Awkward ’90s Reference

Money Talks: IU alumni express their displeasure over the censoring of the IDS by cutting off donations

It’s important to track these things… 

THE LEAD: If money talks, IU alumni are screaming their disapproval of what the Media School has done to the Indiana Daily Student. After news broke regarding the firing of adviser Jim Rodenbush and the killing of the print edition, all in an effort to censor the students, donors have retracted pledged funds or vowed to cease future donations:

Patricia Esgate, who graduated from IU with a journalism degree in 1973, told IndyStar that the university angered her enough to cancel $1.5 million in bequests she was planning to leave in honor of one of her former classmates, Mary Whitaker. Whitaker was murdered in her home in 2014.

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Toby Cole, a fourth-generation graduate and third-generation IU football player, told IndyStar over email that his family was ceasing their monthly contributions and working to cancel a $300,000 planned gift to support scholarships.

“If IU can pay our FB coach almost $100mm we can fund our IDS,” he said in an email. “Problem is ‘they’ don’t want an independent free speaking print newspaper because students actually wield power with it.”

Other folks mentioned in the story also either cancelled their ongoing donations or have stated intentions to do so.

HAMSTRUNG BY THE PURSE STRINGS: One of the complaints noted earlier by the Media School folks was that the paper kept losing money, so the school needed to step in and enforce some financial responsibility. However, the paper had managed to fundraise a six-figure pile of cash that was meant for IDS use:

Many alumni of IU’s prominent journalism program have contributed to the IDS Legacy Fund, which “ensures the financial viability of our editorial operations.” The fund has been used for costs like student pay, conference fees and other operation costs, according to the donation page.

However, reports about how the university has controlled the use of that money has worried some alumni.

The fund has north of $400,000, according to Rodenbush, but he said he was hamstrung from using those funds for operations. An administrator told him to think more strategically and of “better uses,” he said.

In short, the Media School had to greenlight the ways that money was used, even though it was meant to be used by the IDS.

(SIDE NOTE: I would give basically anything to have a really good investigative journalist just FOIA the heck out of the money trails that run through the IDS and the Media School in relation to this kind of stuff. I have heard that other institutions have “gotten creative” in how they took large donations that were earmarked for student media and somehow funneled it into department, school or college pockets. I’m obviously not accusing anyone of anything in this situation, but I’d be reeeeeeeaaaallly interested in seeing the books at IU.)

DOCTOR OF PAPER HOT TAKE: If alumni continue to put up a stink and the foundation can see its coffers get a little sparser, this situation is going to go one of two ways moving forward.

WAY ONE: The university continues to back Tolchinsky and everything else the Media School is doing, with the goal of running clock on the kids, normalizing the “no-print IDS” and generally remaining stubborn. This is the way in which academics work once they convince themselves they are right about something, much to the dismay of those of us who have a normal sense of reality.

WAY TWO: The university goes all “Casino” on the Media School, cleaning house and doing so in a way as to leave no doubt that this kind of thing WILL NOT be tolerated. They’ll ship Tolchinsky off to a nice farm upstate where he can work on his films and keep getting paid whatever you pay someone not to put up a fuss. They’ll put Galen Clavio in some podcasting class in a place where he can’t really do any damage. Then, they’ll make a big show of hiring someone with a great First Amendment background and use it as a way to jump start some fundraising.

Under normal circumstances, I don’t see this happening and I don’t know IU well enough to know if the people in charge are really this level of mercenary. That said, we aren’t talking about a few journalists pulling their $25 a month donation to a beer fund. If the money keeps falling off the table, the university might decide that the juice isn’t worth the squeeze when it comes to the leadership of the school.

It’s all fun and games until 2,900 pages of you participating in racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic chat get leaked (and a few suggestions on how to avoid this situation in the first place)

Screenshot of the Politico header on the story about racist chats. 

THE LEAD: While we here at the blog were dealing with the Indiana University situation involving censorship and free speech, another story involving way-too-freely speaking and stuff that probably someone should have censored came to light:

NEW YORK — Leaders of Young Republican groups throughout the country worried what would happen if their Telegram chat ever got leaked, but they kept typing anyway.

They referred to Black people as monkeys and “the watermelon people” and mused about putting their political opponents in gas chambers. They talked about raping their enemies and driving them to suicide and lauded Republicans who they believed support slavery.

William Hendrix, the Kansas Young Republicans’ vice chair, used the words “n–ga” and “n–guh,” variations of a racial slur, more than a dozen times in the chat. Bobby Walker, the vice chair of the New York State Young Republicans at the time, referred to rape as “epic.” Peter Giunta, who at the time was chair of the same organization, wrote in a message sent in June that “everyone that votes no is going to the gas chamber.”

THE BASICS: Politico got its hands on nearly, 3,000 pages of chat messages that span nearly nine months of discussions among Young Republican group members. These people apparently range in age between 18 and 40 years old. Reporting on this material states that these chats feature people saying so much terrible racist, anti-Semitic and violent stuff, it’s likely Quentin Tarantino will be optioning it as a script for his next movie.

The disgust at the chat has garnered bipartisan anger, with members of both major parties stating they disapprove of this kind of language, regardless of who said it. On the other hand, Vice President J.D. Vance said he refused to take part in the “pearl clutching” over the use of language like this.

He also had a somewhat different angle when it came to giving his kids some fatherly advice in a situation like this:

The father of three said he would caution his own children, “especially my boys, don’t put things on the internet, like, be careful with what you post. If you put something in a group chat, assume that some scumbag is going to leak it in an effort to try to cause you harm or cause your family harm.”

So, kids, always remember, keep your seething racism in private, personal conversations, lest some “scumbag” out there find it and make a big deal out of it.

KEY LESSONS BEYOND THE VANCE THEORY OF “DON’T BE RACIST IN PUBLIC:” Hopefully, for most of us in here, that first lesson is kind of like me telling you, “Don’t commit a ritual human sacrifice on the break room table at work:” Even if I didn’t say it directly, I hope that human decency and public decorum would have made this concept obvious to you.

Beyond that, here are some important things to take with you:

If the only thing keeping you from saying or writing something is, “I’m pretty sure I won’t get caught,” think a little harder before you do that thing:  I remember reading a number of psych studies that assessed to what degree people were or were not willing to do things they knew to be wrong, based on a variety of factors.

In some cases, the idea was to make people feel cheated out of something they deserved and then provide them with an opportunity to do something negative to the person they believe had wronged them or some other person at random. In other cases, it was about measuring the underlying guilt built in through various social systems including things like religion.

The one thing that ran through all of these studies was perception of being caught: “If you were completely sure you would never get caught, and thus have a consequence-free outcome for your actions, would you do X?” This variable always radically shifted the way in which people chose to act, leading a lot of the scholars to debate the natural human state of decency.

In the situation outlined above, these people didn’t stop and say, “Man, we really should not be saying stuff like this because it’s wrong.” They essentially said, “Man, if we get caught at this, we will have HELL to pay here!” And then they did it anyway, meaning they thought that as long as there continued to be no consequences, they were going to be fine.

A good way to prevent consequences you want to avoid is to not do the things that could lead to those consequences. If, for example, I wake up in the morning and think, “Gee, it’d be great to have my wife bludgeon me to death and bury me behind the chicken coop,” I’d probably try to have an affair with someone. Since I know that this action is wrong and I don’t want to die, I should avoid taking that action. If I instead think, “I know it’s wrong, but I’ll be extra sneaky,” I’m setting myself up to be fertilizer.

Ask yourself, “Would I say this to someone’s face?” before you put it in the public sphere: Things can jump up a notch on social media and through digital communication. Trust me, I know I’ve bitterly complained about myriad things online that I probably would not have done if I needed to do it in public. In most cases, they involved things like people being too slow in line at the grocery store, people texting while driving and the way in which the Cubs stole my team’s World Series in 2016. (Yes, I’m still bitter.)

Digital media is like the beer goggles of communication: it warps your sense of what is and isn’t acceptable and when you’re forced to confront your choices in the cold light of day, you usually aren’t all that thrilled about them.

This is one of the reasons when a student complains about something in an email, I tell them to come by the office and chat. Part of it is that there’s a lot of bravado on their end that probably isn’t going to hold up during a one-on-one conversation and another part of it is that I don’t want to start a digital land war over a B- or something. It’s a good way for both of us to have a cool-down period and to then deal with things like two regular people, as opposed to two methed-up coyotes.

There is no such thing as privacy anywhere anymore, so act accordingly: I tend to think that this should be common sense at this point, but then again, if it were “common” sense, everyone would have it.

We have cameras everywhere, recording everything. We have GPS and tracking on our digital devices that can let anyone who wants to know exactly where we are at any point in life. We put stuff out into the world through all forms of social media that can be shared millions of times over in the blink of an eye. The concept of living a quiet, private life is as unlikely as the Cleveland Browns making the Super Bowl this year (or at any point in my life time, I suppose…)

If I wanted be EXCEPTIONALLY GENEROUS in translating some of Vance’s statements into something less dismissive of this godawful situation, I’d say that it is important to realize that people need to be more aware of how they express themselves in general because it might not fully represent the best versions of themselves.

Being an idiotic poser by trying to out do the last stupid thing someone else said is rarely a good idea in any situation, which, yes, a lot of us learned somewhere along the way before the world could record everything we did and share it with the world. However, we don’t live in that world anymore, and thanks to the ability to share everything, we have all seen the consequences of being that kind of idiot.

With that in mind, you either need to be all in on what you say or you need to make sure you’re giving yourself a beat before you let random stuff you don’t honestly mean come flying out of your head and landing on a screen.

“How do we frame that, you know, in a way that’s not seen as censorship?” The IU Media School Fired Student Media Director Jim Rodenbush For Not Censoring Student Media

THE SHORT, SHORT VERSION: David Tolchinsky, dean of the IU Media School, fired student media director Jim Rodenbush for refusing to violate the First Amendment rights of the Indiana Daily Student staffers.

The powers that be in the administrators in the school have been trying to force the IDS into a series of short-sighted moves that would both damn the paper to irrelevancy and undercut the students’ rights to self-governance.  

If you would like to speak up on Rodenbush’s behalf, please email Tolchinsky at: mschdean@iu.edu or call him at: 812-856-4513 to let him know you stand with Rodenbush and the students at the IDS, who could also use your support (ids@indiana.edu).

 

THE LONGER, MORE NUANCED VERSION: Jim Rodenbush, who had been the director of student media at IU since 2018, was summarily fired on Tuesday after he refused to tell the staff of the Indiana Daily Student what they should publish in the homecoming edition.

A formal termination letter, signed by Dean David Tolchinsky, was making the rounds on various media outlets late Tuesday night:

DOCTOR OF PAPER FLASHBACK: The media school spent more than a year trying to force all of its student media outlets to work together, as part of a “converged” model that everyone else in the media world has figured out can’t work. We covered the rigamarole that the IDS was facing around this time last year in our “Hostile Takeover” series. 

Multiple generations of student editors at the IDS were adamantly against this approach, as well as opposing the idea that the free and independent media outlets they ran were going to be kind of “folded into” the media school.

At the time, I’d been in contact with Rodenbush, who was more than polite in his refusal to crap all over this idea, telling me he had faith in the kids and was working within the system to keep the ship afloat.

 

THE STUDENTS SPEAK: If you ever wonder where all the guts in journalism has gone in today’s world of media giants folding like a cheap tent in the rain, look to student journalists.

In a blistering letter on the IDS website, co-EICs Mia Hilkowitz and Andrew Miller explained exactly what happened to Rodenbush, bringing the receipts with them. In pulling quotes from emails and multiple meetings, they outlined the brazen attempts of the administration to force the students to bend to the school’s whims:

Telling us what we can and cannot print is unlawful censorship, established by legal precedent surrounding speech law on public college campuses.

Administrators ignored Rodenbush, who said he would not tell us what to print or not print in our paper. In a meeting Sept. 25 with administrators, he said doing so would be censorship.

“How do we frame that, you know, in a way that’s not seen as censorship?” Ron McFall, assistant dean of strategy and administration at the Media School, asked in that meeting.

Not to put too fine of a point on this, but if you have to ask how to “frame” something so that it doesn’t look like censorship, you’re committing censorship and you damned well know it.

And the students know it too:

IU will attempt to frame this censorship as a step toward a balanced budget. The IDS, along with the Student Press Law Center and Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, see it very differently.

“The Media School’s order limiting the Indiana Daily Student’s print edition to homecoming coverage isn’t a ‘business decision’ — it’s censorship,” the Student Press Law Center said in a statement to the IDS. “This disregards strong First Amendment protections and a long-standing tradition of student editorial independence at Indiana University.”

If administrators disregard our rights as student journalists now, what will stop them from prohibiting the IDS from publishing certain stories on our website and social media, should they deem it appropriate?

 

AN ALUMNUS SPEAKS: In looking for Tolchinsky’s contact information on the IU Media School website, I came across a familiar face in the “Proud Alumni” section of the site.

Andy Hall is a 1982 graduate of the IU journalism program and former editor of the IDS, and we worked together for a bit at the Wisconsin State Journal. The media school gave him a well-deserved write up, where he discussed the foundation of Wisconsin Watch, an investigative journalism outlet here in the Badger State.

I’m not sure if IU full grasps the irony that the Media School is literally championing a free and independent media outlet, founded by a relentless investigative journalist, at the same time it’s trying to undermine the place that helped launch his career.

(SIDE NOTE: Here is my best Andy Hall story. Every year, staffers at the WSJ were assigned a high school graduation to cover as part of their duty to civic journalism. Andy’s assignment coincided with a planned trip back to IU for a reunion of some sort, so he hit me up to ask if I could cover for him that weekend.

Andy explained that not only would I get paid for the work time and mileage, but that he’d kick in a six-pack of some Indiana beer and a bucket of Tell City Pretzels as a pot sweetener. After I agreed to do that, word got around the newsroom pretty quickly that the college kid could be bribed into taking your graduation story gig if you ponied up some free beer. I think I wrote like 10 or 12 grad stories that year and had the best beer fridge of anyone my age.)

I got a hold of Andy late Tuesday night and filled him in on the situation, asking what a guy who cut his teeth at the IDS thought of the school’s actions. He didn’t mince words:

“As a former editor-in-chief of the Indiana Daily Student, I am deeply disturbed by this apparent attempt to censor the decisions of its student editors. The IDS charter specifies that ‘final editorial responsibility for all content rests with the chief student editors or leaders.

“I hope that the Media School leadership finds ways to work productively with the IDS editors to ensure that the student news organization retains the full independence granted by its charter. Ultimately, that journalistic independence is in the best interests of the school, the students and, most importantly, the public.”

I wonder whose profile the school will be taking down first, Jim’s or Andy’s?

DOCTOR OF PAPER HOT TAKE: This is what happens when you train great student journalists and then try to play them for fools. The level of ham-handed stupidity involved in not just what was done, but how openly it was discussed in various meetings where journalism folk were present makes some of the Watergate stuff look nuanced by comparison.

I mean, even the mob knows better than to talk about how they plan to whack a guy in terms this blatant.

As far as Rodenbush is concerned, he’ll be getting the red carpet treatment on a national stage, according to Mediafest 25 Convention Director Michael Koretzky:

Jim Rodenbush is coming to MediaFest. SPJ is paying his way.

Jim will be recognized during Friday’s keynote, and we hope to get video of the room applauding him – then make sure it gets back to campus. (Two IU TV students are attending MediaFest. Hopefully, they’ll record the moment along with the rest of us.)

If you’re coming to MediaFest, please say hello to Jim at Friday’s CMA/ACP reception and around the Grand Hyatt halls.

We have other things planned for Jim upon his arrival. SPJ president Emily Bloch is excited to host him, and SPLC’s Jonathan Falk will invite Jim to speak at one of his sessions. CMA leaders haven’t gotten back to me yet, but I’m sure they’re just as excited.

Let’s stand with and for Jim.

As for what’s next for the IDS, I’ve got an email in to Tolchinsky and his admin crew asking that question. I’ve also got emails in to the co-EICs to see if they want to fill me in on anything. In the name of full transparency, I did get one reply:

I don’t know about you, but I can practically hear Langosa’s sigh of relief in that message from here. If anything else comes through, I’ll update it here.

Looking ahead, I don’t know who is going to take the job next, as this is the second adviser in a row to get canned at IU under some really awkward circumstances. Hall of Fame media adviser Ron Johnson got removed, with the university arguing it was a financial situation while the students arguing that this was an attempt to censor the publication. When news of Rodenbush’s firing hit the College Media Association’s listserv, more than two dozen folks chimed in with messages of condolence for Rodenbush and some version of “This isn’t right.”

It’s out of pure, morbid curiosity that I want to see the job posting for whoever the hell IU thinks is going to saddle up for this gig.

In the mean time, please feel free to email Tolchinsky at: mschdean@iu.edu or call him at: 812-856-4513 to let him know if you disagree with this act of censorship. Also, please feel free to offer your support to the IDS staff (ids@indiana.edu), because they definitely deserve better than they getting, but they aren’t going down without a fight.

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.

A Sarcastic List of Serious Writing Rules We Need as Media Writers

(It’s important that you get key information in a timely fashion, for obvious reasons, so enjoy the list.)

 

One of the best things I get to do as a former media adviser and college professor is judge media contests. Between the pros, the college ranks and the high school pubs, I find myself deluged in content on a regular basis. It’s a ton of fun to see what’s going on all over the place, what makes for news in various corners of the country and how certain things are relatively universal across all levels of media writing.

I have to say, and I really believe this, the hardest part of the job is picking and then ranking the winners. It doesn’t matter if it’s just one winner or a top ten, it always seems like there just aren’t enough awards to go around. A lot of good folks are doing some good work all the time.

That said, I also run into a relatively large swath of copy that has me shaking my head a bit. Regardless of experience level, the size of the publication or the purpose of the piece, writers can be uncannily consistent in some really godawful ways.

With that in mind, I’ve built a running list of rules based on the bad, the awkward and the generally problematic writing I’ve been seeing lately. My hope is that it helps break a few bad habits, so folks can make next year’s judging even harder:

If you only have one source, it’s not a story. It’s a soliloquy.

Adding a dozen adverbs to an event story doesn’t transform it into a feature piece.

If you have to tell me, “When asked about XYZ…” in a story, you need to have another place in the story where you tell me, “In a spontaneous outburst of information somehow relevant to this story…”

The key to making a story better isn’t just making it longer.

If a kid from the 1980s could follow your concluding line with, “And that’s one to grow on!” pick a new closing.

Apparently, nobody is a typical professor, a typical administrator, a typical minister, a typical politician or a typical sophomore, so skip telling the reader that in your profiles and just explain who this person is.

Instead of thinking about what you want to write, think about what you would want to know if someone else were writing the story. Then, structure your story accordingly.

Unless you can prove you checked in with every human being on Earth, avoid generalizations like “nobody,” “no one,” “everybody” and “everyone.”

Put extra effort into your opening, whether it is a news lead or a feature opening. If you don’t grab the readers in the first 10 seconds, it won’t matter how awesome the rest of your story is, because they won’t see it.

An expansive vocabulary isn’t meant for you to show off. It’s meant for you to use the exact right words to better inform your readers in a way they can understand.

What you write won’t be perfect on the first pass. If you think so, save a copy for later and try to disprove your assumption with subsequent efforts.

Don’t try to tell me and sell me in your writing. Show me through facts, sources and descriptions and let me come to my own conclusions. You’re a journalist, not a MLM owner.

If you have to explain four things to me before I can understand a fifth thing, that fifth thing better be able to cure cancer.

If you wouldn’t read it, don’t write it.

Just because a source uses a term, it doesn’t mean you should

(I wonder how many transponsters were excessed in this latest round of rightsizing…)

The job of reporters is to take information from sources, distill it into something that makes sense to an audience and convey it effectively. The opening to this story went 1-for-3 with two strikeouts:

I’m going to skip past the empty lead, the two-sentences-that-should-be-one structure and the lack of anything resembling news (if everyone is doing it and it’s not a secret, rarely is it news). I’m wondering what it means to be “excessed.” (A word so stupid, every time I type it, I get the squiggly red line under it.)

Using a partial quote, particularly to showcase an odd turn of phrase, can be valuable. (The mayor calls his opponent a “rump-runt” or a coach calls a compound fracture of a fibula a “teeny tiny break.”) It can also be valuable in calling out the use of a stupid term (“excessed” would likely fit), so the reporter can shed more light on the term in a clear and complete way later.

That didn’t happen here, despite continued use of “excessed,” in quotes and paraphrase. (If I took “excessed” in the “Read this Article Drinking Game,” I’d be hammered after about six paragraphs.

This term is like a number of euphemisms that do nothing to inform readers but instead try to soften the blow of something really bad. A few years back, corporate-speak had journalists using the term “rightsize” or “rightsizing” as a way to explain how a company was cutting jobs and laying off employees. The shift away from “downsize” (which sounds sad because it includes the word “down” in there) was meant to make the actions seem more reasonable.

When faced with something like this, here are a few helpful tips:

AVOID IF POSSIBLE: Just because someone uses a term in their world, it doesn’t follow the rest of us should in ours. It’s the same reason we shouldn’t say someone was “transported to a nearby medical facility” when they are taken to a hospital or say an officer “performed a de-escalation through kinetic application” when a cop smacks someone to get them to stop doing something. Parroting a source because we are a) lazy or b) uninformed is not doing the job. Telling people what happened is.

USE ONCE, DEFINE QUICKLY, MOVE ON: If you have to use a term that is likely unfamiliar to your readers, don’t rely on it constantly. Say it once early in the piece and make sure you define it then and there in a way your readers will understand. Then, use a more common term that relates to the concept throughout the piece, like “the bill” or “the group” or “the process.” That will explain what’s going on without numbing your readers through the repetitive use of something like “excessed.”

ASK THE SOURCE TO TRANSLATE: Sources will likely want to use their preferred terms because a) they are comfortable with those terms and b) those terms are likely advantageous to their position on an issue. “We rightsized the operation to improve productivity” sounds a lot better than “We fired a bunch of people to improve our profits.” Same deal when a law-enforcement agency “neutralized a threat” or “depopulated an area.” Those phrases sound a lot better than, “We shot a guy to death” or “We killed everyone in a two-block radius.”

Have the source put that into English for you and don’t let them use euphemisms to define other euphemisms. If reporters are going to be held to a “what happened?” standard of clarity and simplicity, we need to hold the sources to that standard as well. If they can’t define it for you in a relatively meaningful way, ask them to go through the process associated with that term and clarify it for you. (“So, these people were excessed… What’s the first step in that process? … Do people who get “excessed” lose their right to the job they had? … Can you show me in a contract the explanation and application of this term? …)

Don’t let the sources Jedi mind trick you into thinking that something is normal simply because they use a made-up term repeatedly. If necessary, ask them to explain it to you like you are a child. When they can’t or won’t, that says volumes more than what the term itself is trying to convey.

(And for the love of God, don’t write a lead like this one, no matter what else is going on. The first two or three sentences really should have been “excessed.”)

“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)

As Promised, Here is Dr. Vinnie’s Bin of Journalism Exercises, Complete with AI Toys

It might not be as cool as opening Marcellus Wallace’s case, but I hope this pile of exercises will still make you as happy as Vincent and Jules.

 

As many of you are starting back to school, I figured I’d break radio silence with some goods I promised to deliver by the end of the summer. Back in May, I asked what kinds of things you needed from me and you were all nice enough to hit me with some ideas. Some were really concrete (“These kids need stuff to learn how to write a #%^#ing lead.”) while others were more nuanced (“They need to play with AI, but in a way that helps them see what it can and can’t do. I have no idea how that would work, though…”)

I’ve put together a bin of stuff that tries to cover the gamut of needs, while offering you choices as to how to apply the exercises in your own schools and for your own needs. Think of each of the files as kind of a Swiss Army knife of opportunities that you can use as you see fit.

It should go without saying that the content is either made up or fictionalized versions of stuff that actually happened, so don’t freak out if you see something and think, “Oh my lord! What hath hell wrought!”

Here’s a brief overview:

Breaking News/Ongoing Situation Stuff: A couple files contain information that is divided into several stages of release. The idea is that, just like a breaking news story, or an ongoing event, information is important compared to other information you receive.

It’s meant to mirror the “King of the Mountain” exercise approach we blogged about some time ago, with newer information forcing students to reconsider what’s most important in updating their content and giving them the critical thinking skills needed to do so.

There is also a straight-up crime story with some quotable material for you to play with.

Raw Materials Folder: There is a collection of nothing but interviews on topics that seemed relatively universal (Fires, Campus Illnesses, thought on Gen Ed classes, TikTok etc.) that students did over the years. I stripped out all the names/identifying features for this and left you with some red text where you can insert names that reflect your student body, places your students would know and so forth.

There is also a couple city council stories that are god awful that I rebuilt from local newspapers with name changes, area changes and so forth. Those can be helpful if you want them to work on revising bad copy or with some of the AI stuff we’ll talk about later.

Standard Story Stuff: I’ve put together a list of standard stories that we all tend to write in various types of journalism (breaking news, meeting/speech/news conference, localization etc.) with some suggestions regarding length and source count.

If it’s more of a reporting class, obviously, you can send them out to do stuff, but I included these for the media-writing folk who might not have students ready to go the full “Lois Lane” out there. These can meld nicely with some of the stuff in the raw material folder.

I also tossed in a “canned game story” for people who need to take a shot at sports writing before they cover a game. It includes stats, scores and post-game interview quotes that can be used to build a solid game recap on a pretty fun game.

AI Fun: I build several AI exercises that allow the students to see how AI can be really helpful and where it can fall short. It includes a trial run for them at something I did for the blog over the summer, involving interview questions. A couple of them also can be used on the raw material files to have AI build a story either before or after they do. This can show them how AI might or might not get the gist of what is important in a story.

HOW DO YOU GET THIS STUFF:

In normal times, I’d just post it here, but between AI and overly industrious students, I’m a little leery of just leaving a pile of stuff on the open web. So, to give you the goodies while protecting the pile a bit, here’s what you do:

Hit me up via the contact form on the blog, which is linked here. Just tell me your name, your school, your email address and anything else you think is important. I’ll then send you the unlock for the folders and you can go hog wild.

It’s all freebie and you can do whatever you want with it for your class. If you run into a better way to use this stuff, or have an idea you want to share, I’d appreciate it. Also, I don’t care if you’re using any of my books or not, so this isn’t an exclusive party for adopters. I just like helping people.

Have a great start to the semester. We’ll be back full time next week after Labor Day.

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

 

 

Journalists: If your mother says she loves you, go check it out (and then be damned sure it’s true)

As the Russian proverb says, “Trust, but verify.”

The long-held adage of journalists saying, “If your mother says she loves you, go check it out,” needs a little more updating these days, as it seems like NOTHING is as real as it seems. Thanks in large part to corner-cutting, scam-baiting and general laziness, we’re finding a lot of cases in which it never hurts to make absolutely sure you are sure. Here are a couple examples:

 

AT THIS POINT, JUST ASK THE MAGIC 8-BALL:  A few months back, we highlighted Rob Waugh’s story about journalists being duped by AI “experts” who churned out content that ranged from generic to highly suspect. Waugh’s latest piece found that journalists who are using supposedly “legitimate” systems to connect with sources are also now at the mercy of AI spamming, all while paying for the privilege of getting screwed:

A PR agency is selling an AI tool that automatically answers pitches from journalists on services such as ResponseSource, HARO and Qwoted.

The AI tool, called Synapse (not be confused with PR pitching platform Synapse Media), “reads” questions sent for for expert comment by journalists via the services, then analyses sources such as books, podcasts and reports per query and uses AI to draft email responses.

Journalist-request services such as HARO charge a fee for connecting PR agencies with journalists. PRs can send out story pitches to journalists and also get access to requests for expert comment.

<SNIP>

The makers of Synapse, Lithuania-based PR agency Wellstone PR, boast that it has a 7-8% acceptance rate, and that used by a human “editor”, it can answer around 20 pitches per hour with one human PR person able to do the work of five.T

The company brags in its pitch to potential clients that it will provide them with fictional content that sounds so much like the real thing, journalists won’t know the difference. I don’t know if it bothers me more that a) it would appear journalists are getting inept/lazy enough not to notice that they’re being fed total bullpucky or b) that the PR professionals are writing such average, generic stuff so often that journalists can’t distinguish it from whatever garbage an AI can produce.

The cost for this service is a one-time fee of $2,500. The only saving grace is that they apparently haven’t sold this to anyone. Yet.

The PR experts quoted in Waugh’s piece are clearly not thrilled by this breach of trust.

Andy Smith, founder of Sourcee, which aims to offer credible, video-checked experts, says that using AI tools in this way erodes trust.

Smith said: “When journalists post a journo request, there’s an implicit level of trust in the person replying. They’re hoping to hear from real people with genuine insights, experiences, and expertise that can bring their story to life.

“They certainly don’t want to receive an automated, AI-generated reply… if that’s what they were after, they could’ve just used ChatGPT themselves.

One thing that has me rethinking my “stop using these stupid “OK-Cupid-For-Quotes” sites” was a point that Smith made about how a good expert pool, like the one he says he’s built, is meant to broaden the reach of journalists. That can prevent them from only reaching out to familiar contacts and ending up with the “usual suspects” in every story. Still, if I had to pick between usual humans and a random lottery of AI word salad, I’ll stick with my boring peeps, thanks.

 

WSJ PLUS AI EQUALS WTF: If Cliff Behnke isn’t spinning in his grave over this situation, it’s only because he’s actively crawling out of it to come smack the shit out of somebody right now:

A story about development plans for a vacant downtown block that appeared on the front page of the Sunday, July 13, issue of the Wisconsin State Journal was removed Wednesday from the Madison daily newspaper’s website before being replaced by a “re-reported” story Thursday afternoon.

An editor’s note on the re-reported story states that the original “contained incorrect information and quotes that were created by an unauthorized use of AI, which does not adhere to the Wisconsin State Journal’s editorial or ethical standards.”

The story topic itself, both in what I can find of the original and the reboot, is a simple, boring tick-tock story about a development project, in which the material for the proposals are all easily accessible. This wasn’t like the reporter needed whatever the hell Tom Cruise is using in the latest “Mission Impossible” movie to create a miracle out of thin air.

It’s not quite clear what’s more terrifying: That a reporter decided to cut a corner on something this vanilla and didn’t bother to make sure on at least a few basic facts or that the editorial process didn’t catch something that was so wrong:

One section about “The Grove,” a proposal from Neutral, a Madison real estate development firm, outlined plans for a “food hall prioritizing minority-owned vendors” and a “community advisory board” that would shape the development’s public life. Neither of those features, nor the name “The Grove,” appear in Neutral’s proposal linked from a city press release listing the firms that responded to its RFP.

“It’s all wrong,” says Daniel Glaessl, Neutral’s chief product officer. No reporter had contacted the firm about the project before Isthmus reached out on Thursday afternoon, he says.

The Synapse people in the story above are like, “Hey, AI will write all your stuff, but don’t worry! The editor will be there to ‘create enough friction’ to prevent anything terrible from getting into the public sphere.” I’m having even bigger doubts about that concept now, especially since I know the folks involved at the WSJ and I have always respected and admired them. It always hurts a little more when it happens where you live.

And finally…

FOUL BALLS: It’s not a stretch to say that the sports memorabilia world is a multi-billion-dollar industry, in which athletes get paid exorbitant amounts of money for scrawling their names across all manner of items. What makes an athlete’s autograph worth the big bucks is a confluence of the awesomeness of the athlete and the rarity of their willingness to sign items. The more people want an athlete’s signature and the fewer of them exist, the more likely there will be fraud involved at some level.

In the 1990s, the FBI dug into the world of fraudulent autographs with “Operation Bullpen,” a multi-year investigation that took down a series of forgers who made a living faking the signatures of Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Mark McGwire and others. In response, the major sports leagues and the preeminent autograph certification houses began using holograms, certificates, registration numbers and QR codes to assure buyers that the autographs they owned were, in fact, real.

It didn’t work as well as they had hoped:

Brett Lemieux, a 45-year-old resident of Westfield, Indiana, was the founder of sports memorabilia site Mister ManCave, which claimed to have sold millions of counterfeit items with net profits exceeding $350 million, and had “the largest framed jersey inventory on the web.”

Lemieux made the claims in a now-deleted Facebook post on the “Autographs 101” group Wednesday, saying the money was “too good” to pass up and that he wanted to stop the fraud, which had been going on for the better part of two decades.

Part of Lemieux’s post, bragging about his fraudulent creation of autographs and the holograms of multiple companies meant to prevent such fraud.

Over the past week, I’ve seen a ton of people submitting their Shohei Otani, Mike Trout, Derek Jeter and other autographs to online authentication groups, only to find that the balls, bats and photos are fakes. Many of these items have one, if  not more, authentic-looking holograms, to boot.

I know this seems far afield for journalists, but it really emphasizes an important point about how and why fraud persists in our space as much as it does everywhere else: If there’s money to be made in an easy way, people without scruples are going to take advantage of the situation.

That means we have to all be extra cautious about what we are willing to accept at face value and what we are willing to walk away from if the situation doesn’t feel right. It’s especially true when we really want something to work out, like getting that crucial source or making that tight deadline.

I’ve often said that paranoia is my best friend. Feel free to make it yours as well.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.