The Dartmouth Provost Used AI To Write His Opinion Pieces. When The Student Newspaper Called Him Out, He Replied With An AI-Written Statement (A Throwback Post)

The topper of the amazing story done by The Dartmouth on the AI use of their provost.

THE LEAD: The next time your professor tells you, “If you just let AI do all your writing for you, you’ll never be able to get a job,” you can now respond with, “Well, I could be the provost of Dartmouth…”

An investigation by The Dartmouth of academic articles and opinion pieces published by Provost Santiago Schnell in 2026 found a median “AI-written” text percentage of 96% using artificial intelligence detector Pangram.

Pangram — which was found to have a “near-zero error rate” by an October 2025 University of Chicago audit — uses a large language model neural network which is trained to recognize differences between separate datasets of human-written documents and AI-generated content, according to the company’s website.

The student journalists at Dartmouth University did an amazingly strong deep dive into this topic, relying on both the most accurate AI-detection program available and some strong reporting beyond that. This wasn’t a quick-hit piece on one thing Schnell wrote, but rather a comprehensive look at his work before and after AI chatbots became widely available.

In addition, they sought and received a comment from Schnell about their findings, but didn’t just give him a pass. Instead, they took each of his claims (it was for grammar only… AI picks on people who have ESL concerns… etc.) and debunked each one of them.

And as if that weren’t enough to make the point, they also found this:

In an email statement to The Dartmouth on Sept. 18, Schnell wrote that he uses artificial intelligence for “language refinement, copyediting, improving clarity and organization and making writing processes more efficient,” but “review[s] the final text and take[s] responsibility for its content.”

“I develop ideas and arguments, conduct the research, evaluate the evidence and sources, determine the structure, prepare drafts and decide what appears in the final text,” Schnell wrote. “I regard these technologies as assistive tools. They do not identify the problem, design the research project, guarantee the validity of research results, interpretations, citations, conclusions or substitute for my research, intellectual judgment or authorship.”

Schnell’s Sept. 18 email statement to The Dartmouth was itself “100% AI-written,” according to a Pangram test.

I imagine next time, the Dartmouth students will want to do a sit down interview with this guy, just to see if he’s capable of doing so…

Given this kind of stuff is now everywhere, even places we generally would expect to be a little more honest, here’s a throwback post that talks about how best to avoid AI fake-outs and keep yourself out of trouble.

How AI “expert sources” have duped journalists and four tips on how to avoid being the next victim

Meet Elizabeth Hubbell, a 25-year-old skin-care expert who is willing to be a great source for your next story on anything makeup or skin-care related. She’s actually completely fabricated. Her picture came from an AI generation site and her name is a combination of my car (Betsy) and a baseball player whose card I had laying around (Carl Hubbell). Careful. It’s dangerous out there…

When it comes to doing interviews, I always tell students they need to do them in person. In response, they often look at me like I’m asking them to use a teletype machine or some semaphore flags. It’s easier, faster and more convenient for both parties if they can do a text, a chat or an email interview, the students say.

I argue that the face-to-face interview allows for a deeper connection for profile and feature pieces. This approach also can prevent sources in news stories from weaseling out of answers they could otherwise work through via several drafts of an email. Plus, if I spend some time in the source’s environment, I can probably find a personal effect that could give us something to talk about, like a family photo, a kid’s drawing or a sports item. At the very least, it’ll help with scene setting.

Apparently, there’s another good reason for my approach these days: Your easy-to-access, extremely helpful, expert source might be AI:

Since the launch of ChatGPT in 2022, anyone can generate comment, on any subject, in an instant.

It is a technology that appears to have fuelled a rise in expert commentators who have appeared widely in national newspapers but who are either not real, not what they seem to be or at the very least have CVs which do not justify their wide exposure in major newsbrands.

The rise in dubious commentators has been fuelled by companies that charge the PR industry in order to share quotes via email with journalists who have submitted requests for comment.

Journalist Rob Waugh found that in a number of cases, digital outlets were mass-generating content from these supposed experts, giving everyone from news journalists to PR practitioners the exact the quote or information they needed on a wide array of topics. However, when challenged to engage more deeply regarding who they are or what they have done in life, the “sources” suddenly had difficulty:

She has been quoted in Fortune talking about “loud budgeting” and by Business.com talking about the best countries in which to obtain a business education (both sites are based in the US).

A profile on Academized describes her as a “biochemist and science educator”. The same byline picture also crops up on a publisher called Leaddev, for someone called Sara Sparrow. Rebecca Leigh has written for DrBicuspid.com about how to write a business plan for your dental practice where she is described as a writer for Management Essay and Lija Help (two online writing services).

When challenged via email to do something that would be difficult to do with AI image-generating software (send an image of herself with her hand in front of her face) or prove that she was an environment expert, Rebecca stopped communicating.

One AI source, “Barbara Santini,” was particularly prolific in the volume and array of topics she could cover for journalists. Waugh found this roster of publications that had included Santini quotes:

She has been quoted in The Guardian talking about the benefits of walking (paid content), in Newsweek talking about white lies, Marie Claire talking about the meaning of money, the Daily Mirror talking about the benefits of sleeping with your dog, in The Sun talking about sexual positions, Pop Sugar talking about astrology, and Mail Online talking about how often to change your pillow.

Santini was recently quoted in a BBC article examining the lifelike responses of AI to Rorschach tests used by some psychologists saying: “If an AI’s response resembles a human’s, it’s not because it sees the same thing but it’s because its training data mirrors our collective visual culture.”

Despite her ability to be all knowing and wise, Santini apparently couldn’t receive phone calls, a relatively easy giveaway that the “person” on the other end is AI. Waugh also found other examples of journalists who were getting taken for a ride by an AI source, including one case where the non-human pitched a sob story about breast cancer survival:

“Seeing my scarred chest in the mirror was a constant reminder of what I had lost,” Kimberly Shaw, 30, told me in an emotional email.

She had contacted me through Help a Reporter Out, a service used by journalists to find sources. I cover skincare and had been using the site to find people for a story about concealing acne scars with tattoos.

<SNIP>

Shaw’s experience may not have been relevant to my acne story, but it tapped into the same feelings of empowerment and control I wanted to explore. Thinking she could inspire a powerful new piece, I emailed her back.

But after days of back-and-forth conversations, something in Shaw’s emails began to feel a little off. After idly wondering to my boyfriend whether she could be a fake, he suggested that I run the emails through a text checker for artificial intelligence.

The result was unequivocal: Shaw’s emails had been machine-generated. I’d been interviewing an AI the entire time.

As a result of Waugh’s story, a number of these information clearinghouses have tried to cull their ranks of AI “experts” while the deceived publications have retooled or removed the stories with fake people in them. Although the founder of one of these “expert mills” blamed much of the situation on “lazy journalists,” he kind of gave up the game a bit when it came to explaining why these platforms don’t prevent the frauds from gaining access in the first place:

Darryl Willcox, who founded ResponseSource in 1997 and sold it in 2018, says that the simplicity and speed of platforms like ResponseSource is key to their appeal and that attempts to add authentication risk slowing down the system.

Willcox said: “The other factor which complicates things a little bit is that these platforms are quite an open system. Once a journalist makes a request they can be forwarded around organisations, and sometimes between them, and often PR agencies are acting for multiple parties, and they will be forwarded onto their many clients.”

In other words, “If we slowed down to make sure things were accurate, we wouldn’t be as appealing as we want to be.” Eeesh.

So what can you to to avoid quoting a fake person? The overarching theme is basically, “Don’t be a lazy journalist,” but here are a few more specific tips:

TRUST, BUT VERIFY: The old Russian proverb really comes into play here and for good reason. I often say that paranoia is my best friend and has kept me out of a ton of problems. To that larger point, not only did I click on every link I could find in Waugh’s story, I also Googled the hell out of Waugh himself. Why? I imagined that it would be the most epic “Punk’d” moment on Earth if the media world was flocking to this story about AI screwing with journalists, only to find out that Rob Waugh was also an AI fake. I found LinkedIn, X, Bluesky, media staff pages and at least a dozen photos. I wouldn’t bet the house on the fact he’s real, but I’d probably bet the lawn tractor.

This can be harder in situations like the one involving the cancer scammer, as regular people tend not to have as big of a social media presence or digital footprint. That said, even regular people under the age of retirement should have left a few breadcrumbs out there for you to find.

KICK THE TIRES: If you can’t find the person clearly through a digital search, feel free to play a little game of 20 Questions to see if you can get some things ironed out. Experts who have kicked the tires on a few bots can offer you specific ways to ask questions that will tend to ferret out fakers. The author in the cancer-scam story revealed that asking for specific photos based on prior conversations can be helpful as well.

I learned about this kind of thing in trying to defeat scams when it came to buying sports memorabilia. When unknown sellers offered either exactly what I wanted when I couldn’t find it anywhere else or provided me with a ridiculously low price for something I knew should cost more, the pros who had been around the block a few times suggested I ask the seller to “coin the image.”

What this meant was that I wanted the person to take a picture of the item with a coin (usually asking for either heads or tails, or maybe even a specific coin) so I could tell they had the item and weren’t messing with me. Turned out, that advice helped me dodge a bullet or two. As weird as it might seem, asking someone to take a picture with their left hand raised or holding a quarter with “heads” showing might help you avoid a problem.

MEET IN PERSON: Again, this is the most obvious one to suggest. If you meet a person, in person, it’s a pretty safe bet that you can consider them real. The rest of the stuff (Are they the expert they claim to be? Did they really do what they say they did? Do they actually have cancer?) remains a risk without substantial additional reporting, but at least you’ll know they exist.

If that can’t happen for legitimate reasons (the person lives too far away etc.), look for other ways to get some human connection with the source. That could be a Zoom/Teams/Whatever video chat or an actual phone call at an actual phone number. In the cases where the frauds proliferated, it was pretty clear that the only connection between the source and the journalist was through a keyboard. That’s especially dangerous when you don’t have a prior relationship with a source.

WHEN IN DOUBT, DO WITHOUT: At the end of the day, there is no journalistic rule that says you have to use a source, a quote or a “fact” just because you have it. If you don’t feel comfortable with how a source is providing you with information or you aren’t 100% sure this person is a person, it’s better to leave that source out of your story than it is to run the risk of getting bamboozled.

If you say, “Well, the whole story will fall apart without this one source and I can’t get anyone else to provide me with this information,” maybe that’s more revealing than anything else we’ve said here.

For Stanford, DEI stands for “Don’t Edit It”: University uses AI to add a Black student to its Dining Advertising

(The Stanford Review at Stanford University showcased the original photo and the “diversified” image the school used in its advertising.)

THE LEAD: If at first you can’t make your campus look diverse, let AI do it for you:

Stanford Residential & Dining Enterprises recently used AI to change the races of the students it included in its advertisements. AI was also used to noticeably slim down and alter students’ faces.

On his journey to campus, Stanford student Billy Ramirez ’27 was sent an image he recalled a Stanford photographer taking. Upon closer examination, he noticed that he had been removed from the photo and replaced by a AI-generated black woman.

On top of the swap out of Ramirez, the AI apparently decided the Asian lady could stand to lose a few pounds and that the white kid needed a better haircut.

And we wonder where young people get their issues…

DOCTOR OF PAPER FLASHBACK: Not to get too “old man shouting at cloud” about this, but back in the day at the University of Wisconsin Madison, administrators didn’t need AI to improve diversity.

They used Photoshop:

MADISON, Wis., Sept. 24 (AP) — The University of Wisconsin at Madison has acknowledged altering a publicity photograph to add a black face to a crowd of white football fans, a step the college says it took to present an image of diversity.

The university said last week that it had digitally altered the cover of its fall admissions brochure to include a black senior, Diallo Shabazz, who says he has never even attended a football game at the university. The mistake was brought to light after a sharp-eyed staff member at the student newspaper, The Daily Cardinal, noticed that Mr. Shabazz’s face seemed to be lighted differently from the other students’.

(“You think anyone will notice we stuck a random black guy’s head in there?” “Nah… Print that thing!”)

Back then, it became such a viral thing (back before we really knew what viral was) that The Onion even took a shot at this stupidity:

DISCUSSION STARTER: What is your general feeling about using AI to alter reality, especially in a way like Stanford did? You could easily argue that people were being lazy, in that I’m sure they could have found a photo that represented the diversity mix the folks there wanted. You could also argue that this is deceptive, which calls into question every OTHER thing the folks present as fact. There are also a ton of other ways you can look at this, so have at it.

Good Good Golf runs Bad, Bad Ad: A look at the fallout from misogynistic advertising (A Throwback Post)

THE LEAD: Good Good Golf has seen a series of lost partnerships, lost jobs and lost credibility after an ad the company ran appeared to be promoting violence against women.

Good Good Golf faces mounting backlash for a controversial online video ad that sparked accusations of sexism.

On Thursday, the digital media company lost its three-year partnership with Callaway Golf, while the PGA Tour said Good Good would no longer sponsor one of the association’s tournaments in November. The ad, co-branded with Callaway, shows a male golfer shoving a female golfer to the ground as she reaches for his driver.

THE LEVEL OF STUPID GOES TO 11: What became interesting right after Callaway cut ties with Good Good was how tone deaf the CEO was in his social media posts:

God (and your husband) will be watching: The failed Peloton Christmas ad campaign

Unless you have been living in a cave, you probably know that Peloton has landed on the “most-hated” list for gifts this Christmas, thanks in large part to the ad shown above.

Social media users have skewered the ad for its gender stereotypes, its use of a “gender normative” set of characters and its generally creepy “God is watching” vibe:

Peloton is so far sticking by its widely mocked holiday ad. The spot, called “The Gift that Gives Back,” continued to air Tuesday evening on networks including ESPN, Lifetime, Bravo and HGTV, according to ad-tracking service iSpot, even as criticism grew.

The ad, about a woman whose husband gifts her an apparent life-changing exercise bike, sparked a gender backlash that clearly clashed with any seasonal cheer the brand was expecting.

“It’s a complete male fantasy ad,” says Kit Yarrow, a consumer psychologist, noting that the spot could inspire men to be “gifting heroes” and get “skinnier spouses.”

A Peloton costs between $2,250 and $2,700, depending on which package you buy. That’s pretty pricey for something destined to become a high-tech clothing rack. It’s probably even more expensive when you factor in the therapy you’ll need when the instructor starts screaming at you to work harder.

A good friend who is a feminist scholar nailed the Peloton ad in a way I couldn’t:

She is already fit and she documents every minute for him as if he is watching her every move. Look at her face. At the end she says her life is so much better but there is no evidence given why her life is better, except that she gets up before dawn when she doesn’t want to so she can ride some bike for him. No one should do such things only because another person wants them to.

After I read that post, I went back and rewatched the ad. I noticed things like the look on the wife’s face on day one: It’s a mix of fear and “I hope to please you.” The fact she records every day for the purpose of eventually showing him the video at the end is freakish. The fact that she seems to be biking at all hours seems obsessive.

The daughter seeing her already-thin mom biking like a maniac provides a strange modeling behavior. Also, what the hell was the guy doing all this time? Is he in a room full of TVs watching her like Billy Baldwin in “Sliver?” At the local bar getting fat on beer and pork rinds, because, hey, it’s not like he has to worry about his waistline.

Holiday ads for high priced items tend to really lead to awkward advertisements. The Kay Jewelers “Woman who is scared of lightning and needs man to protect her” ad stereotypes women in multiple ways. Also their slogan of “Every Kiss begins with Kay” seems to imply, “Wanna get laid? Buy her some jewelry!”

Pick any Lexus ad that involves a big red bow and you essentially can see even more awkwardness. If you want to step past the fact it’s pretty much always some rich handsome dude buying some trophy wife woman an overpriced Toyota with better hubcaps, you can still see some real creepy in this ad:

Not sure what they were going for here. “Lexus: Bring out the little girl in your wife.” Eeew.

If the maxim, “There’s no such thing as bad publicity” is true, Peloton is getting a heck of a lot of value out of body-shaming a stick-thin woman. People are debating the ad online and morning shows are running it on a constant loop to give it an official “tsk tsk.”

However, the truth probably is that the company did more harm than good to its brand. The stock price, which got a quick uptick after the ad went viral, has since gone back down, in a slide some are calling a “nightmare.” Also, any guy who picked up a Peloton in November thinking, “She was asking about this thing. I’m a great guy for getting it.” is now swearing up and down to Citibank that this was a fraudulent charge.

Maybe the only person who came out of this with any benefit was Monica Ruiz, the wife in the commercial, who scored another gig based on her role:

Writing digital headlines without abandoning old-school journalism values

A friend and journalism professor put this challenge to the hivemind recently:

“I have been teaching headline writing the same way for decades and I think headlines have changed drastically in the last 10 years and no longer are we writing headlines the same way as sentences with a noun and a verb, but we are writing things that are more like teasers, invitations and clickable phrases. Does anyone have any material on how to write headlines for digital media (not print)? I need to update what I am teaching my practicum and journalism students.”

As I’ve always said, the blog is about what you need, when you need it, so here goes our look into the world of headlines for digital media:

THINGS THAT ARE THE SAME:

A number of things that we tend to think of when we look at traditional headlines remain valuable in writing digital media headlines. In looking into a number of media outlets and organizations that are working on headlines or studying them, here are some things that they are pitching for today’s writers that should look familiar to those of us old enough to remember the 1980s well:

Short and Simple/Clear and Concise: Depending on which way you want to play this, the authors of these suggestions are trying to get at the same basic thing: Make sense for your readers and don’t screw around while doing it. I’m more of a fan of “clear and concise,” in that clarity and simplicity aren’t always the same thing and in most cases it’s better to be clear than simple. Still, the idea is all about not wasting your reader’s time or space on their screens.
Accuracy above all else: If it’s not right, it doesn’t matter. That means it’s important to do your research on the topic, read the story fully, understand what the words you are using mean and double/triple/quadruple check your head for any mistakes before you push the big red button.
Concrete nouns and vigorous verbs: As much as passive voice has a space in headlines in print (Kennedy killed; Trump elected president), you get a little more room in digital heads to work in noun-verb-object format and really nail down those first two items.
Answer “Why do I care?” above all else: If people don’t know why they should care about something, they’re not going to pay attention to it. In some cases, it’s an easy sell, while in other cases, you have to rub their nose into it like you’re training a dog that keeps pooping in the house, but it needs to be there in a meaningful way.

Consider the headline that just showed up in my feed while writing this:

US House passes funding bill to avert government shutdown

It hits most of the marks pretty simply: Short/simple, (9 words, 57 spaces including blanks) accurate, (House passed the bill, it was a funding bill, without it we would likely shut down the government) concrete noun/vigorous verb, why you care (no government shut down)

Now consider these other ones:

House passes short-term funding bill to prevent a shutdown before the election

House sends government funding bill to Trump to avert shutdown ahead of Midterms

Congress passes funding bill to avoid October shutdown, pushing fight past midterms

U.S. House Passes Homeland Security Funding Bill Ending Shutdown For All Department Of Homeland Security Agencies Except ICE and CBP

The verb in three of the four alternatives is the same (passes), with three of the four focusing on the House (vs. Congress). The alternatives tend to focus on the election while the original didn’t. All are longer than the original, but each has something more than the original included in there (in the case of that last one, way, way, way too much…)

THINGS THAT ARE DIFFERENT:

The digital world gives us several challenges that are crucial to be aware of when we’re moving away from print heads.

SIZE, IN A DIFFERENT WAY, DOESN’T MATTER: We talked about the importance of keeping things short in both digital and traditional headlines. However, there’s another size issue we need to consider. In newspapers, we refer to headline copy as “the big type,” as it was traditionally larger than body copy and the idea was that the bigger the story, the bigger the headline size. Look at some of the headlines written when World War II ended and you get the idea.

The end of World War II was a big enough deal to cover everything above the fold (and at least an inch or two below it) with two letters and a hyphen.

In the digital realm, size doesn’t matter in terms of the font, because search engines and news aggregators treat all words exactly the same. They don’t stop and say, “Oh, wow! This headline is huge! I better move it up in my results list.”

PEOPLE ARE ATTUNED TO HYPE SO AVOID IT: Like most things we are inundated with, people have gotten over being enticed or impressed with “EST” claims. THE BEST BRAND! THE FASTEST WAY TO MEET WOMEN! THE CHEAPEST AIRFARE IN THE WORLD!

In fact, using this approach will actually activate defenses of readers who will now be less likely to trust you and will be more likely to push back against you. It’s like when your lazy stoner roommate comes to you and says, “Hey, I want you to know I just did everyone’s dishes, cleaned the bathroom and put in a little extra for rent this month.” If your Spidey Sense isn’t going off at that point, something is wrong with you.

FOCUS ON “U” ELEMENTS: To generally write effective headlines, experts at American Writers and Artists offer the “4 U” approach:

Be USEFUL to the reader,
Provide him with a sense of URGENCY,
Convey the idea that the main benefit is somehow UNIQUE; and
Do all of the above in an ULTRA-SPECIFIC way.

Beyond the maxims and cute little clusters of advice, however, headline writing comes down to applying the basic skills you’ve learned within your writing classes to this point. Let’s get into the nitty-gritty stuff and look at some key ways to do this:

Identify your point in six words or less: One of the best bits of advice I have been given about writing is to boil everything you are doing down into one simple, declarative statement before you begin. If you can’t do that, you don’t know what you’re doing yet, and you need to go back to the drawing board. The more sure you are of the point you want to make, the easier this is and the more clearly you can do this. When you are kind of all over the place, you don’t know what you’re trying to say in the headline. When that happens, it’s probably safe to assume you’re going to be all over the place when it comes to everything else as well.

Start with a few words that define what you’re trying to accomplish. Don’t worry if they don’t form a perfect noun-verb-object structure. Also don’t worry if you’re not using declarative statements at this point. As you will learn later, these variables take on different values in your writing here than they have in everything else you’ve written to this point.

Custard is superior to ice cream
Write a better blog post
Study more effectively for finals
Avoid 8 a.m. classes
Is 4-wheel-drive worth it?
Selena Gomez or Taylor Swift?

In each case, we’ve identified a lane we intend to drive in and we did it in less than six words. This means we focused. Some focus could be better. “What does “worth it” mean?” or how are we comparing these singers? It’s all not perfect, but it gets us off the tee and into the middle of the fairway.

Usability experts talk about the 3 and 3 rule, which states that people scan headlines in the same way they scan text: They basically catch on to the first three words you write and the last three words you write. In the middle is kind of a mess of letters that they’ll go back to if the first three and last three words grab them.

With that in mind, you want to start strong and end strong on your headlines for the digital media world. If you’re lucky and keeping things tight, the middle is tiny compared to the first three and last three words. If you go back to the example head, you’ll see a good example of how this works:

Front 3: US House passes
Back 3: Avert government shutdown

If we dodged “US” it might be a bit stronger with “House passes funding” so, that’s something else to think about.

Focus on benefits: When you are doing feature pieces, particularly those in the “how to” range, you want people to see your story as the solution to all their problems.

People will smartly employ aggressive attention filters while scanning headlines and you’ll get through that filter much more easily if you spell out your benefits rather than imply them slyly in a nuanced fashion. The big type is supposed to hit you in the head with a hammer, so make sure it does.

Ask yourself, “What possible good will come to my reader from spending time with this thing that I’m writing?” Then focus on that:

Dinner for a king on a peasant’s paycheck
Save time studying for finals
Build your savings account without depriving yourself
Avoid stupid Facebook arguments with redneck friends
Learn why Putin is your friend

In many cases, the idea of “how to” is implied in there while in other cases, it’s just about learning something you need to know. However, the goal is to really tell people, “This has value. Read me.”

Pick words other people would pick: The easiest way to be found is to put yourself out there in a way that people would look for you. Let’s say your roommate had a really rough night and threw up in the kitchen sink before going to bed. You wake up the next morning and find this disaster of Jagermeister and Taco Bell has coagulated in your sink and has somehow after about 30 seconds of trying to run the garbage disposal, it stops and you’ve got no idea what went wrong, but you still have a mess on your hands.

You can’t call the landlord and you don’t have money for a plumber, what are some words you would choose to google to get you out of this jam? (garbage disposal, sink, plug, stuck, broken, fix MORE).

The point is, you wouldn’t Google “Lousy roommate” and “food death spiral in the sink” even though those would likely be the first words out of your mouth in describing this disaster to anyone who would listen to you. Those other words are what you need to get out of this jam.

In many cases, we would call the words you would pick out keywords or SEO-driven search terms. What you need to do is figure out what words go with your topics as part of the headline. In marketing, people often refer to these kinds of terms as part of a word bank or a brand dictionary, but either way, you want to find them and use them. Basically, pick words other people are going to pick.

Follow the formula: Certain headlines match up with certain types of digital pieces, much in the same way that certain topics lend themselves to certain types of stories and blog posts. Here are some examples of what I mean:

Instructional post: “How to avoid talking politics with racist relatives at the holidays.”
Listicle post: “10 things only children of the 1980s will understand about watching movies.”
Profile post: “The Finnish Farm Boy who held the Russian Army at bay for six months.”
Analysis post: “A deeper look at why US/Iran nuclear deal will lead to Armageddon” or “Five things the Iranians didn’t ask for in the nuclear deal but should have.”
Cheat Sheet: “A helpful series of MS Word quick-keys that will speed up your typing.”

Certain words match up with certain topics: Numbers with lists, “how to” with instructions, “helpful” or “easy” or “simple” with cheat-sheets. Analyses rely on “deeper” or “smarter” or what have you. When you think of the types of posts you read, you can now see how the words match up with the types of posts.

Lenka Istvanova analyzed blogs that got the most clicks based on headlines and found a simple formula that tends to relate to most of the things we want to see in a headline:

Numbers + Adjective + Target Keyword + Rationale + Promise

Here are a few general applications of those items:

Ten Simple Dating Tips for People Who Want to Avoid Gold Diggers

Five Strong Resume Words Job Seekers should Use to Rise to the top of the Pile

One Difficult Thing Overweight People Should Do Every Day to Avoid Giving up Pizza

Seems ridiculous, but it really does work. Keep in mind, the formula can shift based on what you plan to do or what topic you plan to cover.

Kash Money: FBI Director Patel sues the Atlantic over claims he’s a drunk (and what journalism students should learn from this situation)

Although this isn’t a great look for a guy accused of drinking to excess, the author of the Atlantic article on Kash Patel stated that this is among the least worrisome moments of his time as FBI director.

THE LEAD: Kash Patel is looking for cash money to the tune of about $250 million, after the Atlantic ran an article accusing him of being too drunk too frequently to run the FBI :

The F.B.I. director, Kash Patel, sued The Atlantic on Monday, accusing it of defamation over an article that claimed his excessive drinking and unexplained absences were putting his job in jeopardy.

The article, under the headline “The FBI Director Is MIA,” was published on Friday and detailed Mr. Patel’s behavior in his role leading the Federal Bureau of Investigation, citing more than two dozen anonymous sources. The author, Sarah Fitzpatrick, wrote that Mr. Patel’s conduct had “often alarmed officials at the F.B.I. and the Department of Justice.” The article said he “has also earned a reputation for acting impulsively during high-stakes investigations.”

Mr. Patel denied the claims in a statement to The Atlantic, which the article included.

THE BACKGROUND: Sarah Fitzpatrick’s article focuses on a string of incidents in which a long list of unnamed sources note that Patel was exhibiting all the textbook signs of an entitled frat boy. These allegations included:

He was drunk and missing a lot of work because of it.
He was drunk at his favorite local bar while hanging out with co-workers.
He frequently jetted off to Las Vegas, where he got plastered at another favorite hangout.
People had to rework his schedule to avoid early morning meetings because Patel was sleeping off the action from the night before.
He was too messed up to do his job when people tried to reach him, or they just couldn’t reach him at all.
He bragged about things that weren’t true, including misinforming the public about the capture of the Brown University shooter.

The White House issued a statement with a blanket denial of these allegations and Patel himself was quoted as saying, “Print it, all false, I’ll see you in court—bring your checkbook.”

IT’S ALREADY FIRST AMENDMENT 1, PATEL 0 IN DEFAMATION SUITS: A judge has already tossed out one of Patel’s attempts at cowing the media based on allegations of defamation:

A federal judge in Texas has tossed a defamation suit brought by FBI Director Kash Patel against former FBI assistant director-turned-MSNBC contributor Frank Figliuzzi.

Patel had sued Figliuzzi over comments he made on “Morning Joe” about the FBI director’s evening activities.

“Yeah, well, reportedly, he’s been visible at nightclubs far more than he has been on the seventh floor of the Hoover building,” Figliuzzi said on the show last year.

<SNIP>

U.S. District Judge George Hanks Jr. (wrote) “Figliuzzi’s statement, when taken in context, cannot have been perceived by a person of ordinary intelligence as stating actual facts about Patel.”

“A person of reasonable intelligence and learning would not have taken his statement literally: that Dir. Patel has actually spent more hours physically in a nightclub than he has spent physically in his office building,” the judge added.

I’m glad about the verdict, but given what we’re seeing these days in terms of “reasonable intelligence and learning” out there, I’m worried where that bar will be set in the future.

WHY YOU SHOULD CARE AS A JOURNALISM STUDENT: This article and Patel’s suit provide a pretty interesting look at how defamation (or libel) tends to work or not work, as well as an opportunity to look into building stories like this. Here are some key issues:

UNNAMED SOURCES: This whole story is built on the backs of sources that Fitzpatrick did not name in the article. That is ALWAYS a huge risk in journalism for a variety of reasons. Source credibility comes into question, issues of people having axes to grind show up, sources who eventually get IDed might backtrack and leave you holding the bag… The list is pretty long and the dangers are pretty strong.

The things that make this a little more stable than many of the other stories that show up with an unnamed source along with a wing and a prayer are:

A) The volume of sources. Fitzpatrick is stacking people like cord wood in this thing, noting as many as a dozen people have corroborated the things she’s putting into her piece. If that is accurate, and I have no substantive reason to doubt it, that means this story has some stronger legs to stand on than most.

B) I go back to a conversation I had with my friend Allison, who covered the Chicagoland Catholic church molestation scandals of the early 2000s. I used to ask her how she knew for sure that the priests in her stories were serial pedophiles. The information she gathered came from the accusers, usually years or decades later, and was almost impossible to back up with documents or other “official source” content that I had gotten used to using in my own work.

Her answer was simple: She did a ton of digging, verified in every way she could and then she published the content and waited. In almost every case, if she published one or two accusations, she immediately heard from at least three or four other people who told her the same things had happened to them.

Cue the update from Fitzpatrick after her story ran:

“My response is that I stand by every single word of this report,” she said. “We were very diligent. We were very careful. It went through multiple levels of editing, review, care.

“And I think one of the things that has been most gratifying, after – immediately after the story published was, I have been inundated by additional sourcing going up to the highest levels of the government, thanking us for doing the work, providing additional corroborating information.”

The only way Fitzpatrick was going to get this story was by providing anonymity to her sources, so she took a risk. That said, it wasn’t a foolish risk, which is something to keep in mind when someone says, “Hey, I have a story for you, but you can’t use my name…”

A HIGH BAR TO CLEAR: As a public figure, Patel has to demonstrate that the Atlantic engaged in actual malice, as opposed to mere negligence, and that’s a pretty tough thing to do. As the folks at Poynter point out:

Can Patel actually be successful in his suit? Sure, anything is possible, but it’s unlikely.

During an appearance on CNN, Brian Stelter, CNN’s media reporter, said, “Actual malice is the very high legal standard that public figures have to prove in order to win a defamation suit. They have to prove that The Atlantic knew these claims were false or had a reckless disregard for the truth.”

This kind of goes back to the first point in a way: When you only have one anonymous/unnamed source, there’s a huge risk you are buying the Brooklyn Bridge and you should know better. When you have a dozen or more people telling you the exact same thing, it’s going to be hard to prove a vast conspiracy among those folks and the reporter, with them all knowingly trying to frame you for something.

It also merits pointing out that what makes for a public figure or not isn’t always easy, so it’s important to think about the stories you’re writing that might cast aspersions. Patel is obviously public, but if you’re writing a similar “too drunk to work” story about the school librarian or a local business owner, if things go south, this might be a concern.

GETTING SLAPP-ED AROUND: We have discussed the concept of Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation, or SLAPP, suits here before. The John Oliver/Bob Murray Suit was one of my favorite versions of SLAPP suits, primarily because not only was it so blatantly obviously meant to silence criticism, but also because it allowed me to use the name “Mr. Nutterbutter” in my textbooks.

As fun as this was, not every SLAPP suit involves two giant bankrolls fighting it out in court. In one case in Georgia, a prominent family sued a grocery worker with what was clearly a case of SLAPP. In another case, an Iowa newspaper almost went bankrupt defending itself against a libel suit that smacked of SLAPP. In that situation, a police officer sued the paper for accurately reporting his inappropriate relationships with teenage girls.

This brings to bear an unfortunate point: Just because you’re right, it doesn’t mean some yahoo won’t sue you to make your life miserable. What’s important to know before you go after a story is to what degree your media outlet will support you, to what degree you can accurately defend your work and to what degree you think the juice is worth the squeeze. Then, you can decide how to move forward.

In Patel’s case, it was obvious he would be coming after the Atlantic, and it was obvious the Atlantic had a big enough war chest to fight back. That said, these kinds of suits can create a chilling effect on quality journalists who want to do important work. It’s not supposed to happen in a society in which the First Amendment provides us with some of the best support in the world, but we do have to deal with the reality of our surroundings.

I Scream, You Scream, but When Stephen A. Smith Screams, He Makes $40M A Year: Understanding how our “hot-take culture” took hold of us

This is perhaps the most informative and honest look at what journalism has become and why it has become more and more difficult to have students do quality journalism when screaming stupid thoughts at other people is a much more lucrative option:

Joon Lee’s piece tapped into a few things that most of us already knew:

Our society has gotten less civil and but exponentially louder and less informed.
It’s cheaper and more lucrative to have two idiots screaming at each other on TV than it is to invest in quality journalism based on clarity an nuance.
If something works at a small level, people will inevitably increase the frequency and intensity of it until the speakers essentially go to 11.

Beyond that, however, here were some really fascinating things (and I use “fascinating” to cover over a multitude of emotional states I had watching this, ranging from “feeling informed” to “wanted to vomit through my ears.”):

The walk through the history of how ESPN built this culture of hot takes showcased the way in which the spike in the ratings from Skip Bayless screaming at people eventually moved us from debate to hot take.
The honesty Lee provides about his experiences in being a guest on one of these shows. After Stephen A. Smith made some pretty racist comments about Shohei Ohtani not speaking English, Lee got asked to step in and present some information about the impact of Ohtani and racism on the Asian American community. His points were great, but what people on social media most commented on was how he got Smith, who never apologizes for anything, to apologize. It was then he realized the content was secondary to the battle.
Lee was also honest about how he felt the pull of the hot-take gig, in that it brought him more into the public eye, helped spike up his social media presence, led to raises at work and other such things. In short, he understood why people would do this, even as he wasn’t really that fond of doing it.
Stephen A. Smith’s overall earnings was reported here to be about $40 million per year, which helped me understand why every sports kid I teach wants to be like him. I also realized I should have started screaming at people for no real reason much, much earlier in my life…
How sports set the table for this, but how it has now poisoned almost every area of our lives, including politics. I remember when Biden snapped at Trump at one of their Election 2020 debates and suddenly, “Will You Shut Up, Man?” T-shirts were for sale before the event ended. I’ve yet to see a nuanced policy discussion show up on a fridge magnet or bumper sticker, but still…

DISCUSSION STARTER: The video gives us a lot of depth and context as to the how and why of this situation, but it doesn’t really provide a lot of relief for those of us hoping we can somehow get out of this mess.

I guess the questions to get the discussion going could include, “Should we worry about this at all, given that people seem to like this stuff?” and “If we need to stop it, how can we get people addicted to better content than what amounts to a mix between a schoolyard punch-fest and cockfighting?”

A Look at the Dianna Russini and Mike Vrabel Situation: When Sources and Journalists Get Too Close, Bad Things Happen (An Unfortunately Repetitive Throwback Post)

A reporter and a source getting way too close for ethical comfort. Also, for all the times people have told me that sources and journalists NEVER hook up like this, I keep seeing a lot of sources and journalists hooking up like this…

THE LEAD: Here we go again….

Longtime NFL reporter Dianna Russini has resigned from her role as a senior insider with The Athletic, according to the Associated Press. Her departure comes amid an investigation by The Athletic into Russini’s conduct and her relationship with Patriots coach Mike Vrabel. In photos published by Page Six last week, the two were seen spending time together at the Ambiente resort in Sedona, Ariz. ahead of the NFL’s annual owners meetings in Phoenix last month.

In her resignation announcement, Russini made the case that this was a set of cherry-picked images that took a totally innocent vacation involving multiple people and turned it into a tryst of some sort. Rather than actually showcase that, she said she refused to dignify the story and resigned instead:

“Moreover, this media frenzy is hurtling forward without regard for the review process The Athletic is trying to complete,” she continued. “It continues to escalate, fueled by repeated leaks, and I have no interest in submitting to a public inquiry that has already caused far more damage than I am willing to accept. Rather than allowing this to continue, I have decided to step aside now—before my current contract expires on June 30. I do so not because I accept the narrative that has been constructed around this episode, but because I refuse to lend it further oxygen or to let it define me or my career.”

That statement has the same effect as trying to put out a fire with gasoline. As a journalist, she has GOT to know that if ANY of her sources made a similar statement, she’d crawl so far up their rear end, they could taste her hairspray.

DOCTOR OF PAPER FLASHBACK: We’ve only covered this topic about a dozen times on the blog, ranging from the look at the Ali Watkins/James Wolfe situation at the New York Times to Olivia Nuzzi and RFK Jr.’s eeew-fest.

If there’s one common thread among these situations, it almost always mentions three things:

Who was or wasn’t engaged/married in whatever entanglement is going on
Any age gap between the male and female participants (This time its about seven years, which isn’t bad when you’re 50 and 43, or at least it’s not this. In most situations like this, we get an ancient guy and a woman 20-50 years younger)
A loud and immediate statement of support for the journalist that ages like milk in the sun.

(This case has yet to be fully explored, so it’s unclear if this is more of a “Kathy Scruggs” situation of unfounded sexual accusations or a full-on “Nuzzi-gate” situation that will be used in an emergency when syrup of ipecac is not available. The Athletic says it will continue its investigation to find out what happened, which it had to do regardless of Russini’s employment status if it wanted to have any credibility in journalism.)

What’s ridiculous is that in trying to pull a single “Throwback Thursday” post together, I found myself with almost too many examples of how gender, media, ethics and entanglements led to bad outcomes. Thus, here are some links to previous posts that might have some value to consider:

I’m sure I have more of these things somewhere, but let’s say that this is enough as a starter pack for “How not to make it in journalism.”

Have a good weekend.

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

When Life Hands You Lemons, Make Lemon Pound Cake: Afroman beats Adams County deputies in defamation case

THE LEAD: The First Amendment is alive and well in Ohio, as the courts ruled rapper Afroman can make fun of anyone who kicks in his door in a quest for lemon pound cake:

The rapper Afroman did not defame seven sheriff’s deputies or invade their privacy when he put out a series of catchy, flamboyantly insulting music videos about them after they raided his home in 2022, an Adams County, Ohio jury ruled on Wednesday.

In a three-day trial that pitted two very different notions of personal outrage against each other, Afroman, whose legal name is Joseph Foreman, successfully argued that he had a First Amendment right to mock the deputies, as public figures, and that the over-the-top lyrics of his viral songs could not reasonably be taken as literal statements of fact.

BACKGROUND: The 2022 raid was based on a warrant seeking evidence that Afroman was engaged in drug trafficking and kidnapping. The rapper’s house had multiple cameras recording the raid, one of which captured a deputy doing a double take of a glass cake dish containing a loaf of lemon pound cake.

Meet Officer Pound Cake, who did not put down his gun and grab a slice and thus cannot testify if Mama’s recipe was, in fact, so nice.

The raid produced no evidence of either allegation in the warrant, but it did lead to a lot of video footage of deputies looking through Afroman’s property, breaking down his door and other miscellaneous actions.

Afroman used the footage in several music videos to mock the law enforcement officials. After the videos went viral, merch began to arrive in the form of “Officer Pound Cake” T-shirts and the like. At that point, several deputies sued for defamation and image appropriation, claiming the rapper used their images without their consent and that his album of songs and subsequent videos caused them significant harm.

DOCTOR OF PAPER HOT TAKE: What people who sue in cases like this fail to realize is:

A) You’re essentially trying to put out a fire with gasoline. The minute this thing began, people started paying more attention to Afroman, his videos and even Officer Pound Cake. I haven’t thought of Afroman in more than 20 years, but now the guy is all over my feed thanks to this lawsuit.

B) Unless you can prove (and I mean REALLY prove) that you were directly defamed in a clear, obvious and serious way, You have absolutely no shot of winning a suit like this, which means all your doing is what we outlined in Point A.

Case after case involving rappers, parody artists and other similar entertainment-based performances has demonstrated that this kind of stuff is protected speech. It also does nothing more than draw people to the very thing you didn’t want them to see.

When the PMRC put out its list of the Filthy 15, the artists and albums listed there spiked in popularity. When Jerry Falwell sued over a spoof ad in Hustler magazine, he targeted a publication that would be here one month, gone the next and likely only seen by a few hundred thousand people. However, now his name is associated with a Supreme Court case that every student in media law has seen, along with seeing the ad.

I get that it’s not fun to be the butt of the joke (believe me, after 12 years of Catholic school as the awkward kid in class, I get it.). That said, mockery is protected speech and pretty much everyone in public life gets their turn in the crap-barrel. The sooner you learn to let it go or embrace it, the less likely this will come up every day of your life.

FCC Chair Brendan Carr and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth threaten media for not being polite, kind lapdogs

This is a photo of me at a high school journalism workshop, apparently trying to explain something that I hope isn’t what it looks like I’m trying to explain. If I can handle this photo of me existing, Pete Hegseth can handle whatever the hell photos they’re taking of him these days.

THE LEAD: The folks in the government are getting grumpy about the way the media is treating them to the point of threatening and banning outlets and coverage they don’t like.

Federal Communication Commission head Brendan Carr said he wants the coverage of the Iraq war to be more “patriotic,” lest the stations within his dominion see their licenses yanked:

The chair of the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has threatened to revoke broadcasters’ licences after US President Donald Trump criticised their coverage of the US-Israel war with Iran.

Brendan Carr told the BBC’s US partner CBS News that broadcasters’ licences were not a “property right” and warned they can be revoked if stations did not serve the public interest.

Carr’s threat came after he accused broadcasters of “running hoaxes and news distortions”, saying they can still “correct course” before their licence renewals.

Some Democratic lawmakers called Carr’s comments unconstitutional. The FCC issues licences to individual broadcast stations, but does not license TV networks.

In a “hold my beer” moment, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth went one step further, barring photo journalists from his Pentagon briefings for not making him look pretty enough:

The Defense Department has barred press photographers from briefings on the ongoing U.S.-Israeli military conflict with Iran after they published photos of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that his staff deemed “unflattering,” according to two people familiar with the decision who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation.

I FEEL PETTY, OH SO PETTY: The media and the government have long had an adversarial relationship, with many political figures badmouthing and blaming on the fourth estate for whatever ails them. We’ve had politicians literally beating up reporters as well, with one “bodyslamming” a journalist in Montana, and yet still winning the election anyway.

This isn’t the standard fare of one saber-rattling chucklehead with limited power and an unlimited ego. This is the head of the FCC basically issuing a mob threat, which Democrats immediately rebuked him for making. Even Republicans who generally view the media as somewhere between a swamp rat and the crud that grows on your teeth when you forget to brush for two days are not having it:

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) on Sunday rebuked Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chair Brendan Carr’s threats to revoke broadcasters’ licenses over TV networks’ news coverage.

“I am a big supporter of the First Amendment,” Johnson said on Fox News’s “The Sunday Briefing.” “I do not like the heavy-handed government, no matter who is wielding it. … I would rather the federal government stay out of the private sector as much as possible.”

“The federal government’s role is to protect our freedoms — protect our constitutional rights,” the Wisconsin Republican added.

Johnson is my senator and I can’t remember the last time I fully agreed with him on anything, so to have us both on the same page might be as rare as seeing Jesus riding a unicorn. (You’re welcome…) Johnson’s essential position of, “I might not like what you are saying, but I’ll fight to the death for your right to say it,” is good to see, given that too few people tend to think about how life might look if the shoe were on the other foot.

The backlash against Hegseth isn’t as loud or strong, but the underlying concern of controlling the media shouldn’t be any less alarming. As much as his staff is now backtracking and claiming there’s a “space and fairness” issue driving this, I tend to believe the first report a little more for obvious reasons.

DOCTOR OF PAPER HOT TAKE: Let’s start with Hegseth because it’s easier. I’m a guy who has had his picture taken at a number of podium-based events and I swear to God, I never look good. I either look like I’m gesturing in hope of winning a game of Charades or my mouth is in some sort of position that looks like I’m eating rotten food or about to spit on someone. I’m also old and bald with bad neck hair, so that’s not helping anything either.

So, from that perspective, I can honestly say: Grow up, dude.

You were once on TV and you considered yourself a journalist, so it’s not like you don’t get the idea of how freedom of expression works. I can pretty much imagine the general outrage you’d put forth if a Democratic administration had tried to crack down on whatever you were doing on Fox News. For you to punk slap the media over a couple photographs you didn’t like when this photo of you exists seems a bit stupid:

As for Brendan Carr, his lack of understanding and his use of threats makes more sense. Carr got a bachelor’s in government before getting a law degree. He was a private practice attorney before being brought into the governmental machine in 2012. He never worked in the media, nor is his expertise in that field.

Carr reminds me of a number of school district attorneys and college counsel-folk I’ve dealt with over the years when school media got censored. They had this vibe like, “I’m a lawyer, thus I know everything and I’m way smarter than anyone else in the room.”

I remember one case in which I had to keep correcting a school lawyer about cases he claimed supported his position. Finally, I outlined several reasons he was wrong before turning to the superintendent and saying, “Ma’am, with all due respect, you’re getting terrible legal advice and likely overpaying for it.”

When governmental people come from the business or legal world, they fail to understand that they don’t have as much free reign as they used to. Being “in charge” back there meant they had unfettered power over anyone or anything within their fiefdom. In the government, we have rules and laws that constrain people from acting on their stupidest instincts.

How to cope with stress and burnout as student journalists and journalism students (A Throwback Post)

Today’s throwback post is kind of a four-parter, in that I’m bringing back the series I did five years ago on stress and burnout. The reason is pretty simple: I’m seeing it all around me at school.

I’ve got kids with mono trying to make it to “draft day” for their papers, while also staying committed to their school sports. I’ve got students who found out that the university didn’t quite count their credits they way they did, thus forcing them to jam an extra 7-week class into their schedule to graduate on time. I’ve got kids lining up for fewer and fewer seats in classes that more and more of them need.

To paraphrase Ethan Hawke from “Reality Bites,” if I could bottle the tension around here, I could solve the energy crisis.

I’m guessing I’m not alone in seeing this, unless, of course, your spring break happens earlier than mine. Either way, neither stress nor burnout is going away any time soon, so I hope this helps.

Stress and Burnout, Part IV: Hints and tips for slowing the burn

Editor’s Note: This week, we’re doing a deep dive into the topic of stress and burnout among student journalists and journalism students. The issues addressed here are part of a larger set of research articles I’ve done with colleagues, outside work done by those colleagues (as well as other researchers) and presentations I’ve done over the years at student media conventions. If you are interested in learning more, please hit me up on the contact page.

The Popularity and Perils of the Police Blotter

The Oshkosh PD police blotter is not only a bit more pedestrian than many other departments, but it almost needs a Rosetta Stone to translate it…

THE LEAD: The Wyoming Tribune Eagle ended its publishing of the police blotter as news this month, noting that despite people’s interest in the material, the ethical and legal concerns were just too risky:

People love the police blotter, because it includes tiny nuggets of drama, intrigue and joy. For instance, in Gillette, Wyoming, cars get “cheesed,” meaning people will cover them with slices of American cheese. Who doesn’t love reading about a good cheesing?

But along with the weird and wacky things that show up in a police blotter are numerous inaccuracies that follow people for life.

“There’s a lot of problems with blotters in general,” Secrest told me. “An initial charge can change really easily. They can up the charge, they can lower it, they can dismiss it entirely. Things can get challenged pretty quickly. Also, people can be acquitted.”

COP TALK 101: For those uninitiated in crime news, the blotter is a list of all the incidents law enforcement officials within a department deal with in a day. It usually lists a mix of things, including the time of the incident, the name of the person involved, the place where the incident occurred, the date of birth of the person involved and any criminal charges associated with the situation.

The blotter only represents what the law enforcement officials are doing at the front end of a situation, not the resolution of the case or any changes made later that day (or week or month).

So, for example, let’s say I’m driving to the aluminum recycling place to turn in some beer cans when I hit an icy patch on the road and skid into the ditch. The cop sees beer cans all over my car, notices that I totaled my vehicle and wants to check me for drunk driving. However, I’m too woozy and messed up from the crash to do field sobriety and the ambulance takes me to the hospital, where instead of a breath test, they do a blood draw.

The officer might list Operating While Intoxicated as an expected charge, pending the results of the blood test. So, it goes into the the blotter as an OWI. However, it turns out I’m as sober as a judge, so the charges eventually get dismissed.

If all the paper is doing is publishing the blotter info and not really following up, that can lead to several problems, like one noted in Poynter’s story on the Wyoming situation:

Although the staff received some pushback when they announced the change, “now that it’s gone it doesn’t seem to be missed,” Secrest said. “Also, this week we had a man call us and tell us that his booking sheet incorrectly designated his charge as a felony and our publishing of that, prior to this policy, caused him to lose his job. We will be able to correct that once he provides the court document confirming the charge. But that was published about 10 days before this policy took place. It felt like a good reminder of why we did this.”

A CHECK OF THE INTEREST ELEMENTS: One of the things we always talk about is balancing people’s right to know something versus people’s right to be left alone. A key way we do this is looking at the FOCII elements (Fame, Oddity, Conflict, Immediacy and Impact) to figure out if we should be doing something or not.

The blanket publication of the blotter tends not to showcase any of these elements other than Immediacy, but as we note in the book, Immediacy always has to be tempered against accuracy. In short, fast and wrong is worse than slow and right.

That said, the Oddity element often shows up in the blotter, which means checking it for information still merits value. The Fame element can also come into play, as people who are well known often end up on the wrong side of the law.

Here are two examples I remember from working with the crime beat:

At UW Oshkosh, the Advance-Titan used to run blotter items under the heading of “Busted!” In looking at the revelations put forth by the Wyoming paper regarding accuracy, that probably wasn’t the best of titles.

In one case, Busted! featured a brief bit of news in which two students were caught having sex in the middle of the day behind the giant UW-OSHKOSH sign on the main drag of campus. When the officer began to write the students up for this tryst, the guy begged the cop not to do this, because he said he knew it would end up in Busted! and thus his girlfriend would find out about his “extra-curricular activities.”

At another place and time, we had a blotter item that really tickled our irony meter. A local radio personality who went by the moniker “The Altar Boy” got busted for OWI. He apparently also gave the cops a bit of a rough time in arguing with them over the bust, noting he was someone of great import.

The folks in Wyoming noted that in cases like these, obviously, the information would be covered, but done so in a more complete way. Meanwhile, minor incidents involving regular folks would not make the paper.

DISCUSSION TIME: Does your media outlet have a blotter section of some kind and how popular is it? What kinds of things do you think are fair game and what feels like a bridge too far? Also, how would you feel if the minor indiscretion you committed in college suddenly became something anyone could find on the first page of a Google search? A lot of student newsrooms have struggled with balancing this, so it’d make for an interesting classroom discussion.

Dynamics of Writing

"Dynamics" textbooks updates, media issues and general mirth

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