Critical Thinking

Journalism, Journalism Education and Generative AI (Part I: The Tools For Your Toolbox)

One of the cool things about doing “mechanic stuff” is that parts manufacturers and tool companies would give you stickers for your toolbox when you purchased their wares. Enjoy an AI version of an AI toolbox. (via Pixlr)

After I posted about the need to smack around students who used AI to do their work, a colleague asked a really important question:

(P)lease allow me to respectfully play devil’s advocate here. AI is here to stay. We are not going to manage to get rid of it in our lives and in our classrooms. Students will keep using it no matter how many drums we beat for them not to. So, why don’t we instead embrace it and start teaching them how to properly use AI – responsibly and ethically? We can turn this into a tool for all. A friend, not a foe.

She’s definitely right in that AI isn’t going away and people will use it no matter what we say, something the folks at Arizona State University’s student newspaper learned the hard way last week. The State Press retracted 24 articles a reporter had written after staffers discovered the pieces were the work of generative AI.

It’s worth noting here that ASU is actively partnering with OpenAI to help students on campus see the ways in which generative AI could be used responsibly and ethically. That’s not to pin the blame on the university for the State Press situation, but rather to demonstrate that even with efforts to properly train and guide students, you’ll usually run into a chucklehead or two.

To take a look at AI from more of an “overhead” view, we’re doing a three-part series on the blog over the next week that will look at it from three key angles:

    • The tools
    • The potential perils
    • The human angle

Let’s start with the tools:

HOW GENERATIVE AI WORKS: According to technology experts, generative AI models take large, complex pieces of information and break them down into simple elements that the AI system can retain easily and replicate on demand. The technology is essentially “trained” by introducing it to millions and millions of pieces of content, which it uses to make sense of concepts and then generate new material.

AI scholars at MIT have noted that this approach is not new, in that computers have done these kinds of things on data sets and science hypotheses for decades. What is occurring now is just an outgrowth those early efforts, with computers consuming vast amounts of written and visual material, breaking it down into simple pieces and then recreating new things based on the “rules” it learned during its examination of the content.

This is also how humans learn, as we learn how to write in the inverted pyramid format or paint a picture in the style of one of the great artists, like Picasso or Renoir. Theoretically, what makes this different is that humans are taught other things like morals and ethics (as well as societal norms) that serve as kind of a traffic signal for what they “should” or “shouldn’t” do, as opposed to just what they “can” or “can’t” do, based on the requirements of a prompt.

 

AI TOOLS THAT CAN BENEFIT YOU AS A JOURNALIST: Of all the analogies I’ve used over the years, the concept of putting “tools in your toolbox” has been the most frequent one. As much as it seems reductive, I like to think of each talent I have, skill I develop or lesson I learn as a tool I’m putting in a toolbox for later use.

In terms of AI, there are tons of great tools out there that can benefit you as a journalist, as they can automate mundane tasks, prompt you to think of things you otherwise wouldn’t and generally make life easier on you. Consider these options:

TRANSCRIPTION: One of the most time-consuming things journalists deal with is taking audio interviews and turning them into useful text for stories. AI has made transcription services both readily available and reasonably accurate. Tools of this kind, such as VG’s Jojo and Otter.ai, use algorithms to decipher speech patterns, pick through background noise and convert sound to text.

IMAGE GENERATORS: These tools have been the source of great fun for people who want to see what kinds of strange combinations of elements they can pair and how the image generator will display their humorous whims. However, AI image generators can assist journalists who are covering serious topics.

Newsrooms have long used photo illustrations and artists renderings to accompany stories in which more traditional means of capturing visual content isn’t possible. Image generators, like Image Creator from Microsoft and versions of DALL-E from OpenAI, can use text prompts from users to generate a wide array of potential visuals. As is always the case in journalism, any kind of illustration or created work should be labeled as such.

RESEARCH: In journalism, good writing is predicated on good reporting, which means we need to dig around a lot. Finding basic facts can be easy through current search engines like Google and Bing, but several companies are constructing AI tools that will allow investigative journalists to do significant deep dives in a fraction of the time. Google introduced Pinpoint in 2024, which is meant to help journalists and other researchers dig through vast quantities of documents to find specific content within the collection. Google states that a Pinpoint collection can contain up to 200,000 documents, including written text, images and audio files.

Other AI tools, like Artifact, which was recently purchased by Yahoo, can be used to create quick summaries of articles and files for you to give you a general sense if the piece is worth digging into more deeply or if it doesn’t fit your specific needs.

FACT CHECKING: The journalistic fact-checking motto has always been, “If your mother says she loves you, go check it out.” Thanks to advances in AI, that might be a lot easier than it used to be. Tools like Chequeado’s Chequeabot are capable of taking factual statements and comparing them to vast repositories of knowledge to determine the accuracy of those statements. These tools can help assess the validity of data-based statements through to public declarations that governmental officials make, in a quicker and more accurate fashion.

WRITING: A number of media organizations have attempted to use chatbots and other similar AI tools to write content for publication, with varying levels of results. Gannett attempted to automate some of its sports coverage, only to stop once it was clear the readers weren’t thrilled by the results. Sports Illustrated even went so far as to create AI staffers to augment their site, something they quickly pulled back from once the situation was discovered. This approach to using some of these content generators is often where problems occur and society at large tends to freak out. That said, it’s important to know how these tools work and that they can be exceptionally helpful. Tools like Writesonic, Notion AI and Text Blaze can assist you in restating material in new and innovative ways, offering suggestions as to how to approach a new topic and assisting you in search-engine optimization efforts. The key here is that these tools are meant to “assist” you, not do all the writing for you.

These are just some of the tools and options out there for you as a journalist. The Society for Professional Journalists maintains a giant list of similar tools for your consideration here.

 

DOCTOR OF PAPER HOT TAKE: I’ve gone back and forth how best to approach AI, because, like so many other tools we use in life, it has both stated purposes and potentially problematic misuse options.

A hammer is a great tool and you can build a lot of cool stuff with it, but you can also use it to bash in someone’s head. The same concept is true of a knife: You can teach a kid to use a knife carefully and responsibly to help make dinner, while simultaneously explaining that, no, you can’t stick it into your sibling’s head because they took the last Mountain Dew out of the fridge.

(I suppose we could also argue that AI might be more like cocaine: We can’t teach you to “responsibly” use it and in merely introducing it to you, the risks outweigh the rewards. I don’t like that analogy, but given what people have been doing with AI, it perhaps merits a deeper look.)

What AI really lacks at this point that most tools have are things like an instruction manual and set of safety features to prevent unintended disasters. The instruction manuals tell you what each switch or button does on a tool and also how to avoid doing something pathologically stupid. The safety features also limit you in some ways, like putting a guard over a table saw’s blade or having a fuse blow instead of letting the whole thing catch fire. AI feels more like those sci-fi movies, where a human discovers a piece of alien technology and is just kind of winging it.

The other thing that makes AI more dangerous than other tools is that we don’t have learned masters under which we can apprentice, like we would in learning to use other tools. When I started working at the garage as a teen, I had a guy there who knew how to use every tool in the place. He helped me on everything from the basics, like which cars used SAE tools and which ones needed metric ones, to the big safety things, like how to prevent a tire machine from taking off my head with a giant iron bar. Here, we’re all relative newbies and as much as I like the idea of learning from my mistakes, I’d prefer to know if something is going to take my head off before I start playing with it.

NEXT TIME: The significant concerns associated with AI technology.

 

Recalling Jim Lehrer’s rules of journalism as the Trump trial gets underway (A Throwback Post)

The breathless coverage of every post, sketch and fart of the Trump trial in New York has cable news in a lather these days. Without cameras being allowed in the courtroom, but still having all sorts of time to fill, television has seemingly turned everything about this thing into the Zapruder film. In his return to “The Daily Show,” Jon Stewart used his Monday opening to castigate these folks for their approach to “news” in this situation:

 

Stewart has long said he’s not a news journalist, so it might be easy to dismiss his critique as arrogance mixed with humor. That’s why we dug out today’s throwback post from four years ago, when Jim Lehrer died to make the same case for us.

Below is a brief tribute to Lehrer upon his death as well as a recap of his “rules” that really should guide our work in a time in which it seems like every shiny object can distract us and minutia can rule the news cycle.

 

Jim Lehrer’s rules matter now more than ever

Jim Lehrer, a journalist’s journalist to the core, died Thursday (Jan. 23, 2020) at the age of 85. He spent decades of his life covering politics, corporations, international affairs and more, and yet had the none of the pretense associated with the greatness he encountered or the epic stories he conveyed:

Jim was calm and careful in moments of crisis, as demonstrated by his coverage of the September 11 terrorist attacks.

“I’m Jim Lehrer. Terrorists used hijacked airliners to kill Americans on this, September 11, 2001,” Jim reported on national television. “Another day of infamy for the United States of America.”’

Lehrer essentially retired about a decade ago, and he did his work on public television, so it’s likely few folks under a certain age would remember much about him. Truth be told, he was really just a name and a standard to me for much of my life: A symbol of straightforward reporting and a talent to which one should aspire in the field.

However, among the many obituaries written on this titan of news, I came across Jim Lehrer’s Rules, guiding principles he used that can and should continue to influence generations of media students to come. (The world in general would probably be a nicer place, too, if non-media folks kept an eye on these things as well.)

These may seem quaint in the era of “Screaming Head” journalism, opinion-as-fact reporting, “sources say” coverage and a general sense that members of the general public have the IQ of a salad bar. However, with very limited quibbling, I could clearly defend each of these as something worth striving toward in our field.

Jim Lehrer’s Rules

  1. Do nothing I cannot defend.
  2. Cover, write and present every story with the care I would want if the story were about me.
  3. Assume there is at least one other side or version to every story.
  4. Assume the viewer is as smart and caring and good a person as I am.
  5. Assume the same about all people on whom I report.
  6. Assume personal lives are a private matter until a legitimate turn in the story absolutely mandates otherwise.
  7. Carefully separate opinion and analysis from straight news stories and clearly label everything
  8. Do not use anonymous sources or blind quotes except on rare and monumental occasions. No one should be allowed to attack another anonymously.
  9. “I am not in the entertainment business.”

Earth to Universities: You can’t like free expression only when it’s expression you like

A print of artist Phil Hands’ cartoon on free speech hangs on the wall of my office, with a nice message from this incredibly talented person. I think this message matters now more than ever.

THE LEAD: Universities are pushing back on speech and assembly efforts in the wake of pro-Palestine protests on campuses throughout the country. Both on campuses and at the federal level, concerns regarding antisemitism and Islamophobia have led to inquires and crackdowns.

Zoom in: Tensions at Columbia bubbled over last week after university president Minouche Shafik called in the NYPD to disband a pro-Palestinian encampment at the center of campus.

  • The University of Michigan said it would draft a new policy on punishable disruptive behavior following a pro-Palestinian protest at its convocation.
  • The University of Southern California canceled its valedictorian’s commencement speech, citing safety concerns that the student called a “campaign of racist hatred.”
  • Stanford University banned overnight camping in February to end an encampment populated by dueling pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli tents, citing student safety, extreme weather and rodents.

FIRST-AMENDMENT BASICS: The First Amendment to the Constitution allows for freedom of expression in a number of ways, including speech, press and assembly. State actors (meaning public officials, public organizations or otherwise government-ish people or groups) cannot step in and deny these rights without some exceptional circumstances.

The law requires a risk of “imminent lawless action” or “clear and present danger” to exist for the government prohibit these kinds of expressions. Examples of this kind of risk include things like inciting a crowd to destroy property or chanting “We are going to kill the chancellor” during a march. That’s why yelling “Mike Pence is a traitor” isn’t the same as yelling “Hang Mike Pence” during the Jan. 6 incident in Washington, D.C.

In some cases, the law can allow for restrictions based on the time, place and manner of the expression, but it also states that the restrictions must be content neutral. In other words, if the mayor of your town refuses to allow a “Pro-Vegetable” march at 5 a.m. because it would be disruptive to the sleeping habits of the citizens, that mayor can’t then allow a “Pro-Beef” march to occur at 5 a.m.

For a more complete view, check out this great primer at the Freedom Forum.

KEY FREAKOUT POINT: This is what happens when the vaguely educated (Congress) asks questions of the overly educated (Ivy League university administrators) and fear is a driving force in the discussion.

Back in November, the presidents of Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania resigned after they reacted to questions of campus antisemitism the way my dog does when I present her with a physics textbook.

Congress, trying to make a point, asked if “calling for the genocide of Jews” violated the campus speech codes and neither of these esteemed educators could find a coherent answer. (As these are both private institutions, they get more leeway about what can and can’t happen on their campus than do public institutions. More on that later.)

What happened next was what always happens next at a time like this: More administrators get called to answer similar questions under a totally disingenuous guise by people who have no interest other than “pwning” these folks.

Thus, to avoid being the next university egghead on the chopping block, these folks force everything 180-degrees in the opposite direction, to the point where saying “bless you” is somehow a hanging offense. Fear drives the silencing of certain voices that people worry might not be as popular as others. The goal is to “run clock” for a while, in hopes that everything will just calm down once the kids find a new TikTok challenge or something.

Words are scary, particularly when you are being accused of certain things. Nobody likes being accused of antisemitism, Islamophobia, homophobia, racism, sexism and other such things. Certain words carry with them a permanent stain, and that can be terrifying enough to make people do or not do certain things. I often think back to this clip from “Apt Pupil” in that regard:

 

REALITY CHECK: As much as it would be great if we could all just get along about everything, that’s not the way life works. This is why we have laws in place to deal with what can and can’t happen when people feel the need to disagree.

The law is clear on how speech and assembly work: Unless you can demonstrate that whatever these people are saying or wherever they are going will lead to lawless action, they have the right to say what they want to say and go where they want to go. The law isn’t here to protect popular speech, but ALL speech.

This is why, as much as it can infuriate folks that a group of Nazis can march through a predominantly Jewish part of Illinois, or that a group of “religious” folks can show up with signs at a military funeral proclaiming “Thank God for dead soldiers,” speech can’t be suppressed for being repulsive alone.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression explicitly explains why even calls for the genocide of a particular group remain protected under the First Amendment.

DOCTOR OF PAPER HOT TAKE: Everyone has a level at which they think a line should be drawn when it comes to speech being problematic, but quite literally, the cure for bad speech isn’t speech suppression. It’s MORE speech. It’s also been clear that there are always risks that unpopular speech may lead to violence, but we have laws to deal with that violence once it actually occurs. Stopping speech because it might end poorly has the same internal logic as the traffic cop who pulls over the Corvette driver because the car “looks like it could go fast.”

The administrators of these schools need to have stronger intestinal fortitude when it comes to supporting free speech, even if it’s going to be wildly unpopular or allow some senator from Bumbledirt, Wyoming to call them all sorts of names on the Senate floor.

Yes, it sucks when you have to deal with difficult situations, but standing for principles is supposed to be administrators’ resting pulse. If you think having people say mean stuff about you on Twitter/X is rough, read this piece by David Goldberger, a Jewish attorney who represented the Nazis in the Skokie case. Members of Jewish Defense League showed up at Goldberger’s office with baseball bats trying to beat the hell out of him. The rabbi at his parents’ synagogue gave a speech denouncing Goldberger personally for taking the case.  He was threatened and called a self-loathing Jew for his troubles and yet in retrospect, he remains as stalwart in his beliefs as ever:

To this day, I have no doubt that the ACLU’s commitment to equal rights for all is a backbone of our democracy — no matter how offensive our clients are. Chipping away at this commitment will open the door to the erosion of the First Amendment as a bulwark against rule by tyrants.

In short, if you want your free speech, you have to be willing to stand up for everyone else’s speech as well.

A PROMISING POST-SCRIPT: As I was finishing this off, a friend forwarded this article about how student journalists on these campuses are not only covering the situation, but taking strong editorial stances in favor of free speech.

As we always say in student media, “Leave it to the kids to lead the way.”

 

With a potential TikTok ban in the U.S. looming, here are some reasons media folks shouldn’t freak out

Trying my hand at some AI image generation. (Pixlr via “TikTok Logo with Chinese Flag prompt)

THE LEAD: The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bipartisan bill on Saturday that would nationally ban TikTok if its Chinese-based parent company did not sell the popular app. The bill gives ByteDance, which owns the app, up to 360 days to sell TikTok to an owner that isn’t tied to China before a ban would kick in. The Senate will likely take up the bill on Tuesday and President Joe Biden has stated he will sign it, if the bill hits his desk. TikTok has stated it will fight this legislation.

 

THE RATIONALE: TikTok has more than 170 million U.S. users and government officials are worried that the Chinese government could access these users’ data via the app and create threats to national security. Both ByteDance and the Chinese government have downplayed these worries, but experts in the fields of international relations and technology have said pretty much any Chinese tech company operates under “a cloud of suspicion.”

 

CATCHING UP: If you are somehow completely unaware of TikTok, or have been kind of doing the “Oh, yeah, TikTok” thing when your kids or grandkids talk about it, here’s what the NY Times calls “The Basic Human Explanation of TikTok.”

 

WHY PEOPLE ARE FREAKING OUT: This is a simple one to explain: Habit and money.

In terms of habit, you have 170 million people in the U.S., spending an average of between 58 minutes per day and 95 minutes a day on this thing, depending on how you slice the data. If you look at any data set, you’ll notice some lighter and heavier users, but the scarier thing is the increase of usage in terms of overall users and overall use. In 2019, users averaged about 27 minutes a day and there were only about 27 million U.S. users.

Cigarettes would have been proud of that kind of habit formation…

And, just like any other addiction, once people get hooked on TikTok, it’s really hard for them to imagine life without it. Users have assailed Congress with TikTok videos that state everything from the U.S. has bigger problems than TikTok, to the idea that this is suppressing free speech. At the core of these and other arguments is basically this statement: Stop messing with the thing I like.

As for money, this thing is a goldmine for ByteDance, which has seen exponential growth in less than five years. Selling it would be financially unwise, especially if it’s forced to do so, as nothing drives down a price like every buyer know you’re over a barrel and HAVE TO sell.

In addition, TikTok influencers have created a marketplace in which they can sell products as well as their own lifestyle brand. Closing the door on the app would essentially strangle their revenue streams, they note. In addition, small businesses have used the app to promote their products and services, stating it allows them a cheap, easy and effective way to reach a wide audience of potential customers.

 

WHY MEDIA PEOPLE SHOULDN’T BE FREAKING OUT: As news journalists, PR professionals and advertising folks, we tend to see a lot of media shifting on a regular basis. If we wanted our lives to be nothing but smooth sailing and stable situations, we’d have taken a job in something less stressful, like defusing land mines. The point is, we’ve seen a lot of changes to the media landscape, let alone the social media landscape, over the course of our careers, so if the ban happens, we’re actually in pretty good shape to deal with it.

One of my students did a great localization story for our reporting class on this issue, and she talked to people who run a Digital Marketing Clinic at UWO about a potential ban. The people there had already expected this and had worked with clients to avoid any messaging interruptions a ban would cause. In addition, the director of the organization gave two really good bits of advice that most of us follow:

  1. Diversify your approach to reaching your audience so that one platform can’t hold you hostage.
  2. Build up your own platforms and connect with your audience through things you control

I imagine that most other quality organizations and agencies that connect people to audiences through media channels have also approached life in this fashion.

 

DOCTOR OF PAPER HOT TAKE: This situation isn’t likely to end up with a ban because everyone is making too much money for that to happen. If TikTok weren’t so profitable, ByteDance wouldn’t be fighting so hard to keep it. If advertisers and influencers weren’t making a living on this thing, they’d be less worried about it going away. This is going to be like a game of “Chicken” for the next couple months until some sort of compromise is hammered out.  What that is remains to be seen, but nobody kills the golden goose if they’re smart enough to realize it’s got a lot more golden eggs to lay.

Even if TikTok gets banned, life on social media will adapt and progress as it always has. Over the course of multiple textbooks in which I’ve had to incorporate social media trends, I’ve seen the landscape radically change in terms of platform supremacy. Each time I do an update, I save the social media chapter for the very, very end and then pray to St. Jude that nothing insane happens between me sending the chapter and the book hitting the press.

Here’s the perfect example: When I wrote “Dynamics of News Reporting and Writing,” I had to pitch two sample chapters and the folks at Sage told me to make one of them the social media chapter. I protested, arguing that stuff was changing so quickly, it would likely need a massive overhaul before the book would press. They argued that if I didn’t SHOW potential adopters a full social media chapter they wouldn’t believe it was going to be there, and thus show less interested in the book. So, I wrote up what was “cutting-edge stuff” at the time, only to have to fully rewrite the chapter FOUR TIMES between that draft and the final version.

We were ON THE PRESS when Twitter decided to move from 140 characters to 280 characters, sending me into a panicking dervish of phone calls and emails. We ended up having to pull the book back and have me patch holes in the social media chapter to fix that.

Fast forward three years and the number of platforms that were in that first edition that were laughably absent from that second edition included:

  • YikYak
  • Storify
  • Vine
  • Periscope
  • Ping
  • Google Buzz
  • Meerkat
  • Digg

And that doesn’t include the stuff that changed, like Twitter shifting to more content, Instagram Reels and other such things. Each time I go to revise an edition, I find myself looking at the social media chapter like when I look back at photos of my childhood in which my parents dressed me in the worst the 1970s had to offer: “Holy cow… I totally forgot about that…”

When Twitter became X and then became an Elon-Musk-fever-dream-hellscape, other stuff like BlueSky and Threads emerged in an attempt to fill the void. When Vine died, everyone wondered where we’d get our 10-second videos of fun. TikTok answered that question. As is the case with most of social media, products will continue to enter the arena with a goal of meeting users’ needs in a way that previous products haven’t or have ceased to do.

DISCUSSION STARTER: Of all the arguments people are making about a potential TikTok ban, which one makes the most sense to you? Is it an issue of free speech? Is it a financial concern about lost revenue for content creators? Is it an issue of governmental overreach? Is it the “keep your paws off my stuff” point of view? Or is there something else? (Or, if you favor a ban, why?)

Using AI to cheat on writing assignments is bad. Doing it in journalism classes is downright stupid (A Throwback Post)

Me to kids who use AI to cheat: “What I do have are a very particular set of skills, skills I have acquired over a very long career, skills that make me a nightmare for people like you…”

I often wonder when I’m reading some of the essay work I get these days that is clearly written by generative artificial intelligence if my students are lazy and stupid or if they think I am.

Truth be told, I usually don’t have a lot of problems in this area because AI has yet to master the art of writing for the media, as it has clearly and repeatedly demonstrated. However, from time to time, I have a class that requires a reflection paper or personal essay, and suddenly, the students who couldn’t find a coherent sentence with a searchlight and a posse have managed to put Shakespeare to shame.

In one case, I found about 20 percent of the kids had completely or mostly written their ETHICS assignment using artificial intelligence programs. The irony on that is so thick, you couldn’t cut through it with a chainsaw.

In another case, I gave students a 1-1.5 page, typed, double-spaced reflection paper before each test that is there to do nothing but make them think about what we covered in the chunk of the class leading up to the test. I did this so that the kids who suck at multiple choice could have a chance to express themselves and to also defray the overall impact of each test.

The prompt was laughably simple. Tell me briefly:

  • What we covered that you already knew before you took the class
  • What we covered that you didn’t know before you took the class
  • What we touched on that you would want to know more about.

That’s it. If you can fog a mirror, it’s almost a guaranteed B+. If you can write a word or two in the mirror fog with your finger, it’s practically an A.

Caught at least one kid AI-ing it, through basic common sense, journalistic skepticism and checking through multiple detection programs. I’ve gotten to the point that I can almost tell exactly WHICH program they used to write it.

And, yes, it’s really quite upsetting. (I’d use other words to describe my feelings on this, but Sage is trying to sell a book or two here.)

As friends and colleagues have told me that this kind of thing is “rampant” on their campuses as well, I figured I’d break out this throwback post on why cheating in journalism (especially in terms of AI stuff) is a really, really bad idea:

 

4 Self-Serving Reasons Not to Cheat in a Journalism Course

At the beginning of each semester, most professors I know give some version of the “Don’t Cheat” lecture. We explain the university policies about cheating and how we can make your life so miserable that you will wish you had never been born. We outline the logical reasoning behind avoiding unethical behavior and try to guilt you into acting right.

And right about now is where we start to notice that none of that really sunk in for some of our students.

Somewhere between midterms and finals week is where I tend to find whatever cheating I’m likely to notice over the span of a semester. It’s always the same: The student who couldn’t write a sentence with a subject and a verb is suddenly putting Bob Woodward to shame. The kid who spent the last two weeks in our “draft” sessions with nothing done suddenly produces a magnum opus in two days. The story I get from a student that seems shockingly familiar for some reason, mainly because his roommate turned in the same thing last semester.

It’s also the same when the students are confronted. They go through all five stages of grief in about three minutes: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. (Or, in at least one case, a note from a parent that told me “The family lawyer will be in touch.) It’s gotten so bad that I keep tissues hidden in my office for that exact moment when a student suddenly realizes there is no way out and tears begin flowing. (For the record, men cry as much or more than women do when the stuff hits the fan like this.)

Since journalism is always about telling people “What’s in it for me?”, consider these four self-serving reasons why you shouldn’t cheat, least of all in a journalism course:

You have much worse odds of getting away with it: Students have come up with so many great ways of cheating on various tests, projects, quizzes and assignments, it gives me hope for the future in terms of innovation. There are the water bottle labels with the answers printed on them. There is the “phone/texting” thing that students have developed over the years. There are “cheat sheets” and “crib notes” written in places that defy logic.
Many journalism classes, however, are performance based and skill structured, so it’s not about memorizing things and regurgitating them, so those tricks don’t always apply. Instead, students tend to plagiarize from published material, use stuff from sources that don’t exist or otherwise “improvise” their ways around their writing assignments and tests.
Here’s the problem with that: Journalists and journalism professors (a.k.a. former journalists) are naturally suspicious, so they have a harder time believing that you managed to track down the governor for a sit-down interview on deadline. They are trained researchers, so they know how to fact check and verify stuff through a number of platforms beyond “TurnItIn.” They usually have connections with sources in the area, so it’s not a stretch to imagine them calling up a city council rep, a high school football coach or an administrator and asking, “Hey, did you have an interview with someone in my course and say XYZ?”
The whole purpose of being a journalist is to dig past the BS veneer that people show us and get to the heart of the truth.
We live for this. And trust me, our ability to dig is better than your ability to hide at this point in your career.

 

You really piss us off and trust us, you don’t want that: When journalists dig into something, we are like a dog with a Frisbee: We just don’t let go. Most of the time, when someone lies to us, we are desperate to dig even deeper to determine how bad this is and what else that person might be lying about.
We will be bound and determined to dig into EVERY, SINGLE, OTHER thing you have EVER written for us and see if there is ANYTHING you did that fits this pattern of plagiarism. We will talk to colleagues about you to see if you were in their classes and see if they had any inclination that you might not be producing work that is on the level. We will look to see what penalties are available and how far this can all go.
The reason is that we operate in a field where trust is earned and all you have is your reputation. If you throw that all away over a crappy assignment in a single college course, what’s going to happen when you get out in the field? Even more, if you go out there with a degree from our institution and people know you had us as professors, how will that reflect on us when you do something this pathologically stupid on the job? Those kinds of thoughts keep a lot of us up at night, not out of fear but out of anger. We are not about to let our field slide into the Dumpster (or further into the Dumpster) because you cheated when you felt “overwhelmed” by your six extracurricular activities and the death of your goldfish. In most cases, professors will be far more forgiving if you essentially tell them everything up front when you can’t complete an assignment. If you cheat, we have a burning desire to make sure you don’t get away with it.

 

Two degrees of separation: The concept of “Six Degrees of Separation” explains that we are all somehow connected to every other person on Earth through no more than six links. In the field of journalism, however, that linkage is a lot shorter.
I have done no definitive work on this, but if I had to guess, I’d say those of us in journalism are probably operating within two or three degrees. Case in point happened this weekend at the college media convention I attended: I was reviewing a student newspaper from Florida when I mentioned that I had a number of former students working in the state. One of the students said that she was in frequent contact with an editor of a particular newspaper. I recognized the name immediately as one of my former students and did the old “humblebrag” thing about it. “Really?” the student asked, her eyes lighting up. “Could you tell her you met me and that I’m really interested in the paper?” She was a smart kid and I liked what I had read in her stories I was critiquing, so I said sure. I dashed off a simple email to my former student about this woman and moved on with life. Today, I got this message back:

Vince,

Small world!

We are considering her for a spring internship. Your recommendation just put her at the top of list.

Hope you are doing well.

I honestly don’t know if my email helped or if maybe the editor was trying to make me feel good about myself, but the underlying point remains: In the most random place and set of circumstances possible in journalism, I was linked to two people in the field like that. This kind of connection is invaluable in our field if the word on the street about you is good. If you plagiarize and get caught, the word on the street spreads as well and, simply put, everybody in this field seems to know everybody else somehow. The “A” you got on that plagiarized assignment better be worth knowing that you will never get a job because everywhere you go, someone will know someone who knows about it.

 

You will never really recover: My dad was fond of telling me that if I ever planned to steal something, I shouldn’t steal a candy bar from a store. Instead, I should steal the whole store, as in when the owner came back the next day, all that was left would be a basement and some wires sticking out of the ground. The reason Dad had for this was simple: If you steal something, no matter how big or small, you’re a thief. If you’re going to steal and ruin your life, you might as well do it for something that matters.
Obviously, his point wasn’t that I should go big or go home, but rather that if I took that path of thievery, I’d never be able to recover everything I lost because of the stupid choice I made. The same is true in plagiarism, cheating and more.
The famous cases are always the ones your professors roll out for you during the semester: Stephen Glass, the wunderkind of the New Republic, who falsified dozens of stories before being forced out in disgrace. He is now a graduate of law school who still can’t practice law because of his prior transgressions. Jayson Blair, the rising star at the New York Times, who supposedly broke stories about the D.C. sniper case, turned out to be a serial liar. He now lives in Virginia and said he knows he could never go back to journalism because of the trust he broke. Janet Cooke, who wrote a compelling tale of an 8-year-old heroin addict name Jimmy, returned the Pulitzer Prize she won after it turned out she made him up. Today, as the story linked above notes, she lives in the U.S. and works in a field not associated with writing.
Beyond those “big names” are the day-in, day-out foul ups that cost people everything. I was on an ethics panel last week when one of my fellow panelists told a story of a student who made things up or plagiarized content. His name was so clearly bad in the field, he ended up legally changing it.
I still have the “ethical agreement” one of our writers signed at the student paper shortly before he made up an entire softball story. We only caught him because someone on the sports desk was roommates with a guy who was dating a softball player and she mentioned it in passing. I have no idea what ever happened to that guy after we fired him, but I do pull out that agreement from time to time and show students. His name is etched in their minds as a cautionary tale.

 

Interestingly for me, I find that this kind of stuff happens most with my upper-level classes. Freshmen and sophomores screw up occasionally by bumping into a problem when they don’t know any better. However, it’s the seniors who are getting ready to graduate that actively cheat. Why? My theories vary.
Look, we all get it. Everyone in journalism has felt the pressure at one point in time. Deadline is approaching, we get caught short and we figure, “If I can just cut this corner this one time, I’ll survive.” The truth is, it’s not worth it. If you screw up that assignment, the worst that happens to you is that you fail that one piece or that one test. If you cheat on that assignment, everything gets so much worse.

Reframing O.J. Simpson: A look at the issues his double-murder trial raised for today’s media students

My chair at UWO had this and another newspaper framed on the wall of his office until he retired. Of all the things he’d seen at the L.A. Times and N.Y. Times, this was the topic he looked at on a daily basis.

THE LEAD: O.J. Simpson, a former NFL running back, convicted felon and focal point of a double-murder acquittal, died last week at age 76. In 1995, he was found not guilty of murdering his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend, Ronald Goldman, but was later found civilly liable for their deaths.

MAJOR CAVEAT NUMBER 1: I’m not using this post to re-litigate anything related to the trial(s), his subsequent legal issues or the issues related to race, fame, justice or social structure in society. The goal here is to try to place Simpson and those moments into some sort of context for a generation of students for whom Simpson is as timely as the Teapot Dome Scandal and show them why the trial resonates to today.

MAJOR CAVEAT NUMBER 2: If you think there are additional pieces missing that fit that paradigm I’m using in Caveat Number 1, please feel free to put them in the comments below.

Now… On with the show…

BASIC O.J. BACKGROUND: Simpson was a star NFL running back for the Buffalo Bills and San Francisco 49ers. He became the first player to rush for 2,000 yards in a season and was inducted into the hall of fame in 1985. His professional life extended beyond football, as he did acting work in television and film, as well as serving as a football broadcaster. Above all else, he was a sought-after celebrity endorser, having done commercials for a variety of products and services, particularly at a time in which people of color did not receive many opportunities in this area. Simpson himself often noted his ability to “transcend race,” as he would say, “I’m not Black. I’m O.J.”

BASIC BACKGROUND ON THE MURDER TRIAL: On June 12, 1994, Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were stabbed to death at Brown Simpson’s condominium. Simpson became the focal point of the investigation. On June 17, Simpson was charged with the killings and was supposed to turn himself in to police, but that didn’t happen. In one of the most famous low-speed car chases in history, Simpson rode in the back seat of a white Ford Bronco as his friend Al Cowlings drove down the freeway, pursued by a dozen squad cars.

The trial spanned 11 months in which the prosecution presented evidence of Simpson’s guilt, including blood found in his car, a bloody glove found near the scene, shoes Simpson was known to wear and more. The “Dream Team” defense often hammered the evidence as being tainted or mishandled. In addition, the defense lawyers presented a significant narrative that both specific racist officers and a racist criminal justice system framed Simpson for this crime, which they stated he did not commit.

On Oct. 3, 1995, the jury returned a not guilty verdict against Simpson in both killings.

 

THE FRAMES OF O.J.: The media coverage of his cases related to those deaths was among the most intense of anything before or since. The issue was framed in a variety of ways, depending on the media lens used to view it and the underlying personal experiences that shaped people’s lives. Some frames were of a man who beat the justice system due to his fame and personal wealth. Others framed it as an issue of a racist criminal justice system, once again trying to railroad a person of color. Still others framed it as another case in which domestic violence was overshadowed by other frames, demonstrating once again that women were second-class citizens.

 

WHY SHOULD STUDENTS WHO WEREN’T EVEN BORN AT THAT POINT CARE: In a lot of ways, the Simpson trial was a “you had to be there” thing for a generation of people. It’s the same way that people of my parents’ age talked about the protests of the 1960s and my grandparents’ generation talked about the Great Depression. No matter how much you learn about the topic after the fact, it’s not the same thing. That said, there are key things that this case did that impact current media students to this day:

  • Fame as an interest element: Simpson’s fame was obviously a key element to what made this case as big as it was. (As Chris Rock famously said in one of his comedy routines, “If O.J. drove a bus, he wouldn’t even be O.J. He’d be Orenthal the bus-driving murderer.”) That said, the spotlight of the trial shifted people into that “name-recognition lead” zone of media coverage. Marcia Clark, Christopher Darden, Mark Fuhrman, Judge Lance Ito, Kato Kaelin, Robert Kardashian, Alan Dershowitz, Johnnie Cochran and more became household names. (Even 30 years after the trial, those names came to mind immediately for me.) Marcia Clark could cure cancer and Lance Ito could do a country album that knocks Taylor Swift out of the top spot of the charts, but their obituaries will still lead with the O.J. trial. Fame is something we still pay attention to, but what makes someone famous both then (during a pre-digital revolution) and now (in the age of internet stars) is something to consider.
  • Real-time broadcast coverage launches the “true crime” obsession: Other cases had allowed cameras and video coverage before, and even a few famous ones had drawn national attention, like the Pamela Smart case. However, just like MySpace and Friendster predated Facebook, these precursors to the Simpson trial couldn’t hold a candle to the overall coverage this received on a day-in, day-out basis. For almost a year, the country was transfixed. If ever there was a “Patient Zero” for court cases as television drama and true crime becoming a prominent form of entertainment, this was it.
  • Opinions become news: Broadcasters having an opinion was nothing new, but this case became a benchmark for what we constantly see today when it comes to “big news.” As Alex Weprin noted in the Hollywood Reporter, this trial basically established the formula for journalists using bluster to become famous and media networks using opinionated blather to draw viewers. It’s often easier to give an opinion about something than it is to do research, conduct interviews and rely on facts, which is why we see so much more opinion than we do in-depth journalism. However, as is usually the case, we need to keep our eye on the ball when it comes to providing our audiences valuable content instead of junk food.
  • The Race Card: Throughout the trial, the prosecutors accused the defense of “playing The Race Card” to overcome what they saw as obvious factual information. The defense argued that you couldn’t talk about anything in this case without talking about race, particularly in relationship to the racist history of the criminal justice system. Det. Mark Fuhrman’s testimony was particularly on point here, in that he repeatedly denied having any racial animus, only to be confronted with recordings of himself using “the N-word” repeatedly. Coverage of the verdict showed a divided America: White people watching were stunned or enraged at the verdict while Black people were shown celebrating. The analysis of this issue to this day remains a case of how race shaped the overarching views of society and how it still does. Journalists to this day need to understand the underpinnings of social and cultural history as it relates to the people and communities they cover. As much as it’s easy to grab a “Side A” and “Side B” and be done, that’s not going to work in situations where these long-festering wounds exist.
    (SIDE NOTE: I remember working on the student newspaper as the city editor when the verdict broke. I mentioned to a friend of mine who is Black that it seemed pretty obvious to me that he did it, in spite of the verdict. He responded, “Well, it was pretty obvious to me that Rodney King got his ass kicked by a bunch of cops, but that didn’t go our way, either.”)
  • The Ratings Monster: Media outlets have always measured things like circulation, audience share, market share and so forth in an attempt to track how well they are “grabbing eyeballs.” However, the Simpson case was like mainlining adrenaline in terms of how to get people to watch. According to ratings data, more than 150 million people watched the verdict live. To put that in perspective, that’s approximately EIGHT TIMES as many people who watched the Women’s NCAA championship game this year. The problem with getting a high that big is that you spend a lot of time chasing it in all the wrong ways. The question of what is good for our audience and what they are willing to watch/read to help us make our numbers look good has become a divergent one.

DISCUSSION STARTER: Take a look at how the obituaries of O.J. Simpson frame him. In terms of content ordering, where are the various elements of his life mentioned and do you agree with their overall approach? Which ones do you feel do the best job of telling the story in a solid, journalistic fashion and which ones do you think veer too much into opinion and hyperbole? What other issues do you see covered as part of his death and do you see them as being more or less relevant than they might have been at the time of his murder trial?

Putting a voice in your head: Filak’s SAGE podcasts on media trends, approaches to media education and the importance of DEI

THE LEAD: As part of the launch of the “Exploring Mass Communication” textbook, I was asked to sit down with some folks at Sage and discuss my thoughts about the field of media. These included things like where we are, where we started and what matters now.

I also talked about the importance of critical thinking, the value in being a “non-denominational skeptic” and the way in which diversity, equity and inclusion are vital in media today.

 

THE CATCH: Clearly, this is part of the book roll out, so there will be a few minor “book plugs” in here, but I did my best to avoid full-on book pimping. Still, I listened back to the info in here and found that it might be more helpful to folks than not, so I’m posting it.

 

THE VOICES IN YOUR HEAD: When I was speaking at a convention one year, a student came up to me and said, “My professor uses your book for our class, so I wanted to hear you speak. When I read your stuff, I imagine how I think you would sound because it feels like you’re talking to me instead of writing. You sound just like the voice in my head.”

I told the kid, “I hear voices in my head, too. Don’t worry too much about it until the start arguing with each other.”

We then both had a good laugh about it.

So, if you always wanted to know if the voice you imagine coming out of me is the same as the voice that actually comes out of me, hop on below:

Here is the link to podcast one, where we talk about the evolution of mass com, the state of mass com today and the importance of being a “non-denominational skeptic.”

 

Here is the link to podcast two, where we discuss the importance of diversity, equity and inclusion, as well as how we integrate that into my Exploring Mass Com text.

Hope they are helpful or enjoyable or maybe even both!

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

5 Basic Rules For Writing Opinion Pieces That Will Keep You From Coming Across Like An Arrogant Chucklehead

There are many ways to convince people to come around to your way of thinking when you are writing a column. You can offer facts, you can present solid analogies or you can find ways to empathize with your readers.

In reading through a lot of contest entries, from both college and professional publications, I’ve found there appears to be a little less of those options and a little more hostility lately.

Consider the following opening to a column I read as part of a contest I judged over the break. I pulled the name of the paper and the byline in an attempt to avoid publicly shaming the author:

Over the past few weeks, I have written several columns talking about things like the “Barbie” movie and Taylor Swift. Some of you may be begging for something that’s a little less surface level, and I hear you.

Unfortunately for you, I make the rules here, and I will once again be talking about something shallow. You want something different on the opinion page? Join (PAPER’S NAME) and write your own column.

 

I feel bathed in the warmth of the writer after that, and I’m just desperate to hear what comes next…

 

Another piece opened with this salvo:

I don’t care what you do. I don’t care if you eat at (RESTAURANT). I don’t care if you shop at (STORE). I don’t care if you wear (ITEM OF CLOTHING). I don’t care if you listen to (ARTIST).

 

Right… Just like your mom doesn’t care if you ever call on her birthday…

Truth be told, opinion writing is part art, part science and even the best columnists swing and miss. I know that because George Hesselberg, who spent decades at the Wisconsin State Journal writing amazing columns in ways I will never come close to, said that even he remembers writing “a few stinkers.”

George also noted, “Everyone thinks it is easy. It isn’t.”

If you are college student  in an opinion-writing class or student media columnist who is DESPERATE to become the next big-name column writer, consider these rules to help you along:

 

Rule 1- You’re not writing for yourself.

The first and worst mistake most columnists write is that something happens to them and they feel that they need to share it with the world.

When you feel this urge, back away from the keyboard, go take a nap and come back to writing when this urge has passed.

Column writing is not group therapy. The goal in giving you a column isn’t to help with your self esteem and make you glad you shared. The goal of a column is to engage the readers and give THEM something to think about, something to learn or something to do.

In other words, it’s not about you. It’s about them. If what you’re writing doesn’t have a direct tie to the audience or doesn’t in some way involve your readers, you’ve failed before you get off the starting line.

 

Rule 2 – Know your audience

Getting to know the people for whom you write means first learning rule #1. Once you realize that you need to write for somebody else, you need to figure out who they are. Don’t assume they are “all exactly like me,” which is what one particularly arrogant columnist told me. Even if she were very similar to many people, she can’t assume that they all share her issues and concerns.

Markets defined in various ways. You have geographic interests (what’s going on around campus this weekend), demographic interests (what can you do if you’re under 21; what’s the college scene look like) and psychographics (interests, activities etc.). If you can figure out what your audience is, where it is and what it likes/dislikes, you’ve got a pretty good handle on to whom you are speaking with your columns.

 

Rule 3 – Stay local

Great columnists for “national media outlets” get a pass to write whatever they want in many cases. I’m not saying it’s a good idea, but it’s what they do. The reason is that they’ve done this job long enough and well enough to have sources on these big issues and thus they can serve as an influencer of opinions.

That’s not most of us or our publication. Think of it like the scene from Bull Durham where they discover fungus on Tim Robbins’ shower shoes.

If the purpose of a column is to reach an audience and get them to do something, chances are you’ll have much better success in doing this if you look around you and talk about things happening in your own backyard.

Yes, you want to write about why the NFL should avoid a lockout or why Joe Biden should annex Puerto Rico, but remember rule 1. You’re not writing for you. You’re writing for your readers. The chances are pretty good that our president isn’t going to hold a press briefing today and say, “My fellow Americans, I had committed to a hands-off approach in relation to the fighting in Ukraine. However, in reading Carl Smith’s column in the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh’s Advance-Titan, I have learned the errors of my ways…”

You can, however, influence local policy. The best column ever from that perspective was a scathing piece on why the university suddenly started charging a “cup fee” for water at the student eateries. The university had no real answer. Prices hadn’t changed, water was still plentiful and they just figured no one would notice or care. They were wrong and they changed back after the editorial and subsequent online uproar about it.

Seems small and insignificant, but it was something the readers cared about. Thus it mattered.

 

Rule 4 – Don’t become part of the noise

When it comes “the big issues,” there are going to be about 20 percent of the people who will agree with you, 20 percent who don’t agree with you and the middle 60 percent who will say, “Well, I don’t care. I’m going to TikTok.” Unless you have something particularly important to add to the discussion, don’t just add to the noise on these things.

Issues like abortion, gun control and more are important and tough issues. However, piping in with “Here’s MY take on this…” adds nothing to the sum of human knowledge. It also violates rule number 1. If you’ve got something that REALLY adds to the discussion or some way of REALLY tying it to your audience in a way that most mainstream media don’t, that’s fine.

Here’s what I’m talking about: I have a thing against movie reviews in college papers. I can get this stuff online from 1,002 other sources, so why would I read it here and care about what you think?

Well, I was critiquing a paper from a religious based school and I noted that they did movie reviews, but from a very audience-centric angle: They talked about issues of sex and violence in the films and to what degree people of their faith would find these acceptable or not. That’s something the folks at Rotten Tomatoes aren’t going to hit on and that made it valuable to their readers.

Same thing with “the big issues.” If they’re building a massive memorial wall to something in Washington, D.C. and you’re in Idaho, you’re probably not adding much to the discussion. However, if the issue of gun control comes up and your campus has just made it legal to carry a concealed weapon on campus, you’ve got a reason to write.

 

Rule 5 – Don’t write beyond your own level of competence

Wanting to do something and being able to do something are two completely different things. When my kid was 3, she wanted to go ice skating so I took her. Half way through, she was skittering toward the speed skaters and my wife wasn’t fast enough to catch up with her. I was going to be the hero, so I skated fast, and caught up. The kid cut in front of me and it was either maul my own kid or take a header. I took the header and wound up with a bleeding black eye that swelled shut and a shoulder injury that took six months of physical therapy to overcome.

The point is, I went beyond what I was competent enough to handle. And I paid the price.

If you don’t know what you are talking about, don’t talk about it. If you have an interest in something, research the hell out of it before you write about it. Don’t just look for things that support your point or things that seem like they’re in your area.

A columnist is supposed to be an expert on a topic, so make yourself that expert before you go after that topic. You’re not just trying to talk about something. You’re trying to convince people of something. Your charm isn’t enough to make that happen.

As the White House presents rules pertaining to artificial intelligence in the federal government, the rest of us are still grappling with the impacts of AI

A quick example of how a free AI program can make something ridiculous look like a religious oil painting. The prompt? “Jesus Christ Rides A Unicorn.” (And, yes, based on the background here, apparently there is a unicorn for you in heaven, if you behave yourself…)

 

THE LEAD: The White House recently handed down its first set of government-wide policies meant to keep artificial intelligence from ruining everything, while still allowing us all to enjoy its true, helpful greatness:

The White House on Thursday morning released its first government-wide policy aimed at mitigating the risks of artificial intelligence (AI), requiring agencies to take further action to report the use of AI and address risks the technology may pose.

Federal agencies will be required to designate a chief AI officer, report how they use AI and add safeguards as part of the White House memo.

The policies include a requirement that governmental offices list what they use AI for, how important it is and to what degree those uses create “safety-impacting and rights-impacting” risks. It is completely unclear if these regulations will do anything, helpful OR harmful, as we continue to muddle through life with AI programs.

 

ISSUES WITH AI: You can’t throw a rock at anything these days without it likely hitting something to do with AI. Or maybe even something generated with AI.

As is the case with most technological advances, the early days of generative AI are becoming an insane wild west, in which their appear to be no limits to what people can do with it. As the law tries to catch up and corral this chaos, a lot of things are happening in the public regarding that people have trouble coming to grips with.

SO WHY NOT BAN IT? The AI genie is already out of the bottle, so a ban is unlikely to work, even if we wanted to do so. As experts in the field note, not only has AI been around for a long time, but we have gotten used to what it can do for us:

  • It automates tasks: If you like the idea of having a spellchecker, a digital calculator and a computer program that can build lines of code in a hurry, you want to keep AI around for a while. The artificial intelligence model is basically one in which machines do things that were once only thought of as being capable in the human mind. A full ban removes all that and trying to draw a specific line between important function and disgusting crap isn’t easy.
  • It personalizes content: The whole reason you get what you want online and why those “suggested purchases” actually are things you’d buy comes down to AI. The systems get to “know us” and then find ways of matching us with other things we might like. (In writing that sentence, I’m both amazed and profoundly creeped out…) Who you connect with online, what suggestions you get for places to eat and what cute puppies are available for adoption in your area often comes down to AI’s understanding of you.
  • It expands our knowledge: AI can do things we can only imagine, which gives us the chance to figure out all sorts of answers to problems that were once beyond our reach. Sure, medical advances and such might be a bit further away even with AI, but people in the field of electrical work are already seeing amazing opportunities.

These and other opportunities are on the horizon, so long as we can get people to stop making nude photos of each other for a few minutes and do something useful with this tech.

DISCUSSION STARTER: How aware are you of what generative AI can do? Have you experimented with any of the image creators or text creators out there? What has your experience been, in terms of quality and outcomes?

What kinds of limits do you think are necessary for people to co-exist with AI content? How would you go about enforcing them within the confines of the laws of the land as they stand now?

 

Four fun election-year stories that go beyond horse-race coverage

Journalists are often accused of doing “horse-race coverage” when it comes to elections, telling stories about polling data, attitudes toward key election issues and how to properly eat a corn dog at the county fair. The primary season is in full swing and with the November election is being talked about like this scene in “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade:”

With all of that in mind, consider a few stories that could be relevant, useful and dare I say fun for college journalists who want to break the election mold:

RENTERS OR OWNERS? WHO CHOOSES THE SIGNS? In driving to work each day, I pass a ton of student rental housing, including single-family homes and multi-unit apartment complexes. The lawns of a good many of them display signs that pitch candidates for local, state and national elections. The question that popped up in my head was this: “Who is supporting these people? The folks renting the place or the owner of the property?”

There is likely a set of rules in your city or state regarding the display and removal of political signage, so this might be a good time to look into this. It might also be interesting to pull the rental agreements to find out if there are any rules woven in the fine print that can explain who has the right to do what in terms of display and promotion like this. In today’s fractured political environment, I imagine that at least a few students would have some issues if a sign for CANDIDATE X was on their lawn and those students hated CANDIDATE X.

 

PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE OF DETAILS: Politics covers a great many things including party affiliation, issue stances and campaign promises, but often the smallest of weird details can win or lose someone an election. The story that Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder tells about making his first big betting win in politics touches on this: In a documentary, he notes that he put his money on Harry Truman after his sister told him that she wasn’t going to vote for Thomas Dewey because women don’t trust men who have mustaches.

Similar weird things have made a difference for politicians along the way. A former pol told me that he had been advised to use a shortened version of his name instead of the full name, because it sounded more relatable. In other words, if I were to run, I should be on the ballot as “Vince Filak” not “Vincent Filak” and certainly not “Vincent F. Filak, Ph.D.” Everything from the color and font people pick for their signage to the types of things they do or wear on the campaign trail can be part of this. Color gurus note that blue-collar voters prefer base colors like pure reds and blues, while more educated or sophisticated voters tend to go for obscure colors or muted hues.

A cool story might be to talk to poli sci and psych profs about this kind of thing if you can find an expert in the area. See if there is a way to separate fact from fiction and data from superstition.

 

THE STATE OF ELECTION SWAG: Over the years that I’ve visited estate sales, I’ve seen a wide array of election-related items for a wide array of office seekers. There were the Milwaukee Braves game schedules that included pitches for judicial candidates, bottle openers for city council reps and pin backs for all sorts of folks. Bumper stickers seem to always been in fashion, as are hats and signs and flags. There were also some weird spoons I saw once for someone running for something that was likely from about the late 1800s or early 1900s.

With everything seemingly going digital these days, are there more or fewer of these items being put forth by candidates? I think I got a Wisconsin sports schedule at a Fourth of July parade in Omro one year, and I know I can get a bumper sticker from either the Dem or GOP headquarters in Oshkosh. Beyond that, are there other creative items that are making the rounds or is swag on the down slope? What are some of the best/worst ideas out there, according to collectors. See what’s available to you on the average Saturday at the farmers market or a parade/rally.

 

ELECTION DAY FOR THE “DONE” POLITICIAN: When athletes retire, they often end up on those game day shows, where they talk about strategies and tactics and all that. They also often talk both publicly and privately about either missing the game or not missing the game at all. Getting this kind of insight is helpful and amazing to sports fans, who never once experienced what it’s like to be in a locker room or on a field like that.

Find a former politician who isn’t running for something and see if you can hang out during Election Day to do a piece that echoes the sports thing. It could be someone who lost an election and is dying to get back in or a person who retired and feels burned out by the whole situation. What’s life like for the “player” when they are no longer “in the game.”

 

How to answer the question “Should I go to Grad School?” when your journalism students ask it

The question in the headline has come up a lot recently, both on the Filak Furlough Tour and from my own students. The way some folks talk about grad school, it sounds like a way to delay life a bit more, or at least push back some of those student loans. For others, it’s an opportunity to become part of a cadre of lifelong learners, who will some day become the “sage of the stage” themselves at a fine institution of higher learning. Reality, as is usually the situation, will vary on a case by case basis.

As I have told my students repeatedly about so many things, you don’t want to look at me for an example when it comes to making a decision about grad school.

At the time, I had about a year’s experience under my belt as a part-time night desk reporter at the Wisconsin State Journal. When I asked if that position could become a full-time job, the answer was less than encouraging. Even more, every job that I wanted to apply for required about three years of newsroom experience.

The job market stunk and I had one actual offer from a newspaper in Kirksville, Missouri, which would have paid me less than I was making as a cashier and grease monkey back home at the Mobil station. Even worse, the paper was terrible, the publisher was chain-smoking during my interview and the job came with no insurance benefits.

At the time, if you kept up with school and didn’t stop being a full-time student, you could stay on your parents’ insurance until you were 25. Also, my boss at the State Journal offered to kind of weld two part-time positions together and give me nearly full-time hours, but not the benefits or a true salary. Add that with the potential to teach a college class, already knowing the area and figuring that I’d finish a master’s in two years, I went for it. It turned out fine in the end, but to explain the whole process requires several beers and a non-disclosure agreement.

Based on what I’ve seen others do over the years, here are some helpful questions you might want to consider if you’re thinking of grad school or to ask anyone who asks if they should consider this path:

ARE YOU CHANGING FIELDS? This is the easiest one to figure out. If you got your degree in journalism, but you took a class in computer coding, psychology or biomedical engineering and found your muse, grad school makes sense. The goal of any form of education that you are going to pay ridiculous money for is to teach you something of value that you can use somehow. Usually that means it helps you get a job. I wouldn’t hire a welder to do journalism or a journalist to do welding, so making sure you have field-specific education makes sense.

IS THERE A SPECIALTY YOU DIDN’T GET IN YOUR UNDERGRAD? In some cases, you find that you want to really dig into a specific area of a field. A “regular” journalism degree might include one class on graphic design or 3D rendering or something that really piques your interest and you only have a base-level understanding of that topic. Going to a different place for grad school where they specialize in that might make a lot of sense. I often make the case that students who go here and find that they really like design or graphic arts in media might do well to get a master’s in that area at Ball State, which has a TON of great profs and resources in this area.

IS THERE A FINANCIAL BENEFIT TO THE EXTRA DEGREE? The question of if a higher-level degree helps or hurts a candidate varies widely based on the field and the employer. However, if there is a clear-cut financial value to getting this upper-level degree, it makes sense to bite the bullet now and go for it.

Case in point, when my mom was teaching, salary bumps were determined in “steps” and “lanes.” If I recall correctly, each step was based on years of experience while the lanes were determined by level of education. Hopping into a higher-ed “lane” got you more money faster. Mom still had to take credits to keep up with something else related to her contract, but she never got a master’s, despite probably having more credits than I have now with a Ph.D. She mentioned more than once if she had just gone for it earlier in her career, the master’s would have really turbocharged her earning power.

If you know that’s the case, or if your company is paying for it in hopes of paying you more when you get it, go for the grad gusto.

DO YOU WANT TO TEACH COLLEGE AT SOME POINT? When I got my master’s it meant I could teach at a college or university in my area of expertise. Many of my family members were teachers and I thought I would like to be like them and help people learn, so the master’s was a smart call. That said, my boss in Missouri told me that the Ph.D. was basically the “union card” for getting a stable, tenure-worthy job, so if I wanted to do this for the rest of my life, I probably should bite the bullet and get the doctorate done.

Today, master’s degrees are fine for both adjunct teaching and a lot of universities have opened up teaching faculty roles that don’t require the full collection of alphabet soup after your name. That said, the master’s is the “you must be at least this tall to ride the ride” measurement, so if standing in front of a room trying to explain the difference between “farther” and “further” or why you spell the word “lead” L-E-D-E, grad school makes sense.

ARE YOU RUNNING TO SOMETHING OR AWAY FROM SOMETHING? This gets a bit deeper on the personal end, but it’s an important question to ask. I often ask this of the kids who come back to see me when they’re about 25 and they say something like, “I think I’m going to grad school” or “I think I should change jobs” or “Do you think the circus is hiring?” When a quarter-life crisis hits, a massive change in life seems like the best idea, which is why I ask them this question.

Change bothers me a lot, just because of who I am and how I feel about it. That said, I know some changes are better than others. I can also attest to the importance of understanding WHY you’re changing something, which comes down to the question above. If you are running toward something (pay raise, new educational opportunities) and the grad school question comes up, that is a good change. If you’re running away from something (I don’t want to be an adult, I’m scared of getting a job that I’ll hate) and the grad school question comes up, it’s probably not a great idea.

It never hurts to ask, “Why are you considering doing this?” and then try to figure out which way you’re running.

ARE YOU GAINING MOMENTUM OR BURNING YOURSELF TO A CRISP? When I was growing up, taking a break anywhere before the completion of all of your schooling was considered verboten. The thinking was, “If you don’t go straight from high school to college (or college to master’s or whatever), you’re never going to go back.” And for a lot of people I know, that turned out to be true.

That said, concepts like “a gap year” never really existed as a positive opportunity to plan and recharge. The “keep moving ahead” approach also conflated the idea of continual motion with positive outcomes.

I truly believe in momentum, and if you don’t, go watch this recap of the 1993 Bills/Oilers game. Thus, if you’re in the zone when it comes to studying, learning and knocking out homework, great. Keep rolling. I also believe in the concept of burnout, so if school to this point has turned you into a charcoal briquette, pouring more work on top of yourself for meager/no pay while adding to your student loan debt and living in what passes for student housing these days makes no sense.

WHAT IS THE FLIP SIDE OF THE GRAD SCHOOL COIN? Instead of saying “Should I go to grad school?” consider asking “What will I do if I DON’T go to grad school?” In other words, what’s the other side of the coin on this one.

I’m a big fan of pro-con lists in making big life decisions and I’m also a big fan of not getting myopic on a choice being either/or. It’s not “grad school or no grad school” but rather “grad school or (OTHER PLAN).” In approaching it this way, you can figure out what else might be out there and avoid thinking of grad school as the only lifeboat off the Titanic.

I’m sure there are many other good questions to ask, but these should comfortably get you out of the “deer in the headlights” mode and toward making a solid decision, or helping someone else make a solid decision.