’s not standard operating procedure for the rest of the world.

 

  • She also made this statement: “You all manipulated that document so that it could be unredacted,” Scherer said. “That is no different than had they given it to you in an old-fashioned format, with black lines, and you found some type of a light that could view redacted portions and had printed that. It’s no different.”
    Right, and I know that more than a few of us have done something like this to try to figure out what was behind the black lines. In the days of typewriters, the keys made impressions on the page, which were still visible through the black marker. With toner (essentially plastic powder melted onto a page), the black of the text was different from the black of the marker, which allowed reporters to backlight the page and read the content. None of this is illegal.

 

  • I checked in with two legal experts about the issue of publishing information that was intended to be redacted to see what the law had to say about the topic. Both of them told me that it’s the record keeper’s job to redact the information he or she wants to keep out of the public eye. It’s not the newspaper’s job to look the other way. In short, it’s not our fault you’re bad at this. The law does not prohibit the publishing of this information.

What you should be concerned about is the ethical issues associated with publishing information in a case like this. This is where the balancing test comes into play, where you weigh the public’s right to know against an individual’s right to privacy. As one of the “legal eagles” explained to me:

Basically, I think it’s completely ethical for journalists to hold redacted documents up to the light (or, in the digital sense, to search for letters/words to see if they show up in the redacted blocks of text). In fact, I think our job demands us to find out as much info as possible (seek truth and report it, right?).

That said, I think ethics come in when it comes to publishing. It’s a bit like handling a leak — what distinguishes us from Wikileaks, besides the Russian control and efforts to undermine democracy of course, is that we make editorial decisions based on journalism principles and practices. So you’ll be balancing public need to know with privacy concerns.

So, as a reporter, you might not want to publish certain information you receive from a source or a document, such as the name of a crime victim or an unproven rumor. However, that’s a judgment call that rests with the journalists, not the courts. When you have the information, it’s up to you to determine what the public should know and what they probably shouldn’t. It’s a monumental responsibility, but that’s why journalists make the big money.

The paper saw within the documents a pattern of the district failing Cruz, as it denied him access to services he desperately needed. Reporting this information was within the best interest of the public, the paper decided.

Earlier reporting on this, done without those documents, was refuted by the superintendent, Robert Runcie, who called the coverage inaccurate and even “fake news.” Runcie and his colleagues sought to hide these failures and gloss over the district’s responsibilities and without those reports, the paper was at a decided disadvantage. This is why open records matter and why using the information within them can shine a light where it matters most.

Student media outlets provide great coverage of Hurricane Ida for their readers

Hurricane Ida bulled its way onto the shores of Louisiana on Sunday night, causing massive flooding and storm damage throughout the area. New Orleans in particular saw devastation, as the entire city lost power amid what forecasters are calling one of the most powerful storms ever to strike the U.S.

Amid the chaos, student media outlets are pumping out content to their audiences, touching on the “big story” scope of the issue, but also drilling down into things that matter directly to students on their campuses.

These publications understand the importance of knowing what’s going on at the college level, because while CNN and The Weather Channel are focused on mega graphics and drone coverage of devastation, students on those campuses want to know what’s open, what’s broken and where they should go to stay safe.

The students here are operating in less-than-ideal circumstances and are working to remain safe while still informing the people they serve. This is incredibly selfless and it’s also why it always infuriated me when “professional” media operatives or professors would note that campus media staffers were “just playing journalist.”

I don’t think the hurricane is taking it easier on these folks just because they’re college kids.

Take a look at some of the great stuff they’ve done in the past 24-48 hours:

Here’s a piece from the Tulane Hullabaloo that explains not only what the storm is doing to the campus area and what most concerns administrators:

A major concern of the Tulane community is the large tower crane overlooking several student residences on campus. In the Aug. 28 update, Tulane administrators provided insight into the status of the crane and its ability to withstand hurricane-force winds.

It also gives students information on how the school is handling the situation for students living on campus:

In an additional update posted to the Tulane University instagram page, off-campus students who feel unsafe were urged to come to the Lavin-Bernick Center prior to 8:30 AM.

This is the first time the LBC-Commons complex is serving as an impromptu housing arrangement for many students. 

The Maroon at Loyola University in New Orleans took a look at what students, faculty and staff were doing in advance of the hurricane, finding more than a few who opted to make a run for it:

Those who have experienced hurricanes in the past are especially sensitive to the shift in plans. Visual communications freshman Virginia Armstrong is from Puerto Rico and said she was without power on the island for three months after Hurricane Maria.

Seeing people gather water bottles and other essential storm supplies struck a nerve in her before she drove off Friday night with her roommate and suitemate to stay at a relative’s home in Jackson, Mississippi.

“The pain never really goes away,” Armstrong said. “It’s there. You live with it.”

At Louisiana State University, multiple student media outlets were covering the storm and it’s impact on the student body on multiple levels. Tiger TV, the broadcast outlet at LSU, has posted updates about class cancellation and statements from university officials.

It has also nudged students toward its Twitter account, where it continues frequent updates as to what is happening around the students:

 

The Reveille, which has served as the campus newspaper since 1887, constructed a “tick tock” style  set up on the front page of its website. This updates with key information as it becomes available, such as cases of storm damage, power outages and official announcements.

In addition, the staff continues to post breaking news stories on the site right underneath the website’s banner head, like this one on the cancellation of classes.

Aside from the breaking news and damage estimates, the publication managed to find some space to let people know about the status of the school mascot, a 4-year-old tiger named Mike. I would be willing to wager that this story tops all the others in terms of site hits today:

Mike the Tiger isn’t spending Hurricane Ida swimming in his pool or hiding under trees: he’ll be staying snug indoors and eating goat-milk popsicles until the high-speed hurricane passes through LSU’s campus.

I’m sure I”m missing some other good stuff out there, so feel free to add it in the comments.

 

5 Back-To-School Stories College Newspapers Should Do As COVID-19 Rises Again

Marty McFly's Radiation Suit Minecraft Skin

“Welcome to Journalism 221! I’ll be your professor this semester. Let’s recap the university’s safety rules regarding COVID-19…”

With many colleges and universities getting back into gear this week (We’re off for at least a couple more weeks, but I know a lot of folks are already strapping on masks and wading back into classrooms.), here are five potential story ideas for student newspapers:

RECAP THE RULES: This is a basic one that I’m sure most folks have thought of, particularly given the rise of the Delta Variant. (Honestly, it sounds like it should be a lousy movie sequel, brought to you from the people who turned “Sharknado” into a cottage industry… “This fall, get ready for ‘COVID-19, Episode II: The Delta Variant!’…“)

Still, the things that are going to be important to hit on will be the basics, such as:

  • Will move-in procedures  for residence halls/dorms change in any meaningful way for people this year?
  • What are the rules that govern mask wearing on campus, both inside of buildings and outside of them?
  • What are clubs, groups and organizations allowed to do or not do in terms of gathering and recruiting? For folks with a lot of clubs, a “student org fair” could be a super-spreader event that the administrators want to cancel. For folks with a strong Greek system, fraternity and sorority chapters tend to have rush near the front of school, so there’s a lot of social events. Who sets the rules and what are they?
  • What are testing procedures for COVID on campus and follow-up precautions in case of positive tests?
  • Are classes being given only in person, only online or in a hybrid/whatever situation? Do students still have “opt-out to online” options or not?
  • What are professors building in terms of “back up” for students who have the illness or have to quarantine after a close contact?

There are dozens of other questions, so consider having a think-tank kind of session with your staff and have someone write them down as you think of them to see how many stories could develop.

LANDLORD LIFE: Complaining about landlords who rent to college students is as common of an occurrence as complaining about tuition hikes and the lack of decent parking. This time around, however, there are more things to consider regarding landlords than if they’re gouging students or if they still haven’t located the source of that smell in the basement:

  • Rental availability: When I was in school 119 years ago, we had to sign next year’s lease for our August move-in date in early January. Students now tell me that around here, they get about three weeks of living in the property before landlords either have them sign up for year two or start showing the property. Given the limitations associated with the 2020-21 school year (isolation protocols, distance learning etc.), it might be a good time to check in with some big and small rental folks in your area to see how things are proceeding for their rentals.
  • Eviction moratoriums: When the Feds cracked down on evictions during the pandemic, most news stories focused on the poor and underprivileged people in big cities who couldn’t make rent during the shutdown period. College students were also renters, so the same rules applied to what could or couldn’t be done to them in regard to evictions. Thus, it might be interesting to see how this affected local landlords and if there are concerns regarding back rent that might never get covered.
  • Bankrupt businesses: Not every rental business is a giant monolith of towers of steel and glass, owned by a hedge fund and operated by a landlord who swims around in a Scrooge McDuck vault of money every night. The “mom-and-pop” rental folks who own a few beat-up houses or who have one small building also tend to populate the landscape of college rentals. Check to see how many of these either didn’t make it due to revenue loss or how many just called it quits, selling off their properties with a raging housing market.

CHECK THE PLAYERS ON YOUR SCORECARD: Old-time baseball vendors used to hawk programs by proclaiming, “You can’t tell who the players are without your scorecard!” (This was probably no more true than for the Chicago Cubs vs. Washington Nationals series, after the teams shipped off a collective 17 players to other teams as part of a trading deadline fire sale. That represents about one-third of the players the teams would collectively carry.) The point here is that after about 18 months of isolation, semi-isolation and general lack of daily connectivity to the campus for most folks, it might be worth seeing who is still on campus and who is gone?

  • Any top-level administrators or high-level athletic coaches decide to go elsewhere or retire?
  • How many professors have called it a day? Any seriously senior-level folks decide to say, “Screw it. I’m not learning Canvas (or BlackBoard or D2L or whatever). I probably should have retired two years ago.” or are folks hanging on? A data check of retirements and resignations comparing the past year to the previous five or ten might be a good idea.
  • How many of the “legends” of campus have left? The cool custodian, the lunch server who always asked “How you doin’?” or the librarian who looked like they were installed when the library was built in 1875 might be gone. Also, think of other folks that make stuff happen on a day-to-day basis that might have been transferred, quit or retired?
  • Death. I know. It’s not a fun one to think about, but sometimes leaving a university isn’t an issue of choice. Check to see if the school has had any students, faculty, staff or administrators who died since you last checked in on everybody.

YOUR PANDEMIC GRADES… JUST AS GOOD. RIGHT?: I don’t think I’m alone in my doubt whenever university officials told us that the online/hybrid/KODAN Armada/whatever version of teaching was going to be “just as good” or “exactly the same” as what we did in a traditional classroom setting. It reminds me of those giant metal boxes they hang on the bathroom walls at truck stops that say, “If you love “Ralph Lauren’s Polo Black,” you’ll love our Pollos Hermanos scent. Insert $1.50 in quarters and push button C-5!” Although the original wasn’t my favorite, the truck-stop version smelled like sour milk and cat urine, so, no, it wasn’t “just as good.”

Someone, somewhere has to have a sense of what grades looked like over the three pandemic semesters (or two if you only want to count 2020-21) and how they compare with what happened before that. There are always anecdotes from students or teachers, but the data could reveal a few things:

  • How many more drops were there in courses during the pandemic terms as opposed to prior terms? If it was a lot more, find out why. If it wasn’t a lot more, report that as well.
  • How did grades fluctuate for both students AND professors? Students might say their grades were better or worse, but the data can back that up, generally speaking. It might also be interesting to see if you can find out if professors’ grading shifted during this time. Grades might be lower, because students had difficulty with life as well as the new environment. They might be higher because traditionally hard-ass professors decided to start giving out more A’s and B’s because of the difficulties.

ATHLETIC ATROPHY: I know a number of our sports had cancellations last year or severely diminished seasons. This is particularly true for sports that have a smaller budget, receive less attention or generally aren’t the kinds you’d see on TV outside of ESPN:8 The Ocho. With that in mind, it might be interesting to dig into the sports area to see how the teams are getting along at brushing off the rust, hitting the workout circuit and generally getting ready for another season

For some teams, it might be great, as it’s a time to let the nagging injuries heal that don’t get a chance to do so under normal circumstances. For others, it might be risky with the idea of muscular atrophy, bad eating/exercise habits setting in or a general loss of connection to the sport.

Hope these help or at least jump-start some ideas for future stories!

“Don’t Take No From Someone Who Isn’t Empowered To Say Yes”

My friend Allison used the quote in the headline this weekend when we were teaching her daughter/my goddaughter how to negotiate for better prices at a flea market in South Haven, Michigan. It turned out to be a golden bit of advice she learned from Peter Greenberg, a Emmy-award-winning journalist who was talking to the students at our old college newspaper.

Here’s the story as relayed by Allison (Greenberg himself recalled this story during a guest appearance on the “Destination Everywhere” Podcast):

Greenberg was explaining how to get an important story and how to persist when people didn’t want to be helpful.

He wanted access to a nuclear attack sub as part of a story he was working on. This was in the late 1980s when this was happening, which happened to be when we were still in the middle of the Cold War with the Soviet Union, so letting a journalist wander around a nuclear sub was laughable at best.

Greenberg kept poking at Naval officials for access, each one basically telling him, “There is no way this is happening.” At one point he asked, “OK, if this COULD be done, who would be the one person who could allow it to happen?” It turned out to be the commander-in-chief in the Pacific, stationed in Pearl Harbor.

Greenberg got the Navy to agree to give him the meeting, which was supposed to be kind of a 10-minute, “we had a meeting” meeting. Instead, Greenberg noticed a photo of a ship on the admiral’s wall and Greenberg knew a lot about that particular ship. Instead of talking about sub access, they started talking about the boat. By the time the 10 minutes had ended, the admiral invited Greenberg to lunch and eventually granted him the permission he sought.

“Don’t take ‘No’ from someone who isn’t empowered to say ‘Yes,'” he told the group.

At the heart of his story were three key things that can be helpful to you as a journalist:

TAKE A SHOT: When Greenberg kept hearing “no,” he asked for a meeting that the people essentially told him wasn’t going to lead anywhere. In the podcast mentioned earlier in this post, Greenberg said the people setting up the meeting for him basically asked him why he’d want to fly all the way to Pearl Harbor just to hear “no” from one more person. He figured he had nothing at this point, so he might as well take a shot in person with the one person who could get him what he needed. What was the worst thing that could happen? He might have no story and a case of jet lag and that’s about it.

If the story is important enough to you, you need to take a shot at it before deciding it’s not going to happen. You never know what you might get if you give up before you give it a chance to succeed.

FIND COMMON GROUND: The thing that made this work was a bit of serendipity. If the admiral had a picture of a sunset, a poster of Porsche or a velvet Elvis on his wall, Greenberg might have not found his in. However, as he explained in the podcast, he realized he needed a connection and he found it:

They gave me a ten-minute appointment at 9:00 in the morning on a Monday. I flew up on a Saturday. I walked in to see him. He could care less about me. I was told to have a meeting. He didn’t want to be there. It was an office the size of Grand Central Station. Everybody was in their dress whites. They didn’t want me to be there. It was like a courtesy call, give him a commemorative coin and get him out.

This is the difference. You seek out common ground and I knew that I had maybe fifteen seconds to figure out what the common ground was. I got lucky because behind his desk was a photograph of a boat and it turned out I knew the boat well.

I said to him, “Is that a Bertram 31?” He said, “Damn straight.” I said, “That’s the best boat they ever built.” He said, “You’re not kidding?” I said, “Let me guess. When you make a hard right turn, the engine cavitates and the water pump overflows?” He goes, “Yeah.” I said, “Here’s how you fix it. You’re going to do a bypass on the impeller.”

We start talking like that and ten minutes later, the officer is going to say, “Admiral, your time is up.” He looked at me and said, “Do you got lunch plans?” I said, “I’m all yours.”

<SNIP>

That’s called chutzpah and luck.

If I’d walked into his office for that ten-minute meeting, he’s like, “Can I go on a sub?” “Get the hell out of here.”

You want to look for ways to connect with a source during an interview. That’s why doing it in person is often so valuable. You can look around and see things that they have around them to help you size up your subject. Starting with a discussion about a picture or a plaque or even a baseball card they have on display can get you an “in” that makes them see you as a kindred spirit as opposed to a pain the butt.

GO TO WHO CAN SAY YES: I think I’m going to use that quote with every interviewing class for as long as I live now, in that it perfectly captures what we should be doing when it comes to getting key information.

“Don’t take ‘No’ from someone who isn’t empowered to say ‘Yes'” is simple, direct and yet amazingly mind-blowing, as it dawns on me that I’ve probably failed in this regard myriad times in my journalism career and my daily life.

When you want permission for something, you need to go to the person who can grant it. Unfortunately, there are often underlings, minions and other pencil-pushers who get put in your path and try to dissuade you from getting that permission. If it’s important enough for you to pursue that permission, get past those people and go find the person who is empowered to grant it.

Like many things, this can be taken too far or in the wrong way. I am in no way saying you should become the snotty person who is holding up the line at the store, loudly proclaiming, “I need to speak to your manager!” because the bananas are ringing up at 39 cents per pound when the sign clearly said 36 cents per pound. However, I am saying most folks take the first “no” as a reason to give up far too easily.

Find the person empowered to say yes and see what that person says. If it’s still “no” at least you’ll know that nobody else is getting your story. If it’s “yes,” you got what you came here to get.

Four things I learned about the mass-shootings debate after wearing a bulletproof vest for a week

TeachingVest

Nearly three years ago, I decided to live in a bulletproof vest for a week as part of a journalism project to find out about guns, fear, mass shootings and more. (Photo by T.R. Gleason)

Over the past two weeks, the country has suffered two mass shootings: A gunman killed 10 people at a King Soopers grocery store in Boulder, Colorado and another killed eight people at three spas in Atlanta, Georgia.

News coverage of these events have examined the motives, the shooters and the “next steps” elements of this in a way that has become all too common in the United States. For me to do so here would be redundant at best, so feel free to Google these incidents and read all about the various elements of these crimes.

A few years back, in the wake of several mass shootings, I decided to take on a project where I dug into things that went beyond what you read in the horse-race coverage after a mass shooting or the political grandstanding that comes with gun-related violence of this nature. Instead of going out to people we normally talk to in the wake of these events, I wanted to talk to people who had specific angles on the various facets of the issue and then just shut up and listen to them.

The project that had been rattling around in my head for three years. After one of my friends noted that her university had become a concealed-carry campus, she expressed concern about what this meant for her safety. After several colleagues weighed in on potential ways to deal with the situation, all to no avail, I made a simple suggestion:

“Wear Kevlar.”

In other words, if you couldn’t play offense, play defense. A bulletproof vest might get people talking about the issue in a different way. She didn’t go that route, but I thought it was worth taking a chance. What followed was a week of personal participation reporting, several months of reporting and eventually a six-part series I called “First-Person Target.”

Here is the link to the main site for that project and all six pieces if you are interested.

After these more recent shootings, I went back and reread what I wrote during that time and found a few minor epiphanies that I thought might be worth sharing. I wanted to note that these are only my opinions based on looking back at what I wrote back then. I wish I had better answers to the bigger questions, but here’s what little I do have:

 

FEAR IS A COMMON THREAD: We often talk about guns as an issue of Constitutional rights or personal freedom or safety. What we don’t talk about, but is embedded in all of these topics and more is the concept of fear.

On a basic level, we do talk about the fear of someone deciding to unleash an internal fury upon a group of unsuspecting people in a seemingly random act of violence. I doubt people who entered a spa or a grocery store earlier this month in Georgia or Colorado thought to themselves, “I’m putting myself in harm’s way by going to this place right now.”

However, once these killers opened fire, many more of us now think about how it could happen to us at any time, in any place. For most of us, the fear will eventually subside when the story is no longer leading the nightly news or filling our news feeds with updates. Then, when the next attack occurs, our fears will be stoked once again.

Beyond that, however, I found that fear is at the heart of every action or lack thereof regarding the gun issue. People who dislike armed citizens fear the havoc guns can create. People who arm themselves do so for fear of not being able to protect themselves. People who oppose legislation that would limit access to firearms fear losing rights they see as sacrosanct. People who could propose legislation to limit access to guns fear the backlash from gun owners and lobbying groups as a result of trying to move the needle.

When I tried to get this project off the ground, fear was right at the forefront. I asked the UWO police chief if he knew where I could borrow a bulletproof vest to wear. He offered me instead a dose of reality:

Vince,

I’m sure you could purchase a vest for yourself, however I do not know of any police outfitter that would loan out this type of equipment.  In fact, if you started inquiring about borrowing a vest it could cause some concern from these vendors on your motives. As you stated people have a heightened awareness because of these mass casualty events.  Sorry I couldn’t be of more help to you.

When I sought people associated with firearms to help me understand a topic I really lacked knowledge in, I found fear as well. When I asked the folks in my community for someone to talk to about sales and gun registration and so forth, they all pointed me to one person in Omro, who owned a gun shop. I reached out to him and got an initial response, but after that, all I got was silence.

In talking to other people who knew this guy, the answer was simple and common: “He’s afraid to talk about this.”

Of all the people I talked to during my project, only one really told me they acknowledged the fear that comes from all of this, and it was Tracy Everbach, the professorial colleague of mine from the University of North Texas whose initial concerns helped spawn the project:

“I don’t spend a lot of time wondering if someone in my classroom is carrying a gun anymore or thinking, ‘Are they going to pull it out and shoot you with that?’”

“It’s just a personal thing to me,” she added. “I’ve chosen not to be afraid of it. I figure I’m as likely to have that happen as a car accident or whatever. Anything can happen to anyone at any time.”

 

WE ARE NOT SIDES OF A COIN, BUT FACETS OF A GEM: Journalism always talks about getting “both sides” of a story, as a way of avoiding bias. If someone is pro-X, we need to find someone who is anti-X. When we do, we quote them both and we’re done.

While some stories, like those on sporting events, do follow that pattern, most stories are much more complex than that. Even more, the people behind those stories are far more complex than many of us care to know.

When I started this project, I didn’t want archetypes or the “usual suspects.” I didn’t want a press release from the head of the NRA that spoke in platitudes. I didn’t want a “thoughts and prayers” statement from a politician. I didn’t want to collect soundbites that I could repeat in my sleep and move on.

I wanted real people who could help me understand their lives and interests and positions without fear of judgment or reprisal. I wanted to look into the heart of the issue through their window and see what they saw, whether I agreed with what they were seeing or not.

What I found is that reality isn’t what we see playing out in the wake of shootings on the news or at protests or elsewhere. I didn’t find “gun people” and “anti-gun people,” but rather people that saw their lives intersect with firearms in a variety of ways and how those intersections shaped them in some fashion.

UWO police officer Chance Duenkel carries a gun every day as part of his job, and yet knows that the weapon and his protective gear might not keep him safe in certain situations. In referring to a fallen officer he knew, he explained:

“He had all the equipment, he had the experience dealing with these types of firearms and weapons calls and the cards, unfortunately, weren’t in his favor.”

Nate Nelson, who trains people how to use firearms safely and is an avid hunter, carries a gun as well. He knows better than most the importance of training, safety and respect for weapons of this kind as well as the ramifications of choosing to carry one:

“If you draw that gun you’re probably going to spend six figures in legal defense,” he said. “People need to take that portion seriously on top of the fact of you might end up taking somebody’s life and it might be the assailant that’s bothering you or it might be somebody else that’s innocent because of where those bullets go beyond that.”

Joseph Peterson, a professor at UWO, owns a gun and works with the FBI to help people better understand mass shootings. Peterson was wounded when a gunman entered his classroom at Northern Illinois University in 2008 and opened fire. The shooter killed six and wounded 17 more.

Peterson spent time  learning a great deal about guns and what he refers to as “gun culture,” and found both the fallacies associated with the law and the nuanced nature of people with whom he interacted:

“Gun laws don’t prevent anything,” he said. “Absolutely. Laws don’t prevent anything. It’s that most people agree with them and people agree not to break them. Safety comes from having more good people than bad people.”

<SNIP>

“I think I’ve been in this kind of journey that I’ve been trying to put myself through on this,” he added. “In learning more about gun culture, learning more about firearms and learning to appreciate them for what they are, demystified a bit, I’m learning that there is a lot more middle ground covered. It’s the extreme views that muddy these waters and that’s what’s keeping things from getting done.”

 

LISTENING VERSUS WAITING TO TALK: During one interview, a source (I can’t remember who said it) stopping abruptly to tell me that they found themselves talking way more than they ever have on the topic. The reason, the person explained, was that I hadn’t said almost anything during the interview.

A similar thing happened when I was talking to Nate Nelson. At one point, about a half hour in, he asked, “Are you getting what you wanted from this?”

My answer was honest: “I really didn’t have anything I wanted to get. I just wanted to listen.”

In many cases, we know what we “want to get” from a source. We have questions that need answers and quotes that need to be gathered. I have done it dozens of times, asking the “How do you feel about X?” question to get the “I’m proud, happy and thrilled” answer. I don’t say this with any great level of pride in my reporting acumen, but rather to explain that experienced reporters and experienced sources know how to do the dance.

In this case, I went the completely opposite way. I had questions, sure, but they were more of a “Tell me a story” variety than a “Give me an answer” form. I also came in with as much of a blank slate as I possibly could. My goal wasn’t to poke back at people, but rather just hear what they wanted to tell me. Could they have been blowing smoke up my rear end? Sure, but that goes back to the earlier point about whom I chose and whom I avoided.

In several interviews, I got the sense that the people with whom I spoke weren’t used to people who listened. They were used to people who were waiting to talk.

I understand that passions can be loud and strong around life-and-death issues and that not everyone had the luxury I had in trying to just sit back and let information envelop me. However, when we aren’t listening, we are simply waiting to tell the other people why they’re wrong, and that’s not going to get us anywhere anyway.

In listening, I got to hear important points that made a lot of sense:

  • If people are going to say that mental health concerns are more to blame than guns for mass shootings, they need to be willing to put forth the money, research and resources to deal with that. They also need to be willing to look beyond that issue if this issue becomes a definitive red herring in the issue of mass shootings.
  • We’re often looking at the wrong thing when it comes to guns and death. Although the mass shootings draw the most attention and an ever-increasing body count continues to work people into a media frenzy, guns do far more damage in far less public ways. Gun statistics demonstrate that more than half of the gun deaths in the United States are suicides. Homicides account for another third of those deaths, with the majority of the deaths coming at the hands of people who knew their attackers, as in the case of domestic violence. Less than one-fifth of one percent of the gun deaths in the U.S. come from mass shootings.
  • People who don’t know a lot about guns actually talk the most about guns. Joe Peterson mentioned in an interview that shortly after the NIU shooting, he found himself talking a lot about the topic of guns and mass shootings while knowing much about either. He then did the academic thing and really researched the topic like a scholar would: Open the aperture on the lens, see the full picture and come to some provable conclusions. Nate Nelson mentioned that people get freaked out by the AR-15 because of its look and misunderstandings about the reason the gun is preferred in some legitimate circles. He noted the light weight and limited recoil make it valuable for hunters like his son. I also dug around after our interview to find that he was right about its role in mass shootings: Most mass shootings were committed with weapons OTHER than an AR-15. (For example the shooter at Virginia Tech killed 32 people with a pair of handguns. The shooter at NIU employed a shotgun and a handgun as well.) However, if all you see are social media posts, memes and news clips, you might be left with the impression that banning the AR-15 would solve all of our shooting problems.

I figured out a lot more along the way as well and I find myself pushing back at a lot of things I might have otherwise accepted as gospel before this project. I also figured out that I can understand a lot of things people believe without completely agreeing with them, and vice versa.

WE SUSTAIN MENTAL SCARS THAT NEVER COMPLETELY FADE: Of all the things I heard in doing this project, the one that stuck with me the most came from Chase Cook, a reporter at the Annapolis Capital Gazette. In 2018, a man with a long-standing feud against the paper came to the newsroom armed with a shotgun. He killed six of Cook’s colleagues.

Cook was off that day, but upon hearing of the attack, he went to the office where he began to report on the events of the day. The work of Cook and the fellow survivors earned national honors and praise, including a spot as Time’s “People of the Year.”

As the incident faded from the collective consciousness, Cook continued to deal with the aftermath of his experiences.

“I have a hard time in movie theaters now,” he said. “I get anxious when the lights go out, which is a bummer because I love going to the movies. I think about it a lot when I’m in really crowded places… That fear factor has kind of permeated through everything. I’m at work, I’m in danger. I’m at school, I’m in danger. I’m at church, I’m in danger. I have to convince myself that I’m not because while mass shootings are a problem in the country and they’re up, they’re still a rare crime.”

I haven’t spoken to Cook for at least a year now, but I often think about him when a shooting occurs. I wonder if he reads the news coverage. I wonder if he’s been able to enjoy movies again. I wonder if he is OK.

In talking to Kelly Furnas, the former adviser of the Collegiate Times at Virginia Tech, I found he also had residual mental scars after dealing with a mass shooting. He mentioned to me simple things, like noticing how certain door handles were replaced because the campus shooter had chained the doors of a building to prevent escape. He mentioned trying to be more aware of certain things but not letting fear dominate his life.

As a newshound of sorts, however, he also found difficulty when it came to reading about each subsequent shooting that occurred in the U.S.:

“Quite frankly when I hear about a mass shooting I read the headline and I mention it to my wife and that’s about it,” he added. “That’s about all I can handle at this point. It’s obviously overwhelmingly sad and it’s frustrating and it makes you angry and upset but it’s also just like not where my energy can be. I think every single time that happens I think back to my students and what they went through and maybe that’s part of it.”

Joe Peterson, who was wounded in a mass shooting, talked about therapy and life changes and other major issues he dealt with. He also discussed minor things like seeking out exits in movie theaters and not being able to sit with his back to the door at a restaurant for a long time. In explaining his experiences, he told me that a lot of those personal difficulties were shared among people who had gone through situations like he had:

“With every one of these tragedies there are more and more survivors,” he said. “We are all members of a club we don’t want to be a member of and we don’t want any more members in it.”

If there was a single thing I think everyone I spoke with would agree on, it would be that.

Fun with FOIA! An assignment and walkthrough on open records, sunshine laws and more

A number of folks had been asking for some help with an open-records/Freedom-of-Information-Act assignment, so I thought this might be a good time to add it to the mix on the Corona Hotline help page.

What I’ve got here is the assignment my junior-level course is doing regarding open record requests. They’re required to FOIA something in a formal fashion, get the records and write something decent out of it.

(Yes, I know, “FOIA” refers to the federal government and its open records policies etc., while states have “sunshine laws” or “openness standards” or whatever else. I explain the difference, but you can’t turn “sunshine law” into a verb, which is why FOIA is much cooler…)

I’ve also uploaded some appendix work I did in advance of the second edition of the “Dynamics of News Reporting and Writing.” It lays out a basic letter and explains why it works the way it does.

(Yes, I know there are open-records templates and open-record-request generators online,  but I have them work off of something like this so they can not only get used to doing it, but to see how each piece works. It’s like the difference between buying a new carburetor and rebuilding your old one: If you take it apart and put it back together, you learn how and why it operates the way it does, which can be inordinately helpful in life.)

Students of mine have done some incredible work with this kind of thing, or just answered basic questions like “How much money does the parking department make off of expired-meter tickets?” and “How many people got busted for public urination during this year’s “Pub Crawl?” It’s less about breaking the next Watergate story and more about learning the process. In addition, it helps them figure out what kinds of things they can get and what those items can tell them.

Hope it helps!

Vince (a.k.a. The Doctor of Paper)

The Hill He Chose to Die On: Ex-NY Times Reporter Donald G. McNeil Jr. uses about 21,000 words to explain how one word cost him his job

My friend Allison and I spent much of the past 25 years talking each other out of doing pathologically dumb things. When it seemed one of us was on the precipice of jumping off Mount Stupid into Idiocy Lake, the other would ask a simple question:

“Is this the hill you’re willing to die on?”

It’s the question that kept us out of a lot of trouble because it asked us to open the aperture of our lens, pull way out on the shot and look at the totality of what we were doing. It essentially asked, “If everything goes wrong, nothing works out right and you get every bad outcome, are you OK with this choice you are about to make?”

In most cases, the answer was “no,” so we went back to the drawing board to come up with a better solution. On rare occasion, the answer was “yes,” so we gave it everything we got and hoped for the best, or at least prayed to avoid the worst.

I thought about that today because Donald G. McNeil Jr. of the New York Times decided to make a stand amid increasing scrutiny regarding complaints about his use of language in front of high school students. He found out the hard way that, sometimes, when you say you’re willing to die on that hill, that’s exactly what happens.

The Daily Beast decided to run a piece on McNeil last month that focused on a trip he took to Peru with a group of high-school students in 2019. The students and their parents complained at the time about his activities there, according to the article, including his use of “wildly offensive and racists comments.” In that article, the authors cite at least two student complaints that he used the “N-word,” a charge McNeil didn’t deny.

The paper investigated the incident when it occurred and basically did very little in terms of punitive measures. McNeil received a letter of reprimand that stated he would not represent The Times on any more of trips of that kind and that if he screwed up again, he’d get punished and perhaps terminated.

When The Daily Beast came calling for a comment in February, the paper went into crisis mode and begged McNeil to basically apologize for everything anyone involved in that situation accused him of doing. McNeil declined to do so for a variety of reasons, which eventually led him to become an “ex-New York Times” writer as of March 1.

A situation involving a white person using a racist term and subsequently receiving life-altering punishment isn’t new or novel. What does make this situation different, however, is that McNeil decided to outline the entirety of the event and the subsequent fall out from it in a four-part essay on Medium.

McNeil took to Medium to outline his case for what happened on that fateful trip to Peru and why he decided to resign.

The series runs about 21,000 words and McNeil notes that it was vetted by two lawyers prior to publication. A kind of “Cliff’s Notes” version of this can be found in articles written for the New York Times and The Daily Beast.

McNeil relies on emails, notes and other artifacts from the 2019 situation, noting spots where his memory was used to fill in gaps or clarify situations. He also states that he built this based on fact, not opinion, although that’s clearly not always the case. When you are the lens through which you ask readers to view something, it’s tough to say the picture you create is perfectly representative of reality.

That said, I would recommend anyone to give this a read, along with the coverage of McNeil’s response. It’s a different experience to see something of this length discussing a topic of this type, especially in today’s 24/7, 280-character, InstaPot news cycle.

I read it at least twice from top to bottom and thought it probably could lose about 20% without missing much. McNeil gets repetitive in his statements, particularly in his efforts to explain how and why a sexagenarian found himself using the most disgusting racial pejorative in front of a group of high school students. It also gets a little too far into some “inside baseball” in regard to the NYT, its guild, personal conflicts and more.

Here are a few other takeaways:

IS WE LEARNING YET?: It can’t be said loudly enough, often enough, in enough venues and in enough situations, but we’ll try this once again for the white guys who might not have heard this the first 843,534,233,901 times someone has said this…

DON’T. USE. THAT. WORD. EVER.

I can’t state this with absolute certainty, but if I had to place a bet on this, I’d wager that if McNeil had done all the other things he copped to but NOT said that word, he’d probably still be working at the Times.

According to the essay, which is the only source for this particular aspect of the situation, a student on the trip used that word in a question to McNeil regarding some social media video that had landed some other kid in trouble. McNeil then repeated the term in asking for context about its usage for reasons that remain a mystery to me.

The degree to which this situation is right, fair or anything else, is completely up for debate among people much smarter and better than me. That said, once that word entered the picture, it was like so many other “third-rail topics” we’ve discussed here over the years.

McNeil noted in his writing that he didn’t see himself as a racist and that he’d been to more than 60 countries in his decades-long career at the Times. I’m sure both of those things are true, in that he doesn’t see himself that way and that he isn’t an uneducated, xenophobic rube who views anyone not born within six miles of their family homestead with suspicion.

What’s also true is that he damned well should have known better than to use that word.

THE NYT IS FULL OF COWARDLY WEASELS: I’ve read several “exposes” on the Times before, including “Hard News” by Seth Mnookin, which looks at the Jayson Blair scandal and the paper’s horrible history on the issue of race. The paper often takes a beating for some pretty good reasons in regard to not being as representative, forward-thinking or enlightened when it comes to this issue and several others of similar importance.

That said, it’s still the New York FRICKIN’ Times. It’s the big boy on the block, the 800-pound gorilla in the room and the standard bearer for the concept of free press and its value to our society. It wins Pulitzer Prizes by the boatload for the sheer dint of being the Times and for having the tenacity of a dog with a Frisbee when it comes to important journalistic endeavors. Its name is on some of the most important Supreme Court cases of our time and it is the go-to for people who still believe in the concept of the Fourth Estate.

Yet, when a tripe-filled Dumpster fire like The Daily Beast decides to report a story two years after the event itself, utilizing the reportorial skill set of the former editor of the National Enquirer to do so, this bastion of First Amendment prowess decides to run around looking for a bed to hide under?

Gimme a break.

Gimme another one if the story that McNeil told about the run up to his ouster from the paper is in any way close to accurate. In outlining his meeting with the administrative big-wigs, McNeil states that the paper wasn’t going to fire him, but they encouraged him to “think about” resigning over this.

McNeil’s answer was right on the money: If I resign, I’m basically copping to all of this and agreeing that I am the a–hole this story says I am. (McNeil liberally refers to himself as an a–hole throughout his pieces, so I don’t think he’d mind me stealing from his act here.)

As quoted in the McNeil essays, executive editor Dean Baquet told McNeil he had “lost the newsroom” and that people wouldn’t work with him because of this situation. What followed was essentially the NYT brass saying, “Will you pleeeeeease think about MAYBE just resigning? Please?”

Look, if you really think this guy should no longer work for your paper because he did something so horrible that nobody will work with him, grab yourself some guts and fire this guy. Just step out and say, “I don’t care what the situation, circumstance or context is. If you say that word or commit offenses like these, you will not work here. That’s the long and short of it.” Don’t ask the guy to throw himself in front of a bus because you’re too scared to make a move.

If you DON’T think this is a fireable offense, and you think the newsroom is really about to break out the pitchforks and torches, have the guts to stand up and say, “I don’t like what he said or did, but I’m not going to let two twerps from a glorified blog push around an institution as venerable and storied as ours. Neither should you. If you really have a problem with this guy or this situation, stand up, tell him and hash it out. If you can’t do that, go LiveJournal it out of your head or send some ‘unnamed source’ comments to one of your friends at another publication, but that’s going to be the end of it. I’m standing up for the paper and I’d stand up for any one of you who suddenly saw your entire career flash before your eyes, so let’s get back to work.”

If your paper can take on the Nixon White House and publish the Pentagon Papers, it can weather this storm.

AWARE, NOT TERRIFIED, SHOULD BE THE PREFERRED STATE OF BEING: Stop for a moment and realize that every second you are alive could be your last one. Any one of a million or more things could kill you, both from the inside (cancer, heart disease, brain aneurysm) or the outside (car accident, fire). You are not guaranteed anything, nor will you likely know the moment at which you will cease to exist.

If you want to come to grips with that information, you can go one of two ways: Awareness or terror.

If you choose awareness, you can make smarter decisions about how you live life. You can quit smoking, eat better and work out with the hopes of driving down the risks associated with those potential internal killers. You can employ safety measures like buckling up each time you ride in a car, avoiding texting and driving and apply maintenance to your car that will make it safer to drive. Again, there are no guarantees, but it puts you in a better position to extend your life than NOT doing these things.

If you choose terror, you’re going to see potential death around every corner. You’ll obsess about every twitch in your body as the early warning sign of something that WebMD will confirm as cancer. You’ll lock yourself in a house like Miss Havisham and coat yourself in bubble wrap to avoid potentially fatal incidents. In short, you’ll basically stop living your life in hopes of prolonging it.

I thought a lot about this in reading the pieces McNeil wrote because I honestly worry that people are going to see what happened here and drop into terror mode when it comes to the complex issues that really need to be addressed in our society. If we are constantly afraid that anything we do could come back and bite us in the keester, we’re never going to go outside of our comfort zones. We’re going to cower in a corner and worry that every offense is a death penalty offense, so let’s just not go there.

Being aware of the needs of others, the pain people can cause each other and the perspectives of others means that we’re going to behave in a way that tries to create improvements in society. Being terrified that we’re going to get whacked in an instant, no matter how many positive marks we have on our side of the ledger, is going to lead to a lot more people who know a lot less about a lot of other people.

THERE IS SOMETHING TO BE SAID FOR CHOOSING YOUR HILL: I don’t know how any of you feel about this situation or anything I’ve written about it. Truth be told, I don’t even know how to feel about a lot of it.

What I do know is that McNeil has a lot more courage than I do.

He could have done what was asked of him. He could have said how he was sorry and that he’s going to attend some training or something and that he never should have thought about that word or those things or anything and just promised that he’d do the right thing, whatever that was, the next time he faced this situation, the Good Lord willing.

Instead, he said, “This is my hill. Win or lose, I’m willing to die here.”

Say what you want to about the choice, but there is something to be said for having the courage to decide that this is where you want to make your stand.

So many of us are willing to acquiesce to whatever others want because we are fearful of what will happen if we rock the boat. We sell out at the first sign of danger. To quote George Carlin’s line about getting mugged, we essentially say, “Do what you want to the girl, but leave me alone!”

McNeil went the other way and it cost him everything he’d spent decades building in a career he’d had since the term “copy boy” was an actual thing.

There’s something to be said for that, regardless of if you think he made the right choice.

Unforgettable Indiscretions: Student newspapers and requests for deleting old stories in the wake of the Boston Globe’s Fresh Start Initiative

In the 15 years or so I advised student newspapers, the most popular feature we produced was the police blotter.

At the Ball State Daily News, the listings appeared under the “Police Beat” title, while UWO’s Advance-Titan went with the more accusatory name of “BUSTED!” In both places, a reporter would go to the campus police station once a week and collect a litany of small crime items that weren’t worth a huge story, but likely held some level of interest to folks.

We tended to have a lot of underage drinking tickets, public intoxication arrests, drug busts and similar consumption concerns. Occasionally, we would end up with a fight, a verbal altercation or a case of vandalism. Anything more serious than that tended to be highlighted and relayed to us by the police department in the form of an alert or a press release.

(The one “BUSTED!” item that sticks in my mind all these years later happened the year before I started advising the paper. A male student and a female student were caught having sex behind the giant concrete UW-Oshkosh sign near the main thoroughfare of campus. When the police “stepped in,” the male begged the cop not to write a report or issue a citation, because then his sexual indiscretion would end up in “BUSTED!” and his girlfriend would find out about it…)

Although these features were popular among our general readers, we found them to be less popular among the people whose names ended up in them. In many cases, we received requests to not publish a particular person’s legal infraction or to remove the reports of them that we had previously printed. At one point, the requests became so popular that the Daily News put the phrase “It’s not our fault you ended up in Police Beat” on the back of the staff T-shirts.

The standing response was that we don’t edit our archives or try to change history. If it happened and we wrote it, it stays put.

Those papers I advised weren’t the only ones to hold that line, as many of student media outlets have policies like this one from the newspaper at Northwest Missouri State University, where my buddy Steve Chappell serves as the adviser:

The Northwest Missourian never knowingly publishes inaccuracies. If any error is found, The Northwest Missourian is obligated to correct the error as soon as possible, regardless of the source of the error. A consistent location, signature and style for corrections and clarifications is recommended.
The Northwest Missourian does not remove any editorial content from its website. However, if there is a factual inaccuracy in a story, the editors will run a correction or an update as needed. When a person calls in question of a fact published they should never be guaranteed a correction will run. A section editor must first confirm that the fact in question is an inaccuracy.

In a lot of ways, this can make sense. The hard-line approach prevents staffers from having to pick and choose among which things are worthy or unworthy of “scrubbing” from an archive. The requirement of factual accuracy being at issue makes it clear that someone being embarrassed or upset over accurate coverage isn’t going to cut it in terms of a correction or retraction.

What seems like a simple cut-and-dried approach to archived indiscretion became more complicated recently when the Boston Globe decided to give people a chance to get a pass on their past. The “Fresh Start Initiative” allows people to request a review of previously published content about them for updates, removal or other reconsideration:

Similar to “right to forget” programs that have cropped up in a number of newsrooms across the country, the undertaking is meant to address the lasting impact that stories about past embarrassments, mistakes,or minor crimes, forever online and searchable, can have on a person’s life.

“It was never our intent to have a short and relatively inconsequential Globe story affect the futures of the ordinary people who might be the subjects,” said Brian McGrory, editor of The Boston Globe. “Our sense, given the criminal justice system, is that this has had a disproportionate impact on people of color. The idea behind the program is to start addressing it.”

Truth be told, student newsrooms have been talking about these concerns for years and have had policies that support whatever position they took. To get a better grip on what student media outlets were doing regarding “take-down requests” and their thoughts on them based upon what the Globe had done, I posed the question on the College Media Advisers listserv.

In many cases, folks explained they had a pretty solid and long-running policy on how they viewed their content. The policy at The Temple News, for example, offers authority to any given editor-in-chief to remove or retain content, but it notes that published content, regardless of format, is seen as part of the “historical record.”

Others, like the Elon News Network at Elon University, provide a pathway to content removal and a process to petition the organization:

ENN has created a review board of organization leaders and faculty advisers to review content that has been petitioned to have content changed. The board will meet at least once a semester to review all requests.

The content removal petition form is available online, and should meet the following requirements:

  • The petition must be filed by the person directly involved, and not be made on behalf of an individual.

  • Three years must have passed from the content’s publication.

  • The form below must be filled out and submitted. Any relevant documents that the review board should be made aware of should be submitted in the form. The review board will not take into consideration any documents submitted after the board has met.

One adviser noted that her students were looking at revising the policy, given the ubiquity of the internet. The line of “Nothing ever truly disappears on the internet” is more true now than ever before. It used to be that a web page could be abandoned and it would fall so far off the beaten path, nobody would find it. Even more, I know at least one student paper where I worked lost a ton of archives when it switched providers.

Today? That stuff would be easy to find and accessible with about two clicks and a simple search term.

(Another interesting angle someone brought up was the way in which efforts to preserve the past are now opening up more windows to older embarrassing incidents. When libraries or media outlets decide to digitize past issues and make them searchable, suddenly that arrest for drinking and driving that your step-dad swears never happened is at your fingertips, complete with his bad 1970s feathered-hair mug shot.)

The question of how to do this is often more concerned with what are the ramifications for doing this at all. In a listserv discussion on this topic, the director of publications at Western Kentucky mentioned a concern I often had in regard to this situation:

The attorney who represents the College Heights Herald and the Talisman has pretty consistently given the advice that you open a Pandora’s Box by granting a takedown request. If you later turn a request down, then you could be subject to being found arbitrary if the matter went to court.

It will be interesting to see if litigation emerges from what The Boston Globe is doing. For the time being, I still favor the “you can’t rewrite history” mantra, with offering to update the story to reflect how it turned out – but with documentation.

As for most legal things, I turn to the Student Press Law Center, which has a giant list of things to consider and processes to follow in this regard. The explanation of how the law works and why it works that way makes a lot of sense. It also outlines the potential legal potholes you might hit along the road.  One other thing SPLC touches on in this write up is the way in which the law and ethics can diverge.

In other words, just because you “can” do something, it doesn’t follow that you “should” do something, and that involves both publishing and removing content. In the case of removing content, the law might say you are on firm ground leaving up the story about the freshman who was arrested after police found him asleep, naked in a tree. However, that kid is now a 30-year-old local minister who has done a world of good, but for some reason, Google’s algorithm keeps putting that at the top of any search of his name. Is it “right” to keep that at the forefront of any discussion of this guy?

To that end, was it “right” to publish it in the first place, even though the law said you could? When it was a day-long or week-long embarrassment that probably won’t make it beyond the campus confines, publishing the content might not seem like that big of a deal. However, if you knew something would follow this person their entire lives and nothing they did could ever scrub it off, would you think twice before publishing something about a drunk freshman peeing in a campus parking lot after a house party?

I don’t know exactly how to split that hair, but an adviser who has worked with me to make the reporting book much better explained his approach in fantastic fashion:

This is the reason I strongly encourage our editors not to pursue stories focusing on minor “crime” stories, things involving drugs and alcohol and general college-aged stupidity. College is a time in a person’s life when they should explore and experiment. And they should not have to live with the punishment of such misdeeds for the rest of their lives. Good gosh, if Google was a thing when I was in college …

I usually err on the side of the person over any notion of journalism ethics.

Human first. Journalist second.

Throwback Thursday: You’ll Never Shame TMZ and 3 Other Impolite Observations on Kobe Bryant’s Death and Breaking News

It’s hard to believe that it was one year ago this week that Kobe Bryant died in a helicopter crash. At the time, it was hard to imagine a bigger story. Now, it’s like, “Man, that was only a YEAR ago?”

In tribute to the Black Mamba, here’s a look back at what we were talking about when TMZ broke the news of his death:

 

You’ll Never Shame TMZ and 3 Other Impolite Observations on Kobe Bryant’s Death and Breaking News

KobeLAT

The death of Kobe Bryant led to a massive outpouring of media coverage, social media mourning and public grief over the past 24 hours. For my money, the place that did the best job of this was the L.A. Times, which dedicated multiple pages to the former Lakers star. It covered the accident, mourned the loss, didn’t sidestep the ugly (even a photo from his “rape allegations press conference” made the inside page) and generally did a good job on a breaking news piece. The layout and headline treatments also reminded me why when it comes to a huge story, newspapers still can do it the best, regardless of circumstances.

(If the LAT is like any other newsroom I’ve ever worked or visited, I’m betting it was a pretty sparse crew on staff when all this took place on Sunday morning. Getting this kind of “flood the zone” coverage on a weekend in today’s gutted newspaper world says a lot.)

One thing that emerged in this breaking news cycle was to what degree the gossip news site TMZ was derelict in its duty as journalists when it published the news about Bryant about an hour after the incident. Officials chastised TMZ for its “very cold” approach to this, noting that families and friends of those who died had yet to be notified personally before the news broke. TMZ, for its part, has yet to respond to that aspect of its reporting, but it continues to publish on Bryant after breaking the story.

While it seems that professionals and the public alike are having a go at TMZ for its role in this situation, here are four thoughts that, while probably impolite, are both accurate and worth considering:

You’re never going to shame TMZ: Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva and Los Angeles County Undersheriff Tim Murakami took their shots at TMZ, noting that the publication was “extremely disrespectful” and “very cold” for reporting Bryant’s death this early. Others in the media also took to Twitter to add their condemnation of the decision to publish the information about an hour after the sheriff’s department received notification of the crash. Talking heads all over the place continue to cluck about how “this kind of publication makes us all look bad” and how TMZ “isn’t real journalism.”

Here’s an unfortunate reality: TMZ couldn’t care less.

This publication has made its bones (pardon the pun) on reporting the deaths of celebrities. It was first on the spot for the deaths of Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston and Prince. It ran the Ray Rice “punch in an elevator” video, showing the former NFL player laying out his fiancee with a single swing and then dragging her limp body down the hallway.

Even more, here are a couple screen shots of things they ran just before the Bryant story broke:

CardiBTMZShoutingTMZ

And those were just two of the better and yet SFW ones available. Sleaze, mayhem, celebrities and death is what they do. A bit of side shade on Twitter from an undersheriff isn’t going to bring those folks around to the world of buttoned-down journalism.

Trying to make TMZ feel guilty is like trying to humble Kanye: It might make you feel superior to try, but it’s not going to work.

Most media folk won’t admit it, but they would have done it too: It’s easy for people who DIDN’T publish this first to say what they WOULD HAVE DONE if they HAD gotten the information first. It’s hard to say for sure what they ACTUALLY would do if put in that spot.

The old-guard media folks, who had three broadcasts or two newspaper editions a day, had more of a luxury to wait than current journalists, for whom a minute might be 58 seconds too late. Even more, I’ve seen what people get like when they get an exclusive story or find themselves at the front end of a scoop-able story. There’s not a lot of sober reflection and deep thinking involved, and far too often, people let the desire to get it first beat down their sense of human decency.

I’m not saying we SHOULDN’T aspire to being more humane in what we do. It’s just that the gap between the hypothetical and the actual is often a lot wider than we would like to believe it to be, especially when the actual makes us look bad.

(If you don’t believe me, watch about six minutes of a show like “Temptation Island” where “committed” couples explain how they’d never, ever, ever, EVER break up. In three minutes,  Blake has left Ashlynn in the room to go make out with Trevor’s fiancee, JayCee, in the hot tub.)

The first story I saw was on another media site (not TMZ) that posted about 20 minutes after the TMZ news broke. Additional news outlets were also cranking out stories shortly after, each falling back on that original “as first reported on TMZ” notice.

(It’s amazing how quickly they all swept those stories away and those early notices once they could get their own sources and after everyone decided to pile on TMZ. If you look on various “mainstream” media outlets now, you’ll find no reference to how TMZ got there first, unless it’s to chastise TMZ.)

What I didn’t see, and might never see, is a timeline that tells me when the officials notified the families of the people involved alongside the information of when each media outlet published its breaking news story.

If I were a betting man, I’d wager that TMZ wasn’t the only media outlet to push out a piece before everyone’s family got the word of the crash. That’s not to say this was appropriate, but it is worth noting that a lot of the “holier-than-thou” outlets clucking about the disgraceful state of TMZ probably ran as fast as possible to grab second place in the race to report the story.

The police couldn’t care less about the media 98.9% of the time: Both Villanueva and Murakami have a point: It’s better if the safety officials can do their jobs and notify people before the media does. However, and I can say this based on personal experience, if you are a media professional waiting for police, sheriffs, state highway patrol folk or other officials acting in an official capacity to tell you everything you need to know, it’ll be like waiting on the corner for a bus that had its route cancelled last week.

If you look at the stream of stories on CNN, for example, you’ll notice that it identifies pretty much everyone on board. Even after those stories ran, the sheriff declined to confirm the identities of those people. If you check out the sheriff’s department social media even today, the IDs aren’t posted. You have people responding to the tweets and posts with more information than the sheriff is willing to divulge.

Journalists know that the police will release information in whatever time frame they feel to be appropriate and that in most cases, you’ll get more info seeking other sources. As much as the police have often said to journalists, “I know you have a job to do…” they also don’t make the journalists’ job a priority. At best, they see the media as something to deal with like paperwork and jock itch: annoying, problematic and part of the curse of being them. At worst, well… I’ve heard the phrase “the F—ing Media” so often from cops I know that I honestly wondered if we’d created a new branch of journalism. (Y’know, like the Space Force…)

This isn’t to say that journalism is more important than the work of police or firefighters or first responders or anyone else who runs toward danger to help people in trouble. It’s not. However, pretending that if the TMZ people had just waited five more minutes until the police called them and said, “We’ve notified the family, so go ahead” everything would have been fine is disingenuous and borders on laughable.

Did this actually happen? I have come to the conclusion that being a “non-denominational skeptic” places me in the awkward role of asking questions people don’t like to hear. However, in journalism, we’re taught that if your mother says she loves you, you should go check it out. Therefore, here’s the question:

Did Bryant’s family (or anyone else on the chopper’s family) get the news of the death from TMZ?

Murakami’s tweet seems to say so:

“I am saddened that I was gathering facts as a media outlet reported … Kobe had passed. I understand getting the scoop but please allow us time to make personal notifications to their loved ones. It’s very cold to hear of the loss via media. Breaks my heart.”

I can’t find any reference in a post, a note, a tweet or a story that says this actually happened. I saw press releases from various organizations, tweets from tons of people and at least two dozen stories on various “respectable” media sites, but I could not find a single statement that would corroborate this. TMZ isn’t saying anything, either, on this topic. (If I missed it, feel free to email it to me via the contact page. I’ll give you the credit for showing the world I’m a dipstick.)

You can easily respond to this with a “That’s not the %@#^%ing point, Vince!” statement, and I get that. However, consider these two equally valid concerns:

  1. If we’re not into the accuracy of facts when they fit the point we want to make, what the hell are we doing in this job? Sure, I get the idea that it would be horrible if I died and my wife got a call like this:
    “Hello, is Mrs. Filak home?”
    “This is Mrs. Filak..”
    “Yeah, not any more… This is TMZ asking for a quote about the death of your husband five minutes ago.”
    However, if we’re going to let the sheriff’s folks use “couldabeen” BS about TMZ’s actions to make a point, why not let them go all the way? Why not have them invent the tears in the eyes of the other Bryant children, as they heard the news on TMZ? Why not let them slather on the details of how Vanessa Bryant got the alert from TMZ mere seconds before her phone rang with the news from the sheriff? The point is, if something is accurate, use it. If not, don’t let people use you to perpetuate something that is not.
  2. As much as this was an easy slam for the sheriff’s folks to make, kicking a publication like TMZ, it wasn’t meant for TMZ alone. This is the media version of a brush-back pitch, in which the sheriff threw a fastball on the inside part of the plate. The goal of a pitch like this is to let the media think long and hard about digging back in the batter’s box.
    TMZ is gonna TMZ. We’ve established that. However, when the L.A. Times or the Orange County Register or the Pomona Tidbit or whatever else is out there gets a tip like this, the sheriff and his colleagues in law enforcement hope this kind of incident will get them to slow up or pull a punch. In most cases, the media outlets will react with a higher level of discretion than TMZ, I would imagine, but simply putting the thought of “we might be the bad guys” in the media’s head is enough to cause some concern. It’s like how people tend to drive slower once they see someone else getting pulled over by a cop.
    In a speeding case, it’s probably a good idea. Here? It might be a toss up.

“I’ve got to go. I’m being arrested.” (or every time a law enforcement officer violates the rights of the media, a journalist gets their wings)

The joke around the student newsrooms I used to advise was whenever someone called in and said, “I need help,” we would respond with, “The newsroom doesn’t pay bail money…”

So it was kind of a shock when I got this photo from Alex Crowe, a radio journalist who has contributed to the blog on several occasions:

Courtesy of Alex Crowe

With it, he wrote, “Good morning, Vince! Got my journalism wings yesterday.”

Crowe was in Milwaukee, covering a protest over the shooting death of 17-year-old Alvin Cole. Wauwatosa police officer Joseph Mensah killed Cole in February 2020, and on Oct. 7, the Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisolm announced there would be no charges filed in this case. Mensah had shot and killed two other people over the past five years in the line of duty and had been cleared in both cases.

“I was sent to the Milwaukee County Safety Building to interview protesters and gather pictures and video of the scene while people waited for a decision to be announced,” Crowe said in an email interview. “I witnessed a crowd that was mostly peaceful but became agitated as time went on. The Cole family and their lawyer were inside the Milwaukee County Safety Building for about two hours, and during that time the crowd began to grow and some people became increasingly aggravated as they awaited what they felt would be an unjust outcome.

“Finally, when the Cole family and their lawyer came outside, some protesters shoved a member of the media and pushed his camera off its tripod and onto the concrete. While the family’s lawyer was speaking, several protesters were shouting obscenities forcing some stations to cut the live coverage. Once the lawyer and family members were done speaking, the protesters began to march towards the interstate where several members of the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office were waiting to try and prevent people from marching onto the highway.”

(Video courtesy of Alex Crowe)

Crowe followed the protesters to the highway ramp, where protesters were walking around the squad cars meant to limit access to freeway. Some clashed with officers and were subsequently tossed onto the hoods of squad cars. As Crowe and other media representatives took photos and video of these encounters, deputies from the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Department demanded that they stop following the crowd up the ramp and cease recording.

“There were simply too many people to arrest all at once,” Crowe said. “The protesters kept moving onto the highway. This had happened to me once before, during the protests after the death of George Floyd. During that experience, officers allowed protesters and media onto the highway, calmly stopped traffic and directed protesters and media members off at the next exit. This time, however, as protesters continued onto the interstate, a member of the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office turned towards myself and several other media members and ordered us off.”

One officer targeted Crowe, coming up behind him and placing him in handcuffs.

“I was on the phone with my boss when it happened and said ‘I’ve got to go. I’m being arrested,'” Crowe said. “Apparently my boss already knew that, because he was watching a live TV feed of the whole event back in the newsroom. I was able to remain calm because I knew that even if I were to be arrested and brought somewhere, they couldn’t charge me with anything and I would eventually be let go.”

The officer told Crowe to hang up the phone, before he confiscated Crowe’s recording equipment and patted him down for weapons.

“As we were walking, I explained that I was simply doing my job and that he had let the protesters go while targeting me,” Crowe said. “He told me he was sick of the media ‘thinking they can do whatever they want.’ It was at this time that another officer within the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office came over to us and asked which organization I was with. I told him and he ordered the other deputy to take me towards the back of the bank of squad cars, where no other protesters or media members were being held.

“He further instructed the officer holding me to uncuff me, give me my equipment back and let me go without any charges. The first officer begrudgingly did as he was told and let me go… I still don’t know why that single officer decided to go after me and insisted on bringing me away in handcuffs when he knew I was a member of the media.”

Once he was released, Crowe said he collected himself a bit and then went back to work, covering the protest.

“I called my boss to let him know that I was OK, then ran back to the highway area but this time on the other side of the fence, so I wasn’t on the road, I was in the grass on the other side of the highway,” Crowe said. “I found a place where about 20 officers were waiting on bikes to ride onto the highway if needed. I pulled out my equipment and started getting right back to work like nothing had happened.”

As far as advice for student journalists who might find themselves in similar situations, Crowe said knowing he was in the right and keeping his wits about him made a huge difference.

“I’m sure if I had made a big scene, the officers would have brought me downtown just for fun,” he said. “I just tried to remain calm and continually explained that I was a member of the media, that I had equipment in their hands that proved why I was there and that they could call my boss right away and get the whole thing straightened out. I just remained calm because I knew that eventually they would realize that I wasn’t lying and that they would be in a lot of trouble if they went through with processing and arresting a member of the media who was following every order given by officers on the scene. I would just tell students to remain calm and keep explaining who you are and who you’re with.”