Dynamics of Media Writing

The Junk Drawer: The Big, Beautiful Edition

Hey! There’s my big, beautiful tape dispenser!

Welcome to this edition of the junk drawer. As we have outlined in previous junk drawer posts, this is a random collection of stuff that is important but didn’t fit anywhere else, much like that drawer in the kitchen of most of our homes.

 

SCORE ONE FOR THE GOOD GUYS

Officials in Marion County, Kansas agreed to pay approximately $3 million dollars to a small local newspaper after it assisted in raiding the paper’s office in 2023. The settlement also included an apology from the county.

We covered this back when the raid happened, but as a brief recap: City and county law enforcement executed a search warrant at the Marion County Record in search of information that a reporter had illegally searched criminal records. The raid was a blatant violation of the First Amendment and led to a series of lawsuits.

Suits against the city and other individuals are ongoing.

 

“QUIET PIGGY” IS GOING TO BE THE NAME OF MY “FASTER PUSSYCAT” COVER BAND:

President Donald Trump went 2-for-2 in reminding me I lack the proper restraint to be a reporter any more. On Tuesday, he went into a tirade against ABC journalist Mary Bruce for asking questions about the release of the Epstein files and the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Aside from calling her a “terrible journalist,” he noted that she asked a “horrible, insubordinate and just a terrible question.” I’d argue that’s not possible, in that to be insubordinate, she’d have to be working for him or for Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who was the target of the question.

On Friday, Trump essentially did more insult in less space when he told BBC reporter Catherine Lucey “Quiet! Quiet, Piggy!” after she asked a question on Air Force One.

In both cases, the journalists and their institutions refused to counter punch, with the BBC issuing a statement about its commitment to “asking questions without fear or favor,” while ABC remained silent.

Neither journalist has made a fuss about the situation, speaking either to their amazing professionalism, the way they’ve gotten used to these temper tantrums or both. If that happened to me, I’d probably be in the middle of a Secret Service-led cavity search due to my lack of decorum.

 

HEY CHATGPT, WRITE A CATCHY SUBHEAD HERE FOR ME BECAUSE I’M AS LAZY AS THIS SOURCE IN THE NEXT SEGMENT:

A former student sent me this one with a note: “This has gotta be up there with your students’ terrible chatgpt emails asking for extra credit and leaving [Enter Professor Name] at the start.”

 

STOP TRYING TO MAKE “FETCH” HAPPEN:

When are people going to get the message that simply repeating a phrase doesn’t make it a thing? President Donald Trump often starts a trend in how he refers to something in a weird way, only to have a bunch of imitators jump on the bandwagon, making it awkward for those of us trying to write about his stuff.

Case in point, his use of “Big, Beautiful” to describe the centerpiece of his current administration’s bill that dealt with tax cuts. He kept it up to the point that everyone, including the IRS’s own website, finds itself having to parrot this line. Now, Texas is in on this thing, as it’s referring to its redistricting attempt in a similar fashion:

“We are running under the lines lawfully passed by the Big Beautiful map and the courts will not thwart the will of Texas voters and their Representatives,” Cain said. “We are confident this temporary court obstruction will be swiftly overcome.”

<SNIP>

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican

“The radical left is once again trying to undermine the will of the people. The Big Beautiful Map was entirely legal and passed for partisan purposes to better represent the political affiliations of Texas. For years, Democrats have engaged in partisan redistricting intended to eliminate Republican representation.”

I’m not commenting on the intent, actions or outcome of either of these things, but I can say I feel for the reporters who have to ask questions using this nomenclature. It sounds either like we’re trying to engage a small child (“Who’s my big, beautiful boy?”) or it’s part of a particularly niche fetish site (“Click Here for Hot Videos of Big, Beautiful Bill!”)

This clearly must stop.

PERHAPS THEY’LL RELOCATE TO NEW JERERSEY:

 

And finally… 

A student who was doing a survey in my Writing for the Media course was chatting with me about a few things when she said she was going to be taking that class next semester.

“People who have taken this class are like, ‘Good luck with that,'” she said.

She then explained that she heard the class is hard, it requires a ton of writing and that a lot of people fail it.

I wasn’t entirely sure what to think about that, so I told the student this:

“Go back to the people who said they failed the class and ask them two questions: “Did you turn in every assignment on time?” and “Did you ask for help when you were confused?” I’d bet my house that the answer to one, if not both, of those questions is ‘No.'”

She also said something that kind of broke my brain a little bit:

“What’s weird is all the people I know who failed your class said they loved it and thought you were a great professor. They said it was really hard but they enjoyed it. It’s usually not what I hear from my friends about a class. It’s usually, ‘I got an A. It was a great class.’ or ‘I failed and the professor was an asshole.'”

So… Thanks? I guess… for whatever that says about me and my teaching acumen.

Breaking (or Broken) News: The pros and cons of keeping track of what’s going on in small towns via social media during the decline of legacy media

While driving home from Milwaukee this weekend, I could see a haze of smoke in the distance that just kept getting bigger the closer I got to the house. I first spotted it about 20 miles south of where I exit I-41 and about 30 miles to the east of the farm.

Smoke like this isn’t rare out by us, as farmers and land owners will often burn brush piles the size of a Winnebago, but this seemed like it might be something more than an average Sunday burn after the Packers game.

When I pulled up to the intersection about three-tenths of a mile from my house, the road was blocked with barricades and squad cars. I managed to weasel my way past the blockade and pull into my drive way, all along wondering, “What in the hell is going on out here?”

A quick check on social media filled me in a bit:

On Facebook and Instagram (at least), a number of people were posting bits of information about what they saw or what they heard:

To be fair to local media, there was some basic coverage, both from the ABC affiliate out of Green Bay, and the area newspaper, the Waushara Argus:

Even after reading all of the posts I could get my hands on and scouring the local media for more than what the local EMS folks put out, I found myself thinking about the pros and cons of how we get information these days. According to a 2025 study by the Reuters Institute, 54% of Americans get their news from social media today, pushing it past all forms of traditional legacy media. The discussion of partisanship, limited focus and the waning of traditional media power on the national or global level are assessed in this thing, which is great for the big picture.

That said, most of the time, we are likely more concerned with what’s going on around us, which falls to a lot of local media outlets or people around you with internet access. With that in mind, here are a few ways in which that can be a good thing or a bad thing on the local level like what I was dealing with Sunday:

THE PROS:

TONS OF INFORMATION: To be fair to the local social media folks, I got far more, volumewise, out of their work than I ever would have received from TV, radio or a newspaper. The videos, the photos and even the mapping gave me a lot to consume:

I also heard from people who were actively being evacuated from their homes in real time:

These are just a few screen shots of the hundreds of messages that were being shared at this time. Granted, a lot of stuff was repetitive, but I could pick up little nuggets here and there with a careful read of these forums.

 

CONTINUAL COVERAGE: The local media did the quick check in, put out some information and moved on. The local folks were a lot more interested in keeping an eye on things. At one point, a news outlet noted that everything was under control, but the social media folks (and my own eyeballs) pushed back on that. It seemed as though the wind (which we get a lot of out in our area) had stoked some of the fire in a part of the marsh that wasn’t fully extinguished, and things kicked up again.

By relying on the info from the fire folks, neighborly chatter and nosy folks like me who were willing to ask a cop at a cross street a thing or two, we all kept up to date on how risky things were and what was really going on. Those bits of info were continuing to be posted and shared on social media, as were some updates on when Highway 21 reopened, if the fire had moved any farther south and if additional fire folks were being called to the scene.

When I was a reporter, I found that I did a lot of “hit-and-run” journalism, in that I saw the disaster, wrote about the disaster and moved on from the disaster in a relatively short period of time. That’s kind of the nature of trying to cover everything in a large geographic area. These folks were more concerned about a specific disaster in a specific area and they could dedicate more resources to keeping people up to date.

 

MINOR NEWS FOR MOST, MAJOR CONCERNS FOR SOME: Social media has the ability to help niche audiences in the ways that traditional media never could. In the case of this fire, that came to the forefront in a few key ways.

For starters, as a lot of people were being driven from their homes and farms, some folks had concerns related to what to do with their pets. A local business up the road from us posted on this topic to help people who were in need:

Other folks felt it important to recognize the people doing the work to keep their homes safe:

These and a lot of other somewhat tangential issues were addressed on the social media platforms that were providing coverage on the fire. From a news-outlet perspective, a lot of these would be somewhat minor concerns, as they don’t impact the entirety of the circulation area or media market. However, to the people who were in the middle of all of this, keeping animals safe and finding ways to help each other in a time of crisis was the No. 1 priority.

This is really where social media, with its niche-level connections, really shines.

 

CONS:

SAYS WHO? One of the things I’ve found myself scrawling on news stories a lot these days is, “Says who?” My students know that this means they failed to attribute important content that is not a “water is wet” kind of fact to a particular source.

In this case, I found that some issues really didn’t matter to me in terms of who was posting. The videos and photos were relatively similar, so I was pretty sure that they all weren’t the work of AI trying to blame some political policy for a wildfire. In addition, I could triangulate some issues, using multiple platforms to get a handle on the situation.

For example, I knew where Highway 21 was closed by me, I had a couple maps from social media that represented where the fire had spread and I used my map app to look for specific areas where traffic was either light, heavy or prohibited.

However, when I saw this post, I found myself really wondering about source credibility:

My concerns on resharing this on social media (with the guy’s name attached) or believing what he had to say were as follows:

  • He’s essentially stating on social media that he started this fire. I don’t know if what he did was criminal, in that it sounds like an accidental ignition, but there might be rules about using ATVs in that area or during certain time periods. In making this public, he could not only open himself up to some legal issues, but also let some potentially irate folks know who he is, thus leading to some possible online harassment or worse.
  • I have no way of knowing if he is telling the truth. In journalism, we tell you that, “If your mother says she loves you, go check it out.” I did some minor sleuthing on this guy’s social media and didn’t find any terrible red flags that he was a bot or a troll, but that’s conjecture, not facts. Given my experiences with people who liked to insert themselves into dramatic police events, I’m erring on the side of caution. (One day, I’m going to write a post about “Whacko Wayne,” but until, then you can feel free to trust me as much as you normally do…)
  • I have no way of knowing if this guy is who he says he is. This might be someone using this guy’s account to make a statement or it might be some troll deciding it would be hilarious to mess with people. As we found out during the Las Vegas shooting, some people are completely fine using a tragedy for “the likes.”

There are a dozen other things I am paranoid about here, as I am someone who was held to account for what appeared under my byline. In the case of social media, this kind of paranoia is unlikely to exist.

Which brings us to another big concern…

 

UNTRAINED, UNREADY AND UNAFRAID: The concept of the Dunning-Krueger Effect has become exceptionally popular in the past decade or so. The broader theoretical and sociological aspects of it are often beyond what most of us consider discussion-worthy, but the long and short of it is that people who have a little experience in an issue are irrationally overconfident in what they are doing:

It took me a lot of time and a lot of disasters to become good at covering things like this fire, and even now, I’m not entirely sure I have it nailed down perfectly. That said, the people on social media have access to the same kinds of broad-based communication tools as I would have back in the day, and are completely untrained as to what kinds of things they can/can’t or should/shouldn’t say for legal, professional or ethical reasons.

They’re also completely fine in sharing information without thinking twice about those things, because they were never trained in the way we train media students, who then become media professionals. For example, I don’t know if the guy who said he started the fire actually did it, nor do I know how much consideration he gave to “outing” himself. However, a media professional with experience in this area would have considered those things and had discussions with other professionals before putting that information into the public sphere.

Beyond this issue, I find a lot of accusations on social media that have me breaking out into hives, not because of the accused’s alleged actions, but because of the legal hell-scape that can befall the accuser if things aren’t dead-on accurate. I keep hearing Cliff Behnke’s voice in my head as I see this stuff and imagine what he’d do to me if I just kind of spit-balled things like these people seem to be doing in some cases.

If you don’t know what the risks are when you do something, you tend to be unafraid of those risks. That doesn’t mean those risks aren’t real and can’t hurt you. That’s why we train students to be aware and prepared for these things.

In the end, I’m sure I missed a few more negatives and positives, but the bigger issue is that this kind of approach to locally newsworthy events is likely to continue to slide more toward the social media end and away from the legacy media. I’m not sure what can be done to prepare folks for this or to help them stay out of trouble, but I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

If you can make an easy decision and not feel torn about it, you really didn’t have an ethical dilemma (A Throwback Post)

Around this time of year, we tend to cover ethics in a few of my classes. Granted, we talk about the importance of ethics all year in various ways, but this is when we hunker down and say, “OK. Let’s really dig into this.”

One assignment I’d given for years involved a scenario in which you are a reporter at your college newspaper and you get leaked some documents about an arrest earlier in the year. The football team’s star running back was picked up for driving under the influence and a search of the car found illegal marijuana (I’ve been doing this for so long now, I have to qualify that this weed is illegal…).

You know the documents are legit, so you go through the process of calling sources. The player pleads with you, the coach threatens you and basically you have a story if you want one. The editor leaves it up to you.

The variety of answers of what they would do always amazes me. The one thing at least one student tries to do is “split the baby,” even though it’s stated this can’t be done: You either run it or you don’t in what is the last publication before winter break. They always seem to think there’s a way to finesse the situation so they don’t have to make a hard choice.

Others make a stand that says the people have the right to know, while even more sympathize with the athlete, seeing themselves as college students with potentially problematic pasts that run parallel to this kid. The one answer that always bothers me is the decision not to run it because “It might hurt our football program.” They essentially see themselves as part of the “football tribe” more than the “journalist tribe” in all of this.

Still, it’s fun watching them come to grips with various ways of seeing a situation when it’s more about “should or shouldn’t” than “can or can’t.” To that end, here’s a throwback post that outlines an ethics assignment that turned out even better than the one noted above, although I don’t know if you can replicate it.

Enjoy.

 

The Accidentally Awesome Ethics Assignment

Trying to make ethics real to students isn’t always easy. Fictional scenarios only go so far, as students can be unrealistically brave (“I’d tell my editor to kiss my grits and I’d quit!”) or fall into “Lebowski mode.”

In my freelance class, we talked about the various elements of ethics (honesty, integrity etc.) as well as some of the crucial aspects of what makes life a little different for freelancers (You only eat what you kill. You might have differing standards for different editors. etc.)

That said, I think I accidentally bumped into one of the more engaging assignments of the entire class. Here’s the story:

I have no attendance policy for the freelancing class, other than to say, “If you skip class, you’re losing out on whatever important thing we’re doing that day.” I figure, hell, they’re paying for the class through their tuition. If they want to treat my class like that Planet Fitness membership they haven’t cancelled over the past six years, despite never actually going to Planet Fitness, well, fine by me.

Only half of the students dragged themselves to the 8 a.m. class in the bitter cold on the day we had the ethics lecture. After we mulled the ethics of ethics and so forth, I asked them to consider the following:

“How would you feel ethically if I decided to just give you 100 percent on the third (final) story you have for this class because you showed up today?” In other words, I waive the assignment, you get the points. It’s like you showed up and you got a free cookie for doing so.

It was like pulling teeth to get them to discuss it at first. Some were happy to take it, others said, “Well, I’d feel a little guilty, but…” Eventually, they kind of settled in with the, “Gee, I don’t know but it sounds nice in theory” outcome.

So, I told them, “I’m going to leave the room. You have 15 minutes to come to a conclusion on if this should happen or not for real. If you don’t all agree, nothing happens. If you all agree on getting the freebie, it will happen. Go for it.”

As I sat in my office, I could hear the arguing, the overlapping voices and the frequent of yelling of “YEAH, BUT, WAIT…” After the 15 minutes, the appointed spokesperson of the group tossed open the door and yelled, “UNNNNGGHHH! FILAK! WE’RE READY!”

They explained that they were going to take the freebie and why they thought it was OK. Some justified it as they were always there and other people tended to skip a lot. (“One of the people not here just Snapchatted me a picture of themself in bed, so I don’t feel bad at all about this…” one student noted.)

Some said they figure life is a lot of luck of the draw, so they just got the lucky draw. Others said the benefit didn’t technically hurt anyone, as it wasn’t like the people who DIDN’T get the free pass had to do MORE than they would have otherwise.

I then said that they had really touched on all the areas except for one that seemed a little obvious. I asked a student if she had covered a vintage clothing event she was paid to do as a freelancer. When she said she did, I asked, “So, what if, after you published this piece, the person who organized the event came up to you and thanked you for such a nice story and gave you a $100 gift certificate to her vintage clothing store? Is that OK? I mean, you’re getting a benefit for something you would have done anyway, right?”

The student just stared at me. The young lady next to her said, “I think I want to change my vote.”

Then one kid asked me, “Is this real? I mean… some of us weren’t really sure that you meant it.”

“No,” I said. “This is real. You get the freebie.”

“My stomach kind of hurts,” another kid said. “This just feels weird now.”

I dismissed the class and they kept talking about it as they walked down the hall, some arguing while others trying to reassure themselves this was fine.

I hadn’t planned this at all, nor did I really think of how it would pan out, but here are a couple things this exercise ended up emphasizing:

REAL LIFE ETHICS ARE HARD: In life, there are a number of decisions I’ve made that I look back on and think, “What if I’d gone the other way?” Almost all of them are ones in which ethics are deeply ingrained.

I’ve never been a fan of debating ethics in a classroom setting because it feels like a false front to me. It’s the same reason I have trouble teaching crime reporting in a classroom: I could do a fake press conference about a fatal accident or have kids “role play” a terrible scenario, but in the end, it’s not real. While ethical debates give the students some things to consider, the impact isn’t there.

The thing that made this situation hard for them was that there were real consequences. They got something for free, which they likely felt they didn’t earn. It was an all-or-nothing situation, which I have found many students don’t like, as they prefer to hedge their bets as opposed to putting it all on 23 Red and spinning the wheel. It was something they really wanted, but they also felt guilty about their good fortune when compared to that of their missing colleagues. Which leads to point two…

GUILT IS A BITCH: One of my favorite discussions ever happened during the weekend I got married. My best man, Adam, came from a traditional Jewish family, while I and the rest of my kin were mostly in the Catholic realm. During the downtime before the wedding, Adam sidled up to me and said, “You’re on to something about Catholic guilt.”

Over the years, we’d had these great debates over whose faith had the bigger slice of the guilt pie. He argued that the stereotypical “Jewish mother” guilt was both real and unrelenting when it came from people within one’s family, while I argued that the less-direct Catholic guilt was like the smell generated from one of those plug-in oil things: It is everywhere and it just hangs there all around you.

In the end, we kind of came to the agreement that this was like arguing Hank Aaron vs. Willie Mays or Mickey Mantle vs. Joe DiMaggio: It all depends on how you slice the argument, but both are more than worthy of greatness.  Guilt, be it Catholic guilt, Jewish guilt or other similar guilt is really a pain.

The situation in class drove that home for me. These kids were literally getting stomach aches and headaches as they tried to wrap their brains around the idea of what was being offered and if they should take it. The emotion most of them came back to was one of guilt.

I’m not saying that’s good or bad, although guilt has led me to both good and mediocre decisions in life, but to have so many people from so many different backgrounds have their mental state coalesce around one emotion really says something.

THERE IS NO GOOD DECISION: One of the things I tell students a lot is that if you end up dealing with an ethical dilemma and you feel perfect at the end of your decision-making process, you really didn’t have an ethical dilemma. Dealing with these kinds of things in journalism is a lot like this scene from “Argo:”

There can be situations where you feel better or worse about the choices and the outcomes, but at the end of the day, you really don’t get to feel like everything is perfect. The key is to learn from each situation and make better bad decisions as you move forward.

“The Tool Doesn’t Know It’s Hurting You:” Learning user responsibilities in working with Artificial Intelligence

(I’ve done a number of dumb things with tools. This one, thankfully, has never occurred to me.)

On a relatively frequent basis, I find myself with a new cut, ding, gash, burn or other similar wound as a result of my hobbies. I nearly clipped the top of my thumb off with a Dremel, put a nice slice through the back of my calf with a carpet cutter and slammed my hand onto a piece of sheet metal so hard, Amy could see the tendon that manipulates my thumb.

I’m not alone in my quest for inadvertent body modification, as two of my uncles managed to saw off their thumbs while reaching across table saws. One got his reattached, while the other ended up being only able to count to 9.5 for the rest of his life.

These and other similar moments remind me of something my father told me that his father told him about needing to respect the tools of our trades: The tool doesn’t know it’s hurting you.

In other words, a sander is going to sand when you power it up, regardless of if it’s sanding off a layer of wood or a layer of your fingers. The drill is going to drill a hole through something, whether it’s helping you remove a spot weld on a piece of sheet metal or giving your hand the look of stigmata. And saws are going to cut, and they won’t really know the difference between a tree limb or one of your limbs.

That’s why you always have to understand the purpose of the tool, treat the tool with respect and protect yourself from the harm that the tool can do to you, because it really doesn’t have any skin in the game, unless it’s cutting through yours.

In teaching media writing, I’ve often made the analogy that every skill we cover is another tool that the students get to put in their toolbox. The more tools they have and the better they practice with them, the stronger their work output will become. In covering AI this week, I reinforced that concept with the the analogy outlined above: AI is a tool, neither good nor bad, and you need to understand what it does or doesn’t do before you start playing around with it.

To that end, here are a few suggestions I gave to the students regarding the proper use of AI that I hope might help your folks as well:

USE THE TOOL AS INTENDED: I’ve had a number of bad breaks along the way when it came to trying to use a tool in a way other than it was intended. I’ve broken countless drill bits when I used them on material that was too strong for their composition or tried to widen a hole by rocking the drill around. Neither of these moves were very bright, as I knew better.

That said, I’ve also used tools without thinking twice about how they were actually supposed to be used. For example, it took me a while to figure out why the glass kept breaking in some cabinets I’d refinished before I understood the point of using push-points instead of epoxy.

When someone develops a tool, that tool usually has a specific intended use. When you try to outstrip that purpose or make the tool operate in a way it was never intended to operate, bad things can happen. This is why it’s important to understand what each AI tool is intended to do.

For example, models of OpenAI were criticized for short-term responses and an inherent need to please people. In responding to each question or statement without a larger understanding of context, along with a stated goal of providing encouragement (while obviously trying to extend user conversations), the models led to a number of problematic outcomes.

When you are building content for consumption as a media professional, AI tools can be great things, but you have to understand what each one does and doesn’t do, lest you find yourself doing more harm than good.

USE THE TOOL, DON’T RELY ON THE TOOL: My great-grandfather was a carpenter and he actually built the house he lived in for the majority of his life. The ability to do this boggles my mind, as I can’t cut on a straight line worth a damn.

The even more incredible thing is that he did it in the early 1920s without the benefit of power saws, battery-powered drills or air-driven nail guns.

If he had those items, I’m quite certain he could have done the job even faster, but he was still skilled without them, making his work less about reliance on a tool.

As with most technological advances, AI can make things easier on us when we want to get things done. People who have mastered tasks like writing, photography, graphic development and more can now do things faster and better thanks to AI, but that’s mainly due to applying their underlying skills to these new tools

The folks who have mastered these tasks without AI are concerned about what will happen to people who CAN’T function without the AI doing the work for them. These are reasonable concerns, in that it’s never a good thing to become completely dependent on a tool of any kind, lest that tool become unavailable or in some other way problematic.

The best thing you can do in learning media skills is to use AI as one of your many tools, but not let it do the work for you. You need to pair your human nature with those tools to create things that go beyond whatever AI can spit out.

Learn the way in which you can make the tool work for you, and then apply it appropriately.

DO DIFFERENT WORK, NOT LESS OF IT: One of the most tedious tasks for me as a reporter was transcribing recorded notes. It seemed to take forever to get through a small section of an interview and I found myself having to go back repeatedly to get the quotes exactly right. When I learned of true transcription AI, like Otter.ai and others, I found myself falling in love.

The technology was great, it did a reasonably decent job and it took away a task that wasn’t really at the core of what my job entailed. That didn’t mean, however, that I saved myself from doing any work related to this task.

On more than a few occasions, the translation wasn’t perfect. Fortunately, I was able to play the recording again as I watched the text, so I could make changes to the quotes. In other cases, the quotes didn’t pan out as well as I thought, because they weren’t as pure as they likely would have been if I’d have been scrawling text and guessing at a few words. Thus, I had to find better quotes to fit the bill, knowing as I did what was and wasn’t entirely accurate. Although the net benefit was heavily in my favor, it wasn’t a 100-0 sum game.

AI tools do some forms of work for you, which is great, but it doesn’t absolve you of all responsibility. In many cases, it just shifts the work you have to do to something else. Think about moving from being a reporter to an editor in a student newsroom: You are no longer out there gathering facts or bugging people for interviews. Instead, you are asking questions of the reporter, poking holes in the story and generally making sure the reporter is sure.

Take the same approach to AI when you are employing a tool: Check the transcript carefully to be sure it wrote what someone actually said. Check each fact the same way you would if Johnny or Janie Freshman wrote it in their first story for the paper. Scour the material for holes based on your own understanding of the concept, rather than accepting the AI version as gospel.

There are obviously more things you can do to keep yourself on the right side of AI, but like the application of most tools, practice will improve performance and care will limit unintended consequences.

And probably save your credibility from needing a bandage or two.

Consider the Source: Four Key Things to Keep In Mind When Deciding Whom to Interview

… but I’m gonna quote you anyway!

One of my favorite stories about source credibility came from Jim Bouton’s classic book, “Ball Four.”

Bouton is explaining a situation where a first baseman is coming in to catch a pop fly, yelling “I GOT IT!” repeatedly. Instead of getting out of the way, the pitcher comes flying in and runs the guy over, which lets the ball drop and the batter reach safely.

Bouton then yells to the irate first baseman from the dugout, “(The pitcher) had to consider the source!”

The point, obviously, is that the value of a message is almost directly in proportion to the quality of the source. This is something we need to keep in mind when picking out our subjects for interviews.

Here are four simple things to consider when deciding whom you should interview when you are picking sources for a story:

DOES THIS SOURCE ACTUALLY KNOW ANYTHING?: This might seem like the dumbest start to a post like this, but if the sources in “localization” and “reaction” stories are any indication, this bears consideration. These kinds of stories are among the least popular ones for reporters who absolutely hate having to interact with an increasingly ignorant general population.

It also doesn’t help that we tend to find ourselves asking these people to give us their innermost thoughts on everything from the deployment of U.S. troops on U.S. soil to the decreasing size and quality of funnel cakes at county fairs. The “just do this and get it over with” attitude can really take over.

This can get even worse as we get lazier and do the “Let’s see what the 14 loudest idiots on social media had to say about this topic” and just do screen shots of their Twitter posts before we call it a day.

That said, it’s important to push back on this instinct and really try to figure out if the source actually can add something to the sum of human knowledge. You don’t need to give them a 20-question exam to see if they have an expansive knowledge of presidential powers vis a vis the Posse Comitatus Act, but at the very least see if they ate a funnel cake before letting them complain about it.

KNOW WHY YOU ARE PICKING A SOURCE: Journalism is often learned by sharing among the collective knowledge within an organization. That can be good in some cases, as older reporters can help younger ones learn from the mistakes of yesteryear. In other cases, it’s bad because you find yourself with a narrowing perspective on how things should work.

This is often true when it comes to picking subjects to interview. When I didn’t know who would help me by providing important information and quotes, I’d often ask the folks around me, “Who’s a good source for this?” The names I got back became the sources and then they became part of my stories. The problem with this is that I never once thought about WHY this person was a good source.

Often the “best” sources were the ones most willing to talk, the easiest to reach or who generally “played ball” with the newspaper. These folks often liked seeing their names in the paper and they made it simple for us to get our job done. It was a symbiotic relationship, but maybe not a good one. In retrospect, I often wonder if I was just taking the path of least resistance and not helping my readers as much as I should have.

When picking a source, ask yourself why that source is a good pick. If someone suggests a source, ask that person why the source is good in that person’s mind. If the source meets your needs and avoids problematic concerns, you should be in good shape. If the answer is, “They always get back to us right away,” think a bit more about that choice.

AVOID “POTSHOT PAULIES” IN YOUR WORK:  You need to think about if the source is actually giving you anything other than a self-serving chunk of content that doesn’t really do much for you or your readers. Instead, they decide to take a potshot at a topic of their choosing and you let them get away with it.

I pulled this quote a long time ago during an election cycle and it seems to be emblematic of what I’ve seen in so many political stories:

So, in other words, the person didn’t really answer a question, didn’t give you any real information and you decided the best way to deal with that was to give them the opportunity to use you as a megaphone for their own point of view on a random topic of their choice?

I wish I could get away with that stuff in my job:

Filak refused to comment on the allegations he was selling grades for money, but instead leveled a criticism of his choosing.

“People are worried that the McRib won’t be available all year round,” he said. “This is disastrous for all people on planet Earth and this is where the focus of all humankind should be right now, dammit!” 

If the person isn’t giving you anything of value to your readers, don’t give them a chance to use you to do whatever they want.

ARE THEY ALL SIZZLE, NO STEAK?: We often talk about people who are “good quotes” with the idea that they’re verbose and they usually give us more than the boring cliches that seem to populate most content. We like the turns of phrases they made and the way in which they approach the content.

We had a chancellor one year who was just gifted at weaving prose together into a tapestry of verbiage that would make Aristotle and Shakespeare look like Beavis and Butthead in terms of communication. However, when we would actually look at what was said, we realized there was absolutely no information in the quotes themselves. They sounded great at the time and they had big, important-sounding words in them, but at the end of the day, it was just a whole lotta nothing.

Part of that is our fault for not actively listening and holding people to account for their words. Another part is that we keep going to the same people and expecting different results. If the quotes aren’t doing more than looking fancy and yet signifying nothing, consider another source.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

6 Key Practices for PR Students Who Want to do Crisis Communication

(Crisis communication takes deft skills and clear messaging that require you to do a bit more than this… )

In teaching a course on public relations case studies this semester, I’ve learned that there seems to be a constant stream of situations that need strong crisis communication. The assassination of Charlie Kirk, the censorship of Jimmy Kimmel, the “don’t take Tylenol” proclamation and the LDS church shooting/arson are just a few of the situations where people were essentially going about their daily lives and are suddenly thrust into crisis communication mode.

In some cases, people do exceptionally well handling a moment that needs a deft touch and clear explanations. Other times, we see what can happen when the person at the podium doesn’t exude those traits.

As I’ve explained to students over the years in terms of covering crises from a news perspective, I can give you a lot of examples and advice, but there isn’t a step-by-step set of instructions that will cover every situation. Furthermore, you don’t know how you’re going to feel as you’re getting ready to share this information, whether its about a corporate scandal or a major loss of life. However, here are some guiding principles as you try to do the best you can with what you have:

Be quick: One of the most critical factors in crisis communication is timing. The widely accepted rule of thumb is the “15-20-60-90” timeline: within 15 minutes, an organization must acknowledge the crisis. It should share preliminary facts by 20 minutes. By 60 minutes, more detailed information should be shared, and within 90 minutes, the organization should be ready for a press conference or further media engagement. Everything after that is variable based on the situation.

Be accurate: You are the head of the river and the source of everything that flows down stream in terms of information. This means you need to be cleaner than a cat’s mouth when it comes to the information you put into the media ecosphere. Check every fact like you’re disarming a bomb. Verify anything you aren’t sure of. If you don’t know, tell the people that you don’t know and that you will go get that information for them as soon as you can. “No Comment” isn’t the answer, but “I don’t know” will work once or twice during a breaking situation.

Be consistent: In most cases, people will say to have one spokesperson and speak with one voice. That can work in some cases, particularly in the case of things like simple press conferences after disasters. However, in a lot of cases you are trying to put information into the field in a variety of ways, including social media, standard press releases, press conferences and more.

To that end, the goal is consistency across all platforms. If you are running everything, that can be easier than if you have 12 people involved in keeping 12 platforms up and rolling. The best way to keep a message consistent is to minimize the number of messengers and make sure they all are working from the same page each time they release information. Otherwise, the media outlets will go forum shopping.

Be clear: During a crisis, messages must be simple and direct. Avoid jargon and ensure everyone quickly understands all communication, regardless of familiarity with the situation. This is especially important when dealing with diverse audiences.

When doing internal crisis management, focus on how the crisis will impact the various aspects of the enterprise and use the language that best explains the “what” “so what” and “now what” to these people. This is where using shared vocabulary that isn’t common to the public is fine, as it will be more helpful to them than trying to “dumb it down.”

For external crisis management, think about how you would say it to your mom, your best friend or someone else who would want to know what you have to say. Don’t bury them in jargon that would only make sense to people in your field or organization.

Be human: The best public relations acknowledges the human side of the situation, particularly if there is some sort of significant loss for people. That could be the loss of jobs, the loss of property or even the loss of life.

Expressions of concern and sympathy need to happen and they need to be GENUINE. The generic “thoughts and prayers” line is almost as bad as “no comment” in the PR toolbox, so think about what you can say (check with the lawyers if need be) and then say it in a way that makes people think you actually care.

Be current: The 15-20-60-90 rule is a great starter, but it only gets you ahead of the game for a little while. Whether things work out well for you or not depends on if you STAY ahead of the game. That means being current with what is happening and getting it out to the people who need to know before anyone else does.

The reason why leaks happen is because a) people who know stuff think they’re more important than the organization and b) reporters get antsy and look for ways to get stuff faster. (Think about the people who pass you on a two-lane road.) If you are constantly updating people with the best and most current info, you become the main source of information and you control the narrative.

Be aware: As much as you need to be putting information out into the media ecosphere, you need to be on top of what everyone out there is saying about you and the situation. This means keeping an eye on mainstream media reports, social media posts and even idle chatter around an ongoing event.

Rumors gain traction when they are allowed to fester unchecked. So do conspiracy theories and the “I heard from a crucial source that…” people. You need to quash that stuff and the best way to do it is to make sure you know it is going on.

The Four-Word Interview Rides Again (A Throwback Post)

Today’s post was sparked by a Facebook memory that reminded me both how damned old I am and how lucky I am.

My dad took the above picture 16 years ago today, just after I purchased my first mid-life crisis vehicle: A 1968 Ford Mustang. Dad knew it was the right thing to do as we were taking a test drive. (I can’t repeat exactly what he said here, as the editors at Sage might have their heads implode, but trust me, it was accurate recognition of pure joy.)

The old part should be obvious, but I want to quantify the lucky part.

I’m lucky that I’ve got a wife who told me, “Go get it. We’ll figure out the rest later.” I’m lucky my dad, who always “had a guy,” could take it to a mechanic to get an honest review and then help me go get it. I’m lucky I have a mom who helped me understand that everyone needs some joy in their lives, or else life isn’t really worth a whole lot. I’m lucky I have a job where a car like this wasn’t going to negatively impact the family or what we need to do to survive.

Beyond that, I wanted to say I’m lucky to have the opportunity to converse with you all on a weekly basis. Yesterday’s post had a number of people I’ve never met reaching out to tell me, “Thank you! I’ve been complaining about (FILL IN THE TOPIC) for a while and maybe the kids will now listen!” I’m lucky that I’ve got the folks at Sage, especially Staci Wittek, who is constantly finding ways to tell people that what I write is good for their students.

Not everything is roses and sunbeams in life, but I will say that when I would get behind the wheel of that car, a lot of the anxiety or distress that comes from all the world’s problems just kind of melt away a little bit.

For that and everything else good around me, I am grateful.

 

 

The Four-Word Interview

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(The subject of a four-word interview.)

I stopped off to get gas this morning when a man in his 70s approached me.

“What year?” he asked, pointing to the Mustang.

“’68.” I told him.

He nodded. “Nice.” He then got in his truck and drove away.

In the simplest of terms, this was a perfect interview and the whole thing took four words.

In all the reporting and writing classes I have taught, the biggest problem students tell me they have is interviewing. They don’t know what to ask or how to ask it. They feel awkward talking to other people or they get the sense that they’re being pests. They would rather just email people and hope for answers instead of approaching people in public and talking to them. This is why interviewing features prominently in both the Dynamics of Media Writing and the Dynamics of News Reporting & Writing.

Interviewing is a skill and like any skill, you need to practice it to become better at it. That said, it is important to understand that every day, you conduct dozens of interviews, so you are probably better at it than you think you are. You ask your roommates how their day went, you ask the waitress what the special of the day is and you ask your professor, “Will this be on the test?” If you don’t think of these interactions as interviews, it’s because you are overthinking the concept of interviewing.

The purpose of an interview is to ask someone who knows something that you need to know for the information you seek. When you get that information, you do something with it. The guy at the gas station wanted to know one thing: What year Mustang was I driving? He figured the best source was me, the owner of the car. He asked a question that would elicit the answer he sought. He got his information and he moved on.

Interviewing as a journalist can seem much more complicated than that, mainly because you have to do a lot of preparation, you need to troll for quotes and you need to figure out how the answers fit in the broader context of your story. That’s all true, but if you start with the basic premise of “What do I need to know?” your interviews can feel more natural and less forced.

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Terrible tragedies occur when shots fired by armed gunmen ring out (A throwback post)

A newspaper of note sent me an alert recently that told me that police were engaged in an  “active investigation” near on the campus of my alma mater.

When I noted on social media that I’d give anything to know if police were ever in the middle of a “passive investigation,” a mentor messaged me a few more stupid terms that needed to die in the fire of journalistic hell.

(My favorite remains “armed gunman.” If you ever see a guy with no arms holding up a bank with an uzi in his mouth, I’ll back off on this one. Until then, knock it off.)

When police were investigating the Charlie Kirk killing, he sent along one more term that was getting a lot of use:

If you have a “to do” list, please add the “shot rang out” cliche. God I hate that.

The wall-to-wall coverage of Kirk’s death seemed to find as many ways as possible to weave that phrase into the mix, along with one of the problematic phrases listed below (terrible tragedy). Thus, in hopes of getting the message across this time, I dug up the list of bad terms and phrases that really need to go away immediately if not sooner.

 

An Unprecedented List of Radical, Breaking News Items that Need to have their Ticket Punched to the Ash Heap of History

Every so often, we hit up the Hivemind here for words that are getting used way too frequently for no really good reason. Without further ado, here is the list that emerged from our most recent visit to cliche town:

Unprecedented: Between the pandemic, the Trump lawsuits and the trend of cooking chicken with Nyquil, we are the point where the bar for something receiving the “unprecedented” label is pretty high. At this point, it better be Jesus riding a unicorn while throwing tacos to his followers.

(And thanks to the AI artists program, we actually can check this one off our bucket list of “unprecedented” things.)

You’re welcome. Now, go find something else to use in place of this word…

UPDATE NOTE: Since AI is advancing at a ridiculous rate, I gave this prompt another shot and got the image below:

(I’ve gotta say, we got a much better Jesus and unicorn, as well as some minor improvements on the followers but apparently AI is still having problems with tacos. At best, those are pitas or loaves of unleavened bread…)

 

Miracle (sports): I’m sure it was a great game or an incredible comeback, but unless the seas parted between third and home or loaves and fishes multiplied in the end zone, we can stop with this.

Radical (political ads): Did the candidate threaten to castrate guys with tin snips in the parking lot of an Aldi’s as part of their plan to limit the needs for abortions? THAT’S radical. The rest is just stuff you don’t like.

Squash (legal term): It is not. You quash a subpoena. You squash a bug. Or you plant a squash.

Agenda (political ads): I’ve yet to run into a politician who has a fully formed set of motives and efforts that they’ve outlined and subsequently enacted, which is the literal definition of an agenda. In most cases, it feels like this:

Punched their ticket to: Nobody punches tickets anymore. I can’t even get a paper ticket so I can keep the stub as a souvenir. I think if the bands you’re seeing are old enough to qualify for Social Security, the fans should be allowed to request paper tickets. And those will still remain unpunched.

Phone ring off the hook: Phones no longer have hooks. They rarely ring. I get that “Phone buzzing off the desk” doesn’t have the same feel, but maybe just take the next train out of Clicheville… I bet they’ll punch your ticket on the way out.

Weaponize (politics): If you accuse people of “weaponizing” race or gender, they’d better be able to launch a missile out of something. Same thing with anything else we “weaponize.”

Officer-involved shooting: Tell me the cop shot someone or that someone shot the cop. Active, not passive.

Breaking news: It’s not breaking just because you finally figured out about it. Also, it’s not breaking news just because you want to tell me something now. “Breaking news: I just started writing this blog post… More at 11…”

Parlay: By definition, it is, “a cumulative series of bets in which winnings accruing from each transaction are used as a stake for a further bet.” You did not “parlay initial success” of anything into anything else. Unless you could lose that success, stop it.

Brandish: It requires a waving with a flourish, usually in anger. The robber with the gun in his pocket didn’t brandish anything. Unless he broke out into show tunes with a dance number…

Parents’ worst nightmare: Really? We sure on that? I just finished watching the Netflix series on Jeffrey Dahmer, and I lived in Milwaukee during that whole time period, so I’ve got a pretty high “nightmare” threshold. I’m sure whatever happened sucked, but if you spent any time in my nightmares, you’d probably not be talking about a kid not answering a cell phone on time in that regard…

Iconic: A friend notes this article on Ben Affleck and a nap as the moment “iconic” jumped the shark. (Another phrase we should stop using, probably, unless this happens again…)

Unique: It means one of a kind. Unless it’s a snowflake or the Hope Diamond, find a different descriptor.

Ash Heap of History: Unless we really are burning the books, stop using this to describe things we stopped using.

Worth noting: Translation- “I don’t have this from a source, but I want to tell you something.”

Terrible tragedy: As opposed to what? Those fantastic tragedies that make us all happy to be here?

Incident (cop speak): “Police responded to an incident in which…” We know it’s an incident. Everything is an incident. Me typing right now is an incident…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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