Awkward ’80s Reference

Damaging Daniels: Do ethics matter any more in showing gruesome visuals? (A throwback post)

The Washington football franchise seems to have the worst luck with the worst injuries for its best quarterbacks. On Sunday night, Jayden Daniels became the latest casualty in the “gruesome” category when a Seahawk defender fell on his left arm and bent it back about 90 degrees the wrong way.

(If you haven’t seen it, you can watch it here.)

It was clear he was in significant pain at first, but it was unclear why, as it seemed to me that it might be a leg injury, given how he fell and how his lower body was posed. Only after a replay did the arm issue become apparent, with an official report calling it a dislocated elbow.

However, that wasn’t the only replay we saw. It seemed like they kept playing it over and over, to the point I woke up the dog when I instinctively screamed, “For the love of God! STOP SHOWING THIS!”

This brought me back to thinking about another similar injury and a post about the ethics of showing stuff like this on TV. However, I’m wondering about the relevance of this kind of discussion these days.

As I’ve frequently told my students, not everyone in the media game plays by the same basic set of rules anymore. The democratization of content collection and dissemination has really changed the way in which we deal with things like this as professionals and as viewers.

In 1987, Budd Dwyer, a public official convicted of bribery, called a press conference the day before he was to be sent to prison and killed himself while some stations carried the event live. Footage of the event exists online, but not of that moment itself.

(I remember using a textbook that showed two photos of Dwyer that we were to debate using for a newspaper’s front page: One with Dwyer holding the gun in both hands, the other with the barrel of the revolver in his mouth. That still messes with me…)

Flash forward almost 40 years and the moment Charlie Kirk was killed, dozens of videos popped up with the entirety of his final moments. Some people added slow motion, while others did zooms. Some even had some sort of sound track of sorts on there. I’m not linking to any of them, but I’m sure you can find them if you want.

That might be the bigger concern: Even as some came down, more went up. The reason was both the cash-grabbing click-baiting end of the deal, along with the basic prurient interests that many people apparently had for seeing a man literally die in front of us.

Thus, the chicken-or-the-egg thing: Is it that we now have more access to more content that allows us to see things, so we go see them? Or is it that we always wanted to see these things and we now have people who are more capable of providing them?

In either case, this throwback post might help spark a discussion or two about how we handle things as professional media folk and what that might mean going forward.

 

Breaking Dak: The ethics of broadcasting injuries in sports

TRIGGER WARNING: There are some graphic videos here of traumatic injuries. Watch at your own discretion. -VFF

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The outcome of the Dallas Cowboys/New York Giants game Sunday was completely overshadowed by an injury to quarterback Dak Prescott, who sustained a compound fracture and dislocation of his right ankle.

Prescott was scrambling for a first down when his body went one way and a sizeable portion of his lower leg went the other way.

(Here is the video if you want to see it. If you don’t want to watch this, I don’t blame you. My wife, Amy, a nurse who loves to talk about brain surgery over dinner and is an avid watcher of “Doctor Pimple Popper,” was really disturbed when she saw this.)

Tony Romo, who was in the booth doing color commentary for CBS, immediately realized something was horrible, proclaiming, “Oh no… Oh NO!” As a former QB, Romo has been on the turf for Dallas a few times with severe injuries. However, he seemed to almost want to magically wish this one away by saying, “You almost gotta hope it’s a cramp right there…” After about three replays, he knew that wasn’t the case.

As fascinating as this was, much like other things that are odd, chaotic and disturbing, I found myself watching it a few times and yet hating that I could see what had happened.

When it comes to gruesome sports injuries, the question for journalists is, “What is enough coverage?” The answer seems to vary from situation to situation and announcer to announcer.

Take the case of Clint Malarchuk, a goalie for the Buffalo Sabres, who caught a skate to the neck in a 1989 game against the St. Louis Blues. The gash sliced open his jugular vein and slashed through his carotid artery. If not for the presence of Sabres’ athletic trainer Jim Pizzutelli, a former US Army combat medic who served in the Vietnam War, Malarchuk would have likely died that night. 

As blood began hitting the ice, the announcers immediately implored the camera operator to stop showing the injury. Malarchuk actually skated off the ice after he received assistance from Pizzutelli and that was the only other shot of him. No replays, no slow-motion blood gushing. After that, the camera stayed in a distance shot of the ice until everything was cleaned up and play was ready to resume.

Contrast that with the case of former Raiders running back Napoleon McCallum, who sustained a career-ending knee injury on Monday Night Football at the start of the 1994 season. Ken Norton of the San Francisco 49ers hit McCallum low when he crashed into the pile, but McCallum’s cleat stuck in the turf, forcing his knee to buckle backwards at an almost completely right angle.

I remember watching this game on TV and the announcers kept showing it over and over and over again, going in slow motion to show each frame worth of knee distortion. Each time they did it, it was accompanied by an announcer saying, “Oh… You hate to see that” or “You might not want to watch this…” And yet, they kept showing it.

Perhaps the most famous Monday Night Football injury involved Washington Football quarterback Joe Theismann, who saw his career end on the field. Linebacker Lawrence Taylor, who made a career out of having no regard for his own body or that of quarterbacks, snapped Theismann’s leg in half. Immediately, Taylor popped up and started waving for the trainer as he held his head in his hands in disbelief.

As the officials tried to figure out what to do about this mangled man, ABC kept looking for the best possible angle to figure out what had happened, finally finding a reverse angle that will never leave your head if you see it once. To its credit, once ABC got there, the station didn’t show it again.

So, the question remains, “How much is too much?”

There might be an official code that outlines this, but I’m having difficulty finding one. Thus, what you see below is kind of a patchwork of various codes that could provide some guidance:

The Radio Television Digital News Association (RTDNA), which deals primarily with broadcast journalism, has a section in its ethical code about accountability  that touches somewhat on this:

Journalism provides enormous benefits to self-governing societies. In the process,it can create inconvenience, discomfort and even distress. Minimizing harm, particularly to vulnerable individuals, should be a consideration in every editorial and ethical decision.

(A similar approach came in this voluntary code of digital broadcasters, which seems to have come from the National Association of Broadcasters.)

The Football Writers Association of America, which deals more with college sports coverage,  lists of elements within its code of ethics to deal with issues happening on the field. Under “Minimize Harm,” it notes the following elements:

  • Show compassion for those who may be affected adversely by news coverage. Use special sensitivity with children or inexperienced sources or subjects.
  • Be sensitive when seeking or using photographs of those affected by tragedy or grief.
  • Recognize that gathering and reporting information may cause harm or discomfort. Pursuit of the news is not a license for arrogance.

(For reasons past my understanding, I can’t find the code of ethics for the pro version of these folks. Maybe it’s buried in the “members only” section.)

In contrast, the Society of Professional Journalists, digs into the ethics of the field at length in its code. Along with the minimize harm stuff that was in the other codes, here was an interesting add:

Avoid pandering to lurid curiosity, even if others do.

Obviously “pandering” and “lurid” are in the eye of the beholder, but it does provide the “If your friends all jumped off a bridge, would you?” line of logic on this one.
I always go back to the line I remember hearing at the State Journal, where we employed “The Breakfast Test.” If someone were picking up our paper and reading it over breakfast, would the images (or in some cases EXTREMELY vivid writing) make that person puke in their Cheerios?
 

And, yet, again, this is variable in a lot of ways. Papers up by us have no problem running photos of people who have “cleaned” deer and pose next to the gutted, skinned carcasses hanging from trees. The hunting community is used to that. For a lot of other folks, that’s going to be a breakfast showstopper.

In any case, the unfortunate answer to the question, “How much is too much?” when it comes this kind of coverage is like most ethical or “taste” situations: It depends.

The audience you serve, the expectations they have, the previous things you’ve shown them with or without problem and more come into this. However, even if you don’t have a concrete answer, it helps to discuss this to find ways to understand what to do when you find yourself in a situation like this. The more you can gain collective knowledge in advance, the better prepared you will be to make your choice.

“You realize that your work with these people was real, and it did matter.” A Q and A With Fired Indiana Daily Student Media Adviser Jim Rodenbush (Part II)

Jim Rodenbush from the IU website

If you missed Part I, you can link to it here.

Indiana University’s Media School fired Indiana Daily Student media adviser Jim Rodenbush after he wouldn’t censor the students and then cut the print publication entirely. The story continues to unfold, and we’ll keep you apprised of anything we learn. In the meantime, it seemed like a good idea to interview the man himself at length to understand his current situation.

Rodenbush was nice enough to spend his layover at the airport on the phone with us, talking about his experiences with the IU Media School. He also talked about what he sees next for himself and what he hopes will be next for his students.

Below is part two of a transcription of our Q and A, with edits to the material to tighten and clarify parts of our discussion, as well as make more sense of my questions, which somehow Rodenbush understood among the many Midwestern “Yeah… Yeah… No…” interjections I put in there.

Dean David Tolchinsky, who one source called “clueless” in his understanding of journalism and the First Amendment.

You mentioned Dean David Tolchinsky earlier and I know I’ve said a lot about him over the past year here. I’ve heard from folks that he is “clueless” when it comes to journalism and doesn’t know squat about important things like the First Amendment. What’s your take on all that?

JIM RODENBUSH: “The best ‘glass-half-full response’ that I can give to this is, David does not come with a journalism background. If he has learned anything about journalism in the last two years, I would say that he’s learned it in tiny baby steps, and most of the responsibility related to student media and journalism, he’s farmed out to other people.

 

Galen Clavio, seen here fronting a 1980s Night Ranger cover band, was Rodenbush’s direct supervisor for most of the past year.

And that brings me to my next question. It’s my understanding that Associate Dean Galen Clavio has been the main guy who is pushing the ideas about changing student media at IU and he’s the one trying to crank out whatever his version of journalism should be at the IDS. What’s the front page on this guy in relation to this whole situation? 

JIM RODENBUSH: “A lot of this responsibility was put on this plate in his role as associate dean. He was made my direct supervisor, basically from October to October, and before the public media guy came in. He has made himself a presence in what I guess you could call the general IU media community, right? He’s in the trenches, he’s producing content, he’s someone who can present himself as someone who is in the know, but his background is also not journalism. His background is media production. His background is sports media. He’s really has made himself a face in the podcasting world, which is great, but that’s you giving your opinion about football. There’s no journalism background to that.”

“In my interactions with him, there wasn’t much of an interest in the journalism side of things because of the liability and the trouble it causes. So, many of his ideas were leaning into production, leaning into background work, and leaning into turning out people that would produce things like Big 10 Network shows, people that would set up the latest podcast. And, yes, these are viable career opportunities. I don’t want to diminish the things that are on the production side of things, but that being said, Galen doesn’t have the background or the interest in growing anything related to real reporting. There’s no background and there’s no interest in helping to grow that at all.”

 

Obviously, you’ve gotten a ton of attention because of this situation. With everyone reaching out to you now, what is the general vibe of their comments? 

JIM RODENBUSH: “I’ve worked at four different universities over 15 years, so I I’m hearing from students and from former colleagues I haven’t talked to him forever. That’s the kind of thing that this situation has generated. Everything has been 100% supportive. I haven’t received a single negative message. Every one of them has been, ‘Thank you for standing up for journalism principles.’ A lot of them have been very complimentary on the example that’s being set for students. Every one of them is saying they’re very sorry that this happened to me, but that I did the right thing.”

 

Given everything that’s happening now, what do you think we are looking at, as far as the IDS and as far as IU is concerned from a reputation standpoint?

JIM RODENBUSH: “You can quote me hard on this one: The IDS was a dream job. It was a dream destination, because it had, it had such a glowing reputation. I felt like I had landed in the big leagues by getting this position. This was a big deal. And this is a big deal to the point where my wife and I had talked about this being our final landing spot. So, this is the dream position where I had expected to spend the rest of my working career. But now, I could not, in good conscience, recommend this position to anyone, for all the reasons that are out there right now.”

“That being said, I do believe from an editorial content standpoint, I know that the kids are going to do everything they possibly can to keep this going as long as they can. And so from a journalism reputation standpoint, I believe that it’s going to hold on as long as it can possibly hold on, but it’s going to get worse, right? It has to. And so it’s just difficult. I don’t know where this goes, and I feel bad for the people that are left behind to continue to try to make this work.”

 

What do you want for the kids at the paper going forward? From your perspective, if the kids could make something happen that would make you say, “Yeah, I feel good for the kids,” what would that be? Is it you back on the job at the IDS? Is it people leaving them alone? Is it Mark Cuban buying the IDS and having “news boys” run all over campus? What’s the best-case situation in your mind?.

JIM RODENBUSH: “It’s so weird, because they should be something that the university should (promote) a lot. With all due respect to my colleagues, the IDS is among the best student media organizations in the country. It’s just full of talented kids, inspiring kids and they’re doing everything right. My hope for them is that there is at least some version of support and advocacy going forward, so that the ones that want to continue to do the work are able to do so.”

“A best-case scenario would be to give the kids a seat at the table. All these decisions are being made absent of input from me, absent of input from the professional staff, but definitely absence of input from the students, and they’re the ones that have to implement things. Let them make decisions. You know they’re going to operate in the best interest of the organization, if you let them.”

 

OK, what about for you? Where do you go next? 

JIM RODENBUSH: “I’m happily married forever to the world’s most compassionate human being, and she has been incredible in the last 48 hours. I have a daughter that goes to IU I have another son who’s about to go to college, and then I have another son who is graduated high school, but it’s on a different path. So there’s a family structure there.”

“Moving forward, I just don’t really know. I’ve allowed myself a couple days to take a beat. I’m going to allow myself a couple more days to enjoy being around everybody, and then I’ve got to figure out what’s next. I hope to continue and in the media world, and I hope to continue in some version of the college level. So I get back home on Sunday and, Monday, I really have to wake up and say, ‘OK, what am I doing?’”

 

If I were to hand you the microphone and let you say anything you want to say about anything at all, what do you want people to know?

JIM RODENBUSH: “In a situation like this, people reach out, and they’re like, ‘I’m so sorry to hear about what’s going on to on you and please let me know if you need anything.’ I’ve been on the other end of that before, but this is the first time I’ve been on this side of the situation and it’s really helpful to know that people are thinking about you. So much the work that you do is in a bubble, and a lot of the times you don’t hear feedback unless somebody’s yelling at you. And you have all these relationships with students, and you think that you’re doing right by them, and you think that you’re doing right by journalism, but you just don’t know.”

“And then you have a situation like this, where people are telling you what you meant to them, and that’s — Jesus, I’m getting emotional — that’s been a real positive part of all this. All of these people are reaching out — and I swear I’ll respond to everybody – and it means so much because you know you’re not totally alone in this process. You realize that your work with these people was real, and it did matter.”

How to make things relevant for your readers when they no longer have shared, collective experiences

On this date in 1960, the Pittsburgh Pirates defeated the New York Yankees in Game 7 of the World Series on Bill Mazeroski’s ninth-inning walk-off home run.

To fully understand the gravity of the moment for many people living in that time, it’s instructive to listen to sports journalist Beano Cook’s assessment of the situation:

“If you grew up in Pittsburgh, the way I did, you remember where you were when heard F.D.R. died, when you heard about Pearl Harbor, when you heard the war ended and where you were when Mazeroski hit the homer.”

I’m sure not every human being on Earth had that kind of reaction to it, especially Yankees fans who considered World Series domination to be their birthright, but it does speak to the larger sense of how we once had a sense of shared moments in time.

During my life time, there have been a few of those “where were you” moments that stick in my head to this day. I remember being on the floor of my parents’ living room on that yellow shag carpeting in front of the old Admiral-brand TV we had when the Miracle on Ice occurred.

I remember being in the Doctoral Pit in Columbia, Missouri with several other former journos-turned-Ph.D.-students huddled around an old tube-style TV as we watched the towers collapse on Sept. 11, 2001. (I also remember having to go to a multi-variate statistics class, taught by an international grad student who had no idea what was going on. To this day, I still can’t figure out binomials.)

In today’s era of quick-hit social media, in which algorithms feed us more of what we want to see and isolate us from a wide array of viewpoints, I don’t know if shared cultural moments are possible for this generation, but the litmus test might be the shooting death of Charlie Kirk.

A recent analysis of what people thought about Kirk, his death and the person arrested on suspicion of shooting him found that social media created completely different worlds in which individuals learned about all of this. In addition, social media companies have removed a lot of the guardrails that were once considered crucial in eliminating factually incorrect content and tamping down rage.

As much as it seems like EVERYONE around me has an opinion on Kirk, his death and everything that’s wrong with the world today that led to it, I am still running into students who know nothing about any of this.

And I’m teaching in a media-based field where knowing what’s going on around you is kind of important.

Rather than going down the rabbit hole of whose values are better or what people don’t see thanks to self-feeding loops of social media destruction, I think it’s more important to realize that horse is out of the barn. What matters now is how we deal with it as journalists, give that most of our job is providing content to people in a way that’s relevant, useful and interesting to them.

Here are a few things to realize about the people out there consuming our content and how we need to serve it up differently for them:

NEVER ASSUME THEY KNOW ANYTHING: This seems a bit blunt and harsh, but we don’t all see the same news at 10 p.m. or read the same newspaper on the train ride into the city anymore. Just because people exist on X, Facebook, SnapChat, TikTok or Chorp, it doesn’t follow that they know anything we’re trying to talk about either.

Everything is individualized, so while my feed might be filled with calm, rational discussions about social policies in higher ed, the person right next to me might be learning that Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl appearance is part of a plot to explode the brains of ICE agents with a sound ray that will also turn undocumented migrants trans.

(We have the technology… You are just being kept in the dark about it. Read more about my inside information at the website http://www.areyoufrickinseriouslystupid.com)

What this essentially means is that we have to start from a position of less than zero to explain situations to our readers if we want them to get anything out of anything we are trying to tell them.

I used to tell students that 1-4 sentences of background was usually enough to catch people up on topics of interest. As much as that number might need to increase exponentially, it also needs to be counterbalanced against the minuscule attention span people have, so it’s going to be a fine line to walk.

This leads to the second point…

WRITE IT LIKE YOU’D WANT TO READ IT: The goal of most standard media writing is to get to the point immediately. The problem is that most people don’t write for others the way they want content sent to them in the realm of social media. That creates a massive disconnect we need to fix.

I did a study a few years back involving student journalists who were responsible for running social media for the media outlet. I asked them to rate a bunch of uses and gratifications they have for social media they received. In other words, what do you like that you get and how you get it from social media? I then asked them to outline the approach they took to sending social media to other people as a source from their media outlet.

The results? Almost zero overlap between what they considered “best practices” for social media they consume and the way they themselves provide it to other people. In most cases, they liked writing really long and involved stuff but they hated reading it. They also liked things to be quick and direct, but felt it necessary to avoid being that direct in their own work.

Studies of social media and its impact on the brain are mixed, but one discussion about the topic seemed to make the most sense to me. The writer basically said that social media exercises our brains in certain ways, so we not only get used to that, but the other aspects of our minds tend to atrophy a bit. The author compared it to “skipping leg day” at the gym but doubling up on core exercises: One part gets weaker while the others get stronger.

This kind of media consumption limits our ability to do the more strenuous mental work that non-social-media use requires. It also impacts our ability to create memories, so writing giant diatribes with six interweaving plot lines isn’t going to help the readers in any meaningful way. So, if we want to get across to the people, we need to build it in a way they’ll best understand it.

 

SELF-INTEREST IS OUR ONLY SALVATION:  If we have but one thing in common anymore, it is literally the interest we have in why something matters to us personally. If that’s all we have to go on, we’re going to need to saddle up that horse and ride it to death.

To be fair, some larger moments over the past 20 years only stick in my brain because I had a personal connection to them. The 2007 shooting at Virginia Tech mattered a great deal to me because I knew the media advisers at that papers and I had spoken to some student journalists from there at one point. I remember refreshing my email every 0.5 seconds, hoping for a response from a friend to tell me she was OK.

The Las Vegas shooting fell into a similar vein, in that my aunt and uncle were in Vegas at that point. I remember trying to teach a class and keeping an eye on text messages from my mom to tell me if my family members were safe.

And again, I’m PAID to be aware of larger issues that get a ton of media coverage, so if I’m falling down on this, I can’t imagine what it’s like to people who are learning nothing other than what TikTok feeds them.

At one place I worked, we used to require the students to finish the sentence “This matters because…” before they were allowed to start writing their stories. Bringing something like this back for all media writers, with a more direct version like “This matters to YOU, my reader, because…” might help us better focus our attention on the “how” and “why” elements of what we’re covering as we target the demographic, psychographic and geographic needs of our specific audience members.

We often have to remind students that they’re not writing for themselves, but rather the audience. Now, we might not only need to double down on that, but also make sure they have a full sense of who is out there and and a laser-like focus on making it relevant to them.

Rudy Giuliani settles lawsuit over his claims of election fraud. No… Not that one… No… That one got settled… No… It’s… Just read the post.

It’s never a good sign when you Google someone’s name and “lawsuit,” only to see smoke billowing out of the back of your computer…

THE LEAD: Dominion Voting Services has settled its lawsuit with former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani over his baseless claims that the 2020 presidential election was rigged. Dominion had sued for $1.3 billion, but the actual settlement was not immediately disclosed.

The company’s suit against Giuliani was based on statements the onetime presidential hopeful made on social media, on conservative news outlets and during legislative hearings in which he claimed the company conspired to flip votes to Biden.

Dominion’s lawsuit was among a series of legal and financial setbacks for Giuliani stemming from his role in spreading election conspiracy theories.

DOCTOR OF PAPER FLASHBACK: We covered Dominion’s situation when it sued Fox News for $1.6 billion back in 2021. The sides eventually settled the suit for $800 million.

If the “meet-in-the-middle settlement principle” holds true, Giuliani might be on the hook for about $650 million, although he’s already financially crunched due to the loss he sustained for maligning two Georgia poll workers. He’s been trying to declare bankruptcy, but a federal judge tossed that out in 2024, so I’m sure the creditors will continue to circle.

A SHORT, BASIC LEGAL PRIMER ON DEFAMATION: When we cover defamation in the writing and reporting classes, we tend to keep things pretty simple. Obviously, the law is rarely as clean cut as what we’re describing below, but it does at least give you a basic look at what these things tend to require.

We usually start with what we call the “minimum basic requirements” for a viable lawsuit. In other words, you have to prove these basic things just to get on the dance floor, so to speak:

Identification: Can I figure out the person/group/company that is being subjected to this potentially defamatory action? This can be naming someone (“Mayor Bill Smith of Springfield stole money from the Veterans Affairs account.”) or through identification that is obvious to a reasonable individual (“The principal of Smithville Elementary in Smithville, Ohio, who shall remain nameless, has installed illegal video cameras in the girls locker room.”).

Publication: Has the information been sent to someone other than the person who claims to be defamed? Defamation can extend across all media. People usually think about “publication” as being something disseminated via a newspaper or magazine, but that’s not the case. Sharing information through almost any channel or platform can fit this standard. I used to say that you could libel someone on a gum wrapper if you put your mind to it. That’s not that far afield from the truth, in that defamation suits have been put forth over broadcast reports, press releases, advertising and social media posts.

Defamation: Does the statement associate the person with illegal affairs or other nasty business? In most cases, we see issues of criminality here, but it doesn’t mean that this is the only way you can cover this base. Accusing people of being associated with a “loathsome disease” also fits here. So not only could you be in trouble for stating, “Johnny Smith shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die,” you could also be in trouble for saying “Johnny Smith is the reason for the chlamydia outbreak in the Delta Delta Delta house.”

Harm: Did the statements cause damage to the person/group/whatever claiming defamation? I remember once a situation in which a group of little… student government people was trying to get me fired as the adviser of the student newspaper. One of them took to the steps of the library wearing a sandwich board sign that essentially said I helped the paper steal about $74,000 from the university. The funniest thing about it was that he ended up misspelling my name on the sign, thus leading the newsroom kids of that era to refer to me as “Dr. Vinie Filk.”

I was basically blowing it off, but I asked one of my legal eagle buddies, if, just for fun, I decided to sue this kid, what were my chances of winning?

For starters, the guy told me, you’d probably need to prove that you are Dr. Vinie Filk. After we laughed at that, he hit me with the real issue: What’s the actual harm that’s come to you in this situation?

His point was that I couldn’t point to a specific negative thing that happened based on this kid doing this demonstration, other than that the kid was annoying the crap out of me. Had I lost my job, lost a promotion, gotten removed as adviser or a number of other things that were directly related to this kid’s actions, I could show harm.

As it stood, I basically was fine, so that’s how that cookie would crumble in court.

DOMINION GOES 4-FOR-4 AND THEN SOME: In the case of Rudy and Dominion, we can check all four boxes: The company was identified repeatedly in Giuliani’s statements, he was doing it on a boatload of platforms that went out to millions of people and he accused a voting company of rigging an election, something both illegal and “loathsome.”

Harm was easy to prove as well, given they could show actual losses related to statements made about how this company was a fraud. In the Fox suit, they stated easily a $600 million loss based on this nonsense, and that doesn’t count all the pain and suffering the Dominion workforce sustained when people who were all in a lather over this went after them.

ALL OFFENSE, NO DEFENSE: When a suit gets this far, we usually see one of two key defenses applied:

  1. The statements, while clearly not nice, are actually true.
  2. The statements were merely an opinion, so not subject to a suit of this kind.

Other defenses can apply here (The one former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell tried regarding hyperbole is an amazing example of chutzpah…) but for the most part, we’re looking at these two. The truth defense was shot to hell really early in all the Dominion suits, as no one could actually PROVE that the voting company was doing anything nefarious. The opinion defense we dealt with in the previous post on this topic, but it bears repeating here.

Opinions are statements that can neither be proven true or false. For example, “Dr. Filak is a lousy professor” fits the opinion because we can’t define what “lousy” means in any legal fashion. However, “Dr. Filak takes money for grades” is a statement we can prove to be true or false. In the Dominion case, it was clear these statements were meant to be taken as fact and stated as such, despite their falsity.

THE “ONE TO GROW ON” LESSON OF THE DAY: When these things happen, they should serve as a reminder to pretty much everyone who puts content into the public sphere that there are inherent risks in doing so. Over the past decade or so, we’ve gotten more and more comfortable with more and more people saying more and more outlandish stuff in the media and essentially getting away with it.

However, when someone actually decides that what is being said is a bridge too far and sues, what you might have thought of as “provocative” or “entertaining” might end up looking “coyote ugly” in the harsh light of the courts.

“Can You Libel a Disaster?” (And several other questions that came to mind after The Atlantic gave Ruth Shalit Barrett $1 Million)

Ruth Shalit Barrett received more than $1 million after suing The Atlantic for defamation, based on its approach to retracting this story. For that kind of money, they must have said this is a photo of Barrett drowning a couple dozen kids in a pool laced with electrical lines. 

THE LEAD: When in doubt, sue somebody, because it apparently works:

The Atlantic quietly agreed to pay more than $1 million early this summer to settle a lawsuit by the writer Ruth Shalit Barrett, who had accused the magazine of defamation after it took the rare step of retracting an article she had written and replacing it with an editor’s note, according to a person with knowledge of the settlement.

Ms. Barrett, who wrote an article about youth sports in wealthy areas as a freelancer for The Atlantic in 2020, sued the publication and one of its editors in January 2022. She said the outlet had smeared her reputation and asked for $1 million in damages.

 

DOCTOR OF PAPER FLASHBACK: I was working on another post over the weekend when I noticed a post I wrote several years ago about Barrett’s article and subsequent lawsuit was getting heavy traffic for no apparent reason. A quick Google search of her name helped me figure it out.

At the time, I figured there was NO WAY this thing was going anywhere. The strength of my prediction powers is also why I suck at Fantasy Football.

 

THE DETAILS: Barrett wrote a story about niche sports that rich parents were pushing their kids to enter, in hopes of gaining an edge when the kids applied to Ivy League schools. The story had a number of problems, including an anonymous source that wasn’t that anonymous, the creation of a kid out of thin air, the exaggeration of an injury to a kid during a fencing match and more.

Eric Wemple of the Washington Post dug into this story and started finding more and more things that didn’t make sense, something the editors of The Atlantic also began to notice. At some point, they decided, “Screw it, we can’t save the patient” and retracted the story with a lengthy editor’s note about the story and Barrett’s history in media.

As a result, Barrett filed the suit, arguing that the note defamed her in several ways. She asked for it to be rewritten and that she be given the story’s publishing rights. The two sides went to arbitration, leading to some edits to the note and a lot of cash.

 

A FEW QUESTIONS: In reading this over and over again, I found myself asking several rhetorical questions, one of which was, “Can I sue Sage for no good reason with the hopes that they give me a squillion dollars to go away for a while?”  While the answer to that one marinates in your mind, here are a couple others:

CAN YOU LIBEL A DISASTER? I’m not calling Barrett a disaster for obvious reasons, not the least of which is I don’t have a million bucks I want to throw away. I’m more or less wondering how we started with a story so bad that it required a full retraction and ended with a pay day of this nature.

The publication stated it was aware of her history of not quite exhibiting the best level of judgment in regard to journalistic integrity. Wemple dug a bit deeper into her life and found more than a few clinkers along the way, including problems with the story on these weird sports. The fact checkers were lied to in at least two cases, with one source being encouraged to lie. (The original note said “at least one” while the new note says “one,” a distinction without merit from a language position. Also, who told you it was “only” one? The person you initially found was involved in all the lying and encouraging others to lie, so… um…)

Courts have ruled on a number of occasions that certain people and situations are “libel-proof,” in that nothing further can be done to harm their reputation. In addition, courts have stated that libel doesn’t apply if only “incremental harm” can be demonstrated. In the former, the courts basically say that someone or something is so bad, any statement that might be libelous toward any other person or group won’t qualify as libel. In the latter, it’s like a person in prison for 10 counts of murder sues you for reporting that they have a dozen unpaid parking tickets.

In looping back to this situation, I fail to see how the changes to the note or the statements regarding Barrett improved the situation to the point of avoiding libel. The distinctions in here feel to me like the quote in “Great Balls of Fire!” when someone yells at Jerry Lee Lewis that  he married his 12 year old cousin, Myra, to which she retorts, “Second cousin, twice removed!” Oh. Well.

The question of how bad was the defamation in relation to what was already out there has me pondering what level of reputation she recouped as a result of the suit. In short, do people who thought poorly of her now think better of her after this? Or did people who thought better of her before the retraction think worse of her AFTER that retraction?

Or did the big check just make things better?

 

WHEN DID GP GO MIA? I seem to remember a time, not so long ago, when people did things on “GP” or “general principle.” In other words, it was standing up for the right side of something or holding someone to account for something, even if it would be easier to just throw in the towel.

Case in point, my parents told me when I first got my license that if I got a speeding ticket, I’d lose my right to drive for a protracted period of time. No muss, no fuss, no BS. Just put the keys on the table. Sure enough, when I was 17, I was ticketed for speeding along a stretch of road that was a notorious speed trap. I walked into the house, put the ticket on the table, dropped the keys on top of it and that was that for a while.

What my parents DIDN’T foresee was that I was involved in about 912 activities that required me to be at various locations at night and on weekends. It would have been far easier for them to just give me back the keys and let me drive myself. However, Mom and Dad dug in and ended up driving me to and from all those things until the predetermined punishment time had ended. It was inconvenient for them, but they decided the principle of the thing mattered. I learned a lot from that and have since avoided speeding tickets, although now that I’ve said that, I’m sure I’m getting nailed on the way home.

The larger point is: When did we stop fighting just because the fights were hard? We’ve recently had the “60 Minutes” lawsuit, the ABC lawsuit, and several other lawsuits that have the “Fourth Estate” folding like a cheap cardboard box in a rainstorm. It’s like, “It’s cheaper and easier to just pay people to go away.” Well, that’s like paying protection money to the mob, assuming it’s a one-time thing.

It’s not just the news business, but it seems like we fold up everywhere: A kid threatens us, we change a grade. A social media “influencer” pulls focus onto a post we made, we take it down and apologize. Don’t even get me started about what the kids are doing in the ice cream aisle at Walmart these days. What happened to standing on principle?

There are times where I go into a situation knowing full well I’m going to lose and there are other times, where the risks are pretty damned high that I will. Still, there’s something that says, “No. You aren’t folding. You’re gonna play this hand out, because you can’t live with yourself if you don’t.”

I feel this moment so deeply

I understand that money is a predominant factor in pretty much everything in the world today and I know that it’s easy to say what I would or wouldn’t do when it’s not my money to spend. That said, I think back to the people I admire the hell out of in this business, who would never have acquiesced as easily as it seems like so many people are so willing to do.

Eight Years a Blogger: Come for the knowledge, stay for the snark

It’s hard to believe this thing is still going after eight years, kind of in the same way its hard to believe that the almond-colored refrigerator with the faux-leather texture and Bakelite handle that your parents bought in 1983 refuses to die. I always figured Sage would have decided I was more trouble than I was worth by this point, or I would have run out of bits of wisdom, weirdly effective exercises and opportunities to mock god-awful mistakes in the media.

Oddly enough, that’s hasn’t happened. And speaking of exercises, if you still want to get in on Dr. Vinnie’s Bin of Exercises and AI Joy, feel free to hit the link here.

This semester is guaranteed to be a little off as far as the blog is concerned, in that I found out last week I will need to teach a fifth class this term. It’s the second of the five that I’ve never taught before in my nearly 30 years of college teaching and the third of the five that’s not in my area of expertise.

Why, you might ask… Well..

 

The relative insanity that this blog provides me might be my only salvation, so let’s get started with a few thoughts to brighten your day (and allow me to blow off developing a giant roster of PowerPoints and podcasts I will likely use only once in my lifetime):

 

STUIPD IS AS STUIPD DOES, TOO: In digging through a ton of examples I wanted to use for the upcoming classes I am prepping, I was stunned at the level of general incompetence when it came to making sure things were edited before they went out. I’m not talking about internet memes or mom-and-pop operations posting on an AOL-Dial-Up-Friendly website. I’m talking about actual organizations with money and staff support.

The number of missing words, misspellings and generally bad writing made it tough to find quality examples for the kids. I mean, I can’t exactly say, “Here’s a great press release, if you ignore the three misspelled words in the lead and the sentence structure that makes Tarzan look like Shakespeare.” Of all the blunders out there, I had to highlight this one:

If you are in the state, promoting the state and having a fair for the state, the least you can do is spell the name of the state properly in the headline…

Also, for the sake of irony, I found this job posting for an entry-level PR position with these two key bullet-points back to back. And I SWEAR I didn’t PhotoShop this:

I looked at it three times and thought, “Is this like one of those tests where they try to trick you? Like that one speed test where you are supposed to read the whole set of directions first, so that you figure out you only need to do the first thing on the list?”

Or do they just really need proofreaders that badly?

Speaking of someone who needs a proofreader:

If you really need something that big to house that item, I feel sorry for your significant other…

 

DID THAT REALLY JUST HAPPEN? I’ve frequently noted that paranoia is my best friend, so much so, that I often find myself doing double-takes on things I swear I saw that turn out to not be as bad as I thought. It usually comes up when I see a sign for “angus” burgers or “first-hand jobs” or something where my mind drifts to the terrible error, even if there isn’t one.

That said, this Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel headline on my phone really should have freaked out a couple people somewhere at the newspaper:

For starters, that’s not Cavalier Johnson unless I have officially gone blind from computer monitor radiation. Here’s his official city photo:

I have no idea who the dude at the podium is, but Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito made a more convincing set of Twins than the two people in the photos above.

Second, and this is really what caught me, that has got to be the worst headline break any human or computer could have made with this story. When I saw that “Johnson speaks with black talk,” I think my brain broke, before remembering Robert Townsend’s spoof of how white people do stupid stuff in Hollywood.

I understand that everything can’t be perfect in every publication, but I also know there are certain topics that need a little more attention and care, due to their sensitivity and the long history of insensitivity associated with them. This is one of those where someone fell asleep at the wheel.

Conversely, sometimes we can really go a bit far in clarifying things for our readers:

Thanks for the clarification, CNN. Otherwise, I might have been confused…

And finally…

I, (FILL IN NAME HERE), AM HAPPY TO HELP (FILL IN NAME HERE): As is the case every semester, I got a series of “could you please squeeze me into your full Writing for the Media class?” emails over the past couple weeks. The excuses are usually the same (I missed my registration day, I accidentally dropped it, I died while donating my heart to my cousin, but thanks to revolutionary bionics, I’m back now…) as are the ramifications they use to nudge me in their favor (I need this to graduate, I can’t move on with out the class, I’m planning to join a biker gang but they won’t take me without a bachelor’s…)

This one came oh so close to moving me…

Look, AI can be helpful in some cases, but your really gotta meet it halfway…

And off we go on another semester-long adventure. Let’s stay safe out there…

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

A Mob Shakedown, Chump Change or An Affront to The Foundations of The Country: Framing Paramount’s $16M Settlement With President Trump

This interview, which literally and figuratively did absolutely nothing to the outcome of the 2024 presidential election, was at the core of a multi-billion-dollar lawsuit President Donald Trump filed against “60 Minutes.” 

THE LEAD: Paramount agreed late Tuesday to pay $16 million to settle President Donald Trump’s lawsuit over the editing of a Kamala Harris interview on “60 Minutes” that Trump deemed fraudulent and deceptive.

Trump sued Paramount in November for $10 billion, claiming the editing of the interview created “partisan and unlawful acts of election and voter interference” intended to “mislead the public and attempt to tip the scales” of the 2024 election toward Harris.

Experts had long noted that the suit was frivolous and that Trump had a better shot of quarterbacking the Cleveland Browns to a Super Bowl title this year than he did of winning this case. Still, the parent company of “60 Minutes” took the settlement route, as a corporate sale of several billion dollars seemed to be at risk if it didn’t:

Many lawyers had dismissed Mr. Trump’s lawsuit as baseless and believed that CBS would have ultimately prevailed in court, in part because the network did not report anything factually inaccurate, and the First Amendment gives publishers wide leeway to determine how to present information.

But Shari Redstone, the chair and controlling shareholder of Paramount, told her board that she favored exploring a settlement with Mr. Trump. Some executives at the company viewed the president’s lawsuit as a potential hurdle to completing a multibillion-dollar sale of the company to the Hollywood studio Skydance, which requires the Trump administration’s approval.

After weeks of negotiations with a mediator, lawyers for Paramount and Mr. Trump worked through the weekend to reach a deal ahead of a court deadline that would have required both sides to begin producing internal documents for discovery, according to two people familiar with the negotiations.

FRAMING THE OUTCOME: We talked about Framing Theory a few months back, but for a brief recap, the idea is that how the media chooses to focus on an issue can shape how people in general will look at that issue. In this case, here are three I’ve seen pop up:

The Mob Shakedown: In most good gangster movies and TV shows, a scene emerges that showcases how to threaten someone without actually threatening them. It’s a pure demonstration of the power the “Don,” the “boss” or the “enforcer” has: Force someone to do something they don’t want to do out of pure fear of what otherwise might happen.

The shakedown scene usually starts with the gangster offering “friendship” or “protection” for a business owner, explaining that the world is a dangerous place and that a lot of bad things can happen. So, for a small percentage of the owner’s finances, this gangster will keep those bad things at bay.

If the owner protests, the gangster tends to get a little more specific while still being vague, offering “God forbid” scenarios like how a mysterious fire could burn the business to the ground or how a random act of violence could lead to the owner being hospitalized for serious injuries. However, fortunately, a payment to this “ambassador of goodwill” can pretty much eliminate those possibilities:

(This was the best “shakedown” scene I could find from any TV show or movie that a) didn’t use enough F-bombs to destroy an underground nuclear bunker, b) use other pejorative language regarding someone’s race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation or pet preference and c) didn’t actually use the violence that was suggested earlier in the clip. Still, it’s not pure enough for totally virgin ears, so watch at your discretion.)

In the Paramount case, the company had a multi-billion-dollar deal waiting in the wings, but it needed “the Don’s” blessing to go through and a lot of terrible things can happen to a deal if, God forbid, the FCC decided to look reeeeeeealllly closely at it. I mean, who knows what might happen to all that money? If Paramount lost that deal just because of a little misunderstanding it could make right with this “60 Minutes” thing? Hey… I’m just saying…

Of course, the Trump administration definitely wasn’t doing that:

Brendan Carr, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, has said the president’s lawsuit against Paramount was not linked to the F.C.C.’s review of the company’s merger with Skydance. Paramount has also said the two issues were unrelated.

Right. And the business owner got that black eye and broken arm after “accidentally” falling down a flight of stairs before coming to the conclusion that protection money is a small price to pay for proper piece of mind.

 

Chump Change: If you look at some of the more successful campaigns to get money out of people, they tend to be the ones that appear to be the least taxing or consequential. Case in point, each year, my alma mater (or maters) send me a pledge card, asking for a “gift” of between a few hundred and a few thousand dollars. Those always go right in the trash without a second thought.

That said, I have a hard time recalling the last time I refused to “round up” at the grocery store, the hardware store or anywhere else for whatever charity the business was repping at the time. It’s like, “Hell, I’m already $132.47 into the Kroeger Family at this point. What’s another 53 cents for a good cause?”

In addition, I’ve seen people drop a few coins in a parking lot and refuse to pick them up, folks at rummage sales drop the “and XX cents” on a customer’s total and other similar maneuvers that basically just round off a relatively insignificant amount of cash.

Thus, the concept of “chump change.”

I personally have a hard time thinking about $16 million as “chump change,” but everything in life is relative, as noted in this clip from “The Social Network:”

I suppose if I’m looking at it from the perspective of a multi-billion-dollar company that wants to make several billion dollars on a deal, giving up $16 million isn’t a lot to make things happen. I also suppose that if a collections company told me I owed $1,000 to a creditor, but I could pay it off today for $1.60, I’d probably avoid the argument and fork over the cash. (Trust me on this one: The comparative math is solid.)

To Paramount, this is the cost of doing business. It’s rounding up at the register to move things along. It’s chump change.

 

An Affront to The Foundations of The Country:  After the news broke about the Paramount capitulation, it might have felt like time stood still for a few minutes. That’s probably because when Edward R. Murrow, Katherine Graham, Walter Cronkite, Ben Bradlee and David Brinkley (among other journalists) started simultaneously started spinning in their graves, the Earth found itself dealing with that “Superman The Movie” trick:

We’ve discussed SLAPP suits here before, where people with virtually no case whatsoever sue for a ton of money to get people to back off. In many of those cases, the defendants lack the sufficient means to truly stand their ground and fight back on behalf of truth, justice and the American way, so they knuckle under.

In this situation, Paramount had the funds, the legal might and the legal precedents to stand up for all the mom and pop media operations (whatever of those are left) and tell the president where to put his suit. Paramount also had the opportunity to stand up for the free press and free speech rights that have defined the country for generations.

It’s something Graham and Bradlee did before when a president came at them. It’s something Murrow did in a time in which a demagogue rattled this country to its core. It’s something so many other journalists and journalism operations have done in big and small ways to reassure us all that our rights are not a “when it’s convenient to people in power” thing.

But a funny thing happened on the way to our current predicament. News outlets are now part of larger conglomerates with larger concerns. TV news always lost money, relative to other programming, but it was seen as part of the deal: You give us quality news, we let you use the public airwaves. Newspapers use to make money and hold sway over larger groups of people. Furthermore, they weren’t part of a collective that also did entertainment programming, sold time shares, controlled real estate and answered to shareholders. Their concern was doing the news well and defending their right to do it.

For Paramount, “60 Minutes” is a “property” of the company, just like all the other stuff they put on TV. If an episode of “School Spirits” pissed off enough people to prevent a multi-billion-dollar deal from happening, they’d kill it or edit it or pay off someone, too. Cost of doing business. That’s the company’s view. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one.

However, when one company lets the powerful dictate the news based on threats like this suit, it undermines the strength of those First Amendment rights for everyone else.

Ask a generic question, get a generic answer: The perils and promise of letting ChatGPT build your interview questions

Believe it or not, we actually used to sell beer like this. Try not to let AI make your interview questions as generic as this marketing approach.

As I noted in previous posts, I wasn’t significantly worried about ChatGPT or other AI programs taking over journalism at this point. The writing wasn’t clean, the material we cover is too specific and the nuances of the language tended to create more problems than solutions.

That changed a bit when a former student told me people in her orbit were using ChatGPT to create interview questions for everything from press releases to profiles. My concerns ranged from students becoming lazy to ChatGPT asking some pretty offensive questions that ill-prepared or inexperienced writers would use to their own detriment.

To see what would happen, I relied on a situation a friend found herself in last week while teaching at Missouri Boys and Girls State. One of the guest speakers was Barbara P. Bush, daughter of former President George W. Bush and granddaughter of former President George H. W. Bush. She has also been a significant figure as an author and global health care activist.

My friend noted that one of her students had an exceptionally good interview moment with Barbara P. Bush, which we’ll get to in a moment. Before that happens, I decided to let ChatGPT take the wheel and build me a set of interview questions for the former First Daughter:

Here are five thoughtful and engaging questions an interviewer could ask Barbara Pierce Bush, daughter of former President George W. Bush:

  1. Your work with Global Health Corps has been widely recognized—what inspired you to focus on global health, and how has that mission evolved over the years?
    (This connects her personal passion to her professional work.)

  2. Growing up in one of America’s most prominent political families, how did you navigate forming your own identity outside of politics?
    (This explores the personal challenge of living in the public eye.)

  3. You and your twin sister Jenna have often shared stories of your childhood—how has your bond influenced your adult life and careers?
    (This taps into her well-known relationship with her sister and could elicit warm, relatable stories.)

  4. What lessons did you learn from your mother, Laura Bush, that have shaped how you approach leadership and service?
    (This allows reflection on legacy and values from a female role model.)

  5. In today’s divisive political climate, how do you think members of prominent political families can help encourage civility and understanding?
    (This invites her to speak thoughtfully about public discourse without diving into partisanship.)

It’s a solid list, but here are a couple key problems I noticed:

  1. Bush has been asked and has answered most of these questions at length before. This means she probably has a pretty standard answer for them, so you’re not getting anything new.
  2. Not one of them directly attaches itself to the idea of your dad being the “most powerful man in the world.” (I always believed my dad to be the “most powerful man in the world” back when I was a kid, as I’m sure a lot of kids my age did back in the day. That said, my dad didn’t have Seal Team 6 or the 82nd Airborne to deploy when my room got too messy for him to tolerate.)

The question my friend’s student asked perfectly dealt with those two problems:

“How did your dad change after Sept. 11?”

Bush teared up immediately, not expecting a question like that, nor one phrased exactly that way. She gave a great answer about how he changed but he would always be her dad. She also thanked the student for asking that question and really tapping into something different.

Even in that scenario, it’s hard to pick on ChatGPT’s effort. These are good questions, and the bot does a good job of rationalizing what each question should provide the interviewer. I could clearly imagine being flustered if I were to interview someone famous like a former First Daughter, who has carved out an impressive career of her own. ChatGPT’s questions would put me on some better ground than, “So what’s it like to be a twin?” or “Was it weird having your high school dates pick you up at the governor’s mansion?”

That said, ChatGPT struggles a bit more when it comes to people who aren’t internationally famous. I picked a Facebook friend at random and tried the same thing, ending up with one of my favorite high school teachers, Greg Frederick, as the guinea pig for this situation (Sorry in advance, Mr. Frederick…):

Here are five thoughtful and respectful questions an interviewer could ask Greg Frederick, former teacher at Pius XI High School in Milwaukee, Wisconsin:

  1. What initially inspired you to pursue a career in education, and what led you to Pius XI High School specifically?

  2. How did your teaching philosophy evolve during your time at Pius XI, and what impact did that have on your students?

  3. Can you share a memorable moment or experience from your teaching career that still resonates with you today?

  4. How did you approach balancing academic rigor with the values and mission of a Catholic high school like Pius XI?

  5. What advice would you give to new educators entering the profession, especially those teaching in faith-based schools?

A couple of these are solid “opener” questions that could get the ball rolling for a decent interview. Why you wanted to be a teacher and why you ended up teaching at Pius for as long as you did could establish report. The third question is always a good one, in allowing the person to open up about something important and not forcing the interview subject to feel pigeonholed.

A couple of these feel problematic: The second question is a bit iffy in that we assume he changed over time (not always a guarantee) and that it impacted his students (again, not a guarantee). The fourth question could be taken poorly, as someone might read it as the values and mission of the faith are at odds with educational rigor.

The bigger thing, again, is that they’re generic. These could be asked of any biped who spent an appreciable length of time teaching any subject at any religious-based high school. In short, there’s less out there on Mr. Frederick because he’s not a president, a pope or a Kardashian.

I don’t know him as well as a lot of other people, I’m sure, in that I was a student at the school for four years during a specific time period, and I haven’t kept up with his life like a stalker in a made-for-TV movie. That said, I do know certain things that might have led to different questions:

  • He taught English at the school, including upper-level courses like honors English and a course in science fiction and fantasy literature. Sci fi seems to predict the future in a lot of ways, so I’d love to ask a question relating his work in that area with what we are seeing now (social media, phones glued to our souls etc.). I’d also like to know what thoughts he would have on how best to inspire his best writing kids to do good work these days, given AI’s rampant use in generating essays.
  • His wife was also a teacher at the school for a time, although not in the same department. A question about what it’s like working in the same place as a spouse, including benefits and drawbacks, would be interesting to me and probably a lot of people who face similar issues. I know how weird it was when Amy was working for the MU police department and I was running the crime beat for the local newspaper. I wonder how people who actually work closer than that find themselves coping with it.
  • His kids went to that school, including his son, Chris, who was in my grade. This opens up a ton of real estate for questions, particularly for me as I was also a teacher’s kid. After kindergarten, my mom and I were not at the same school ever. I’d be interested in finding out what discussions led to the Frederick kids going to school where mom and dad worked. I wonder if they’d do it the same way again, based on how it all worked out for the kids and the parents.

(SIDE NOTE: Chris and I participated in a number of musicals together, which speaks more to the desperation the directors felt in getting males into the productions than it did to our musical acumen. In preparing for one such musical, the choral director actually told both of us to just “mouth the words” during the songs as we were not only godawful at singing, but we were screwing up everyone else who could carry a tune. Good memories…)

  • I’d be interested on his take on things like homeschooling, which really beefed up its presence over the past few decades, in terms of teaching your own kids or being able to have other people teach them. I’m sure I could blather on forever here, but let’s move on…
  • It never hurts to ask the “So what are you doing now that you retired?” question, in that it opens the door to something people who learned from Mr. Frederick or taught with him probably want to know.

Again, this is just based on some basic stuff that I know that ChatGPT doesn’t. If I were to end up doing a profile on Mr. Frederick, I’d take my normal “build the donut around the hole” approach and interview his family, some people I know who taught with him, some of his students who have gone on to work in specific fields and so forth. The goal would be to figure out what kinds of questions to ask that are more on point about him specifically as opposed to Generic Catholic High School Teacher X.

This is why it’s important to use ChatGPT as a tool in your toolbox and not view it as a panacea for completing your work. If you don’t go beyond the basics that ChatGPT can offer, you will never create anything better than a basic piece.

Goodnight, Cliff Behnke. There will never be another one like you.

I bogarted this photo of Cliff from the obit. I’d argue “fair use,” but I probably wouldn’t argue it with Cliff.

 

Cliff Behnke, the former managing editor of the Wisconsin State Journal and generational journalist, died Sunday in Madison at the age of 80.

The irony of this piece is that it’s impossible to explain Cliff without resorting to cliches, a writing failure the man himself disdained.

Cliff despised lazy writing and wasn’t above telling writers how much redundancies, passive voice and unneeded descriptors displeased him. However, if there is one thing anyone who worked under him knew he hated most, it was cliches, so much so that the concept led his obituary this week:

 

 

Spring never sprung under Cliff Behnke’s watch.

“White stuff” didn’t fall in winter, and no reporter ever dared refer to Thanksgiving as “Turkey Day.”

Behnke was a stickler for detail and standards during his four-decade career at the Wisconsin State Journal.

(I managed to pull off a minor miracle once in a weather story when I used the phrase “a white, wintery mix” and Cliff never said a word.)

The cliches really did tell the tale of Cliff, as everyone in Barry Adams’ fantastic obituary seemed to use one now that Cliff could no longer stop them.

He was an “old-school editor,” in that he prized big-picture accuracy, clarity and value while simultaneously picking at the details that would rob a piece of any of those things. He was “no nonsense” in that staffers knew him to be serious and direct, focused and fair as he kept the newsroom moving forward. He was a “newspaperman in the best sense,” spending far more time in his college newsroom than his classes and helping to shepherd the state’s official newspaper throughout the salad days of print journalism.

In reading Cliff’s obituary, one fact discombobulated me: His age. I was in my early 20s during the three years I spent working the night desk at the State Journal. That would have put Cliff in his early 50s back then, which is where I find myself now. I can’t square those numbers, given that I have neither the skills, the seriousness or the stature that Cliff had at this age, never mind how he terrified staffers in a way that is almost impossible to explain.

I feared Cliff, as did a number of the folks quoted in Adams’ piece, but not in the cliche way usually associated with “old school” editors. He never yelled at me, nor did he have a large physical presence that had me afraid of violence. He didn’t break out a string of colorful curse words when dressing me down.

(Cliff was always on the lookout for stray curses making it into the paper. I remember him calling out a sports story that contained a quote like, “We played a hell of a game.” Cliff’s restrictions on cussing in print would make a 1950s all-girls boarding school look like a biker bar. It took at least three phone calls for us to run a quote in one of my stories about a riot with the quote “F— the pigs!” in it. And, yes, that was WITH the dashes.)

Listening to Cliff’s assessment of my screw ups was like watching a ninja throwing razor blades at me. It was just slice, slice, slice until I fell into 1,000 pieces. It could be about something big or about something small, but I still remember (and refer to) a number of them.

In one case, it was a redundancy. I was writing a photo caption about a model train railroad show when I felt the presence of Cliff lurking behind me. He began simply enough:

“Can you imagine if there were 88 model railroad layouts that were EXACTLY the same?” he asked.

“Huh?” I replied, unsure as to if I was having an out-of-body experience because Cliff was talking to me.

“Do you think it would be possible for a group of people to build 88 IDENTICAL model railroad layouts?” he said in that calm, metered voice of his.

“Uh… No?”

“Right. So why are you telling me that there are 88 DIFFERENT model railroad layouts in this cutline? Of course they’re different. That’s redundant.”

He then disappeared almost as quickly as he showed up and I still haven’t forgotten that lesson.

I also never forgot the time I should have been fired for screwing up a brief, in which I reported that a guy was dead when he wasn’t.

It wasn’t bad enough that I screwed it up, but then the local radio stations did their “rip and read” journalism on the air, letting EVERYONE know the guy was dead when he wasn’t. Our competing paper also used to love to crib our stories and then claim they had an “unnamed source” that confirmed the info, so those folks also amplified the story. It turns out everyone was wrong because I was wrong.

The man’s wife was getting condolence calls from people who saw or heard the “news” and she freaked out that the news people knew about his death before she did. After a complete clustermess of a situation, I got called into Cliff’s office for what I assumed would be the end of my journalism career.

After slowly and calmly walking me through every stupid thing I had done and every way a reasonably competent biped could have avoided that stupidity, he told me that the woman wasn’t going to sue us, but she had several demands. Aside from a correction for the paper, I had to write a letter apologizing to the man’s children for screwing up and then I had to hand-deliver it to his wife and talk to her for as long as she wanted.

“You need to go to the hospital at 10 a.m.,” Cliff said. “You will not justify your mistake. You will not discuss your feelings. If anything comes out of your mouth other than, ‘Yes, ma’am,’ ‘No, ma’am’ or “I’m sorry, ma’am.’ You are gone. Do you have any questions?”

I was both young and stupid enough to have one: “Yeah. Why don’t you just fire me now instead?”

His response was perfectly Cliff: “I honestly don’t know, so get out of my office before I figure it out.”

What he taught me that day was responsibility for my actions, the importance of paranoia-level accuracy and that I needed to tough out this painful lesson if I was ever going to be much of anything in this world. As another editor explained to me when I said I should just quit, “How are you ever going to teach a student to do something tough if you won’t do it yourself?”

I didn’t work for Cliff as long as many other people did, nor did I spend much time in contact with him during my time at the paper. In reading some of the online tributes to him, he was both everything his obit said and so much more. He was generous with his time to Daily Cardinal kids, serving on the board and kindly mentoring staffers as they gained their legs in journalism. He was a giving person to friends and family who knew him less as a mythological editor and more as a human being.

What I can say is that there will never be another editor like Cliff, as the confluence of events that made him could not exist today. Nobody is going to spend four decades in journalism anymore, least of all in one state or at one publication. That means we won’t have someone like Cliff who can capture the culture and soul of the audience the media outlet serves. It also means no one will have a firm grasp on all the details that add clarity to local stories, such as if Devil’s Lake gets an apostrophe or where the East Side stops and Downtown starts. He was like Google in a shirt and tie.

Accuracy, the driving force behind Cliff’s work at the State Journal, now seems to be as antiquated as the term “newspaperman,” with people caring more about being first, getting views and making sure “their side” is winning. In the days of newspapers, mistakes were permanent and you couldn’t undo your failures. That fact helped Cliff drive the rest of us to obsess over being right. As much as I still obsess, I know that if someone finds a mistake in this thing, two quick clicks and it’s like the error never happened. As nice as it is to be able to erase public errors, it does make for some lazy journalism.

Above all else, I do wonder how this generation would take to Cliff’s brand of leadership, as to cause fear these days is hate crime and to criticize is a soul-crushing micro-aggression. I wonder how Cliff would work with people who have been known to bring a parent with them on a job interview. Not every 22-year-old who rolls off the college assembly line these days is the stereotype of an entitled snowflake, but I’ve seen a significant crop of emotional hemophiliacs who complain about everything from making deadlines to not getting enough praise for things they’re just supposed to do. The amazing thing about working for Cliff was that we knew he was reserved with his praise and generous with his critiques. That’s why his praise really meant something, unlike the vast sums of participation trophies that line the bookshelves of “kids these days.”

What I do know is that if anyone could have found a way to make all of this work well and get the best out of people in this current environment, it would have been Cliff. He just wouldn’t quit until he did.

 

Gone Fishin’: End of the Semester Blues Edition

If your semester felt anything like this, I’m right there with you.

As is the tradition around here, we’ll be taking a break now that the semester is ending. If something crazy comes up (read: crazier than the usual crazy we’re all living with right now), we’ll hop on it pronto. If not, we’ll be back probably in mid-June for the weekly summer schedule.

I’ll keep you all updated on the exercises I’m building as well as how a few projects that got left on the wayside are coming back to life.

Have a great break.

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

The Art of the Deal: A few suggestions for end-of-term grade debates

More than a few friends are posting online over the past week or so about the end of the semester and the “great grade debates” students tend to engage in with professors. One of them noted that a student demanded a passing grade because, “I’m graduating in a week.”

Um… Doesn’t it usually work the OTHER way around?

As I’ve written on more than a few syllabi over the years, “Instead of telling me at the end of the semester, when you have no hope of passing, that ‘I need this class to (graduate/move on/continue my program/whatever), wake up every morning before class, look in the mirror and say it to the person you see there. Then, behave accordingly.”

Still, if the kid who couldn’t be bothered to prove they were sentient in your class has now become a mix of Clarence Darrow, Jack McCoy and Daniel Kaffee while arguing for a better grade, here is a throwback post that looks at a few options.

Potential solutions for grade debates between students and professors

As the end of the semester draws near, grades tend to become a topic of consternation among students and professors. Students tend to worry about the outcome of their course work as it relates to their ability to graduate, move on or keep that ever-important GPA on the up-slope.

Professors, on the other hand, find themselves buried in grading, often wondering why we didn’t just show movies and mark attendance for 15 weeks. As we slog through the work we brought upon ourselves, students are questioning, begging and cajoling, all in desperate hopes of nudging grades just a little (or in some cases, a lot) higher.

I can’t solve every problem (or most of them) on the blog , but here are a few random ideas I have for making life a bit easier on all of us in regard to the grade debate.

Take them as seriously as they seem…

The “Peace with Honor” grade: I’m sure most students have failed to put in an appropriate amount of time on an assignment at some point in time. I’ve noticed this usually happens on essays or longer-form writing pieces, where the student figures if they pour enough BS into a Word document, the professor will decide to give them at least a few points.

The problem is that professors are often stuck when it comes to grading these papers, even with a quality rubric. We don’t know if you were having difficulty with the assignment, so we need to point out the errors in detail to help you for the next one, or if you just didn’t give a crap, so we’re wasting time telling you things you knew, but just didn’t do.

Thus, I propose a “Peace with Honor” grade approach.

When a student knows they are behind the 8-ball on an assignment, instead of BSing us to high heaven and having us wade through your BS, a student can write something simple like, “I know I should have dealt with this assignment better, but I’m not wasting your time trying to fake it.”

The professor, in gratitude, will fail the student with a specific amount of points (I’m a fan of 40-50%), with the idea that not having to comment on every stupid thing the student could have written will save time and defer carpal tunnel surgery.

 

The “I’m Better Than This” cease fire: In journalism, we care what you can do, not what your grades are once you graduate. To that end, many professors will encourage students to participate in student media to sharpen their skills and gain experience.

In more than a few cases, this is like encouraging someone to “just try” some cocaine so they can get a bunch of stuff done quickly. The students quickly become addicted to the newsroom and their GPA heads downhill like a stock market graph of the Great Depression.

Professors often start getting weaker work from those students because they’re running the paper or the radio station or the TV station. Suddenly, classes have become something of an fifth or eighth priority in their lives.

For some professors, this can become irritating because we KNOW you can do better at this work. For some students, this can also become irritating because they KNOW they are better than what the grades they get keep reflecting.

A potential solution is this cease-fire approach: I’ve told more than a few students, “Look, I get it. I once skipped six weeks of classes because I was dedicated to the student newspaper. I know why you’re disappearing like a kid running after a red balloon in a Stephen King novel. I also understand I’m not a top priority, so let’s try to make peace with this.

“I will promise not to ride you mercilessly about how crappy your work is in here, if you promise not to piss and moan about your lousy grades. We’ll get you through this alive, and once you end up running a professional newsroom, just make sure you keep your alma mater in mind for potential internship candidates. And don’t make GPA a requirement for successful applications when you’re running the show.”

 

The “One-Point, Death-Grade, Elevator-Pitch Shimmy” Approach: At the end of a semester in which we grade hundreds of papers across multiple sections and various courses, the computer will eventually spit out a number that correlates to your grade. In more than a few cases, that number will be riding juuuuuuuusssst on the line of a potentially life-altering edge.

For example, if 75 is the demarcation line between a C and a C-, and you need a C or better to continue in your program, you might find yourself sitting at 74.89. The difference between having to start all over with a course or be able to take what you’ve likely scheduled for next semester hangs in the balance of a professor’s attitude regarding rounding, grade-grubbing and the degree to which they want to tolerate you again.

Here’s the best I got for what I would consider “death grades,” the line between pass/fail, advance/retake or B-/C+ (It’s hard to sleep at night knowing you were THAT close to a B of any kind and came up short.): If you’re within a point or two of that death grade, we professors promise to tell you before we file. You have 24 hours to make up a 30-second elevator pitch that would convince us to buy your argument for a better grade.

If you use the words “deserve,” “worked hard,” “need this to graduate,” or any other whiny bull-pucky, you’re done. Gimme at least one or two concrete reasons that I told you were relatively important to this class that you learned or did that make you worthy of me shimmying  up your grade a tad.

My discretion in the end, but I gave you a chance.

And finally…

 

The “But I Tried Really Hard In This Class” Resolution: When your grade is somewhere in the vicinity of the Mendoza Line and you missed so many classes that I almost called in an Amber Alert on you , it’s kind of ballsy to make the claim of effort.

That said, numerous students do this every year, so here’s the best solution:

Good luck with finals and we’ll see you next time!