Dynamics of News Reporting & Writing

Catching up with a former student got me to see how best to help future students

I spent part of this week catching up with a former student who has a job most of my current students would give multiple limbs to obtain: beat writer for the Green Bay Packers. The view he has of sports, his job and the importance of learning really inspired this post, so I’m hoping I do him justice.

When students around here discuss their desire to enter the world of sports journalism, they tend to focus on a variety of surface-level interests: Getting to cover games, getting to know players, seeing how the league works, publishing columns that offer opinions on the team and so forth.

In teaching sports journalism students over the years, they have often expressed a sense of connectivity to their team as well, much to my chagrin. In presenting the students with a fictional ethics scenario regarding the arrest of a football player from their school, they often declined to publish information about the situation because they say it will “hurt our team.” They’ve also noted that most of their readers would be upset that this story could create problems for “our player” or undercut “our chances” to win.

(In grading these, I’d often push back by asking, “What about your readers who think you’re playing favorites for an athlete in a way you wouldn’t for them?” or “What about your readers who aren’t fans of the team and think you’re picking sides against them?” I rarely got a substantive answer to those questions.)

Other students have complained about having to take on different assignments, such as open records, crime coverage, deep-dives and more. “I’m never going to have to know this stuff,” they’ll say, as they groused about stories that required them to look at the impact of vaccination rates on dorm dwellers, the difference between robbery and burglary or how a budget works.

In discussing this stuff with my former student a bit, he talked about all the random topics he’s had to learn about while covering college and pro sports, which led me to this list of things that can benefit ALL student journalism folks:

 

BECOME A LIFELONG LEARNER: If there’s one thing I’m REALLY worried about in terms of artificial intelligence, it’s that people will become less interested in learning things. If the AI can do something difficult for you, it’s a lot easier to let that happen and do something less taxing that you enjoy.

One of the things my former student mentioned was how he had to learn how the criminal justice system worked when athletes were accused of crimes. He also had to learn about medical conditions like CTE when former players found themselves dealing with brain damage later in life. He learned how to understand issues related to city construction and planning/zoning while seeing stadiums being discussed or construction projects related to athletics coming to fruition.

In each case, he found himself not only being nosy (a great journalism trait) but interested in learning the key aspects of each area so that he could clearly and fully explain what was going on for his readers. I also got the sense from him that learning those things made him feel more confident in his writing and less likely to become bored with the grind of the “pre-game/game/post-game” story treadmill.

Trying to inspire lifelong learning in some students can be like trying to teach a seal to play the cello, but it’s worth it when it actually pans out. Not only are students more likely to build a better knowledge base from which to write, but they’re also more likely to benefit the readers by going beyond the basics.

 

EXPLAIN “WHY” MORE: One of the stories he wrote that I still use to this day was from his summer as a sports editor at the student newspaper. As we were preparing for a final issue, an open-records request response came in, dumping dozens of emails on the sports desk that talked about the tension between a coach and the university. I distinctly remember the look on his face when that happened: it was like he’d seen a ghost coming after him with a chainsaw.

We printed off all the emails and started highlighting dates, people and specific chunks of text that ran counter to the standing narrative the U had put out, which was that everything was fine. In the end, he published a great story that really capped the summer nicely.

In chatting about it a little the other day, the former student mentioned how grateful he was that I was working with him on it and how I was explaining not just WHAT we were looking for or writing, but WHY we were doing it. He also was able to see WHY we decided to file that open-records request, as the resulting story showcased how open-record requests could reveal truths that some people had been hiding.

I have found that over time a gap has continued to widen on both ends of my teaching spectrum: I tend to think that things I have taught multiple times have a patently obvious rationale behind them, so explaining “why” seems redundant. Meanwhile, students every year seem to have less and less awareness of the entirety of things around them, thus making them less and less likely to understand why certain things matter the way they do. Each year, I try to recalibrate my end of the deal and lean in harder on explaining the “why,” both because it tends to help them better understand what I’m teaching and because if they understand the “why,” they tend to internalize it and have stronger buy in.

 

BREAK DOWN THEIR ABSOLUTISM: I don’t know if I’m the only one seeing this, but I’ve noticed that students in more recent semesters tend to either default to “I don’t know” when asked a question or they lock in on an answer and will defend it to the death, even when it’s completely wrong.

I’m not talking about questions like, “Is Donald Trump a good president?” or “Is the food on campus any good?” where strong opinions can emerge. I’m talking about things that are factually right or wrong like “Sylvester Stallone won a Golden Globe award” or “You can’t lose 50 pounds this weekend by eating a special brand of gummies infused with mystic herbs.”

I blame a lot of this on social media, not just because it perpetuates a lot of stupid content that is flat-out wrong, but also because the algorithms and such tend to reward louder, more confident, absolutist idiots. It’s always the “TOTAL PROOF THAT SELENA GOMEZ IS SECRETLY DATING A MARTIAN THAT ONLY AN IDIOT WOULDN’T UNDERSTAND OR SUPPORT!!!!” posts that do better than things with nuance and focus. Everyone is an expert, even though experts are among the most likely people a) not to be yammering on TikTok and b) to tell you that almost nothing is 100% certain.

Over the past few years, I’ve felt like I’m deprogramming ex-cult members in trying to get students to see beyond their self-assured sense of reality as they try to engage in journalism. As much as the recent political and social world has pushed us as journalists to not be objective and balanced, I think we need to actually push harder in that direction in regard to teaching students to report with a balance, but publish based on fact-checked accurate information.

A student once asked how I could do something like this with all the “bad people” in the world. I explained that every interview I did for a story, I tried to keep the door open in my mind to see what that person had to tell me. In some cases, that door was wide open, like when I would interview a fire chief about a fire or when I’d interview a nun about church safety.

In other cases, that door was hard to keep open, even a little crack, but I did it. In one case, I had to interview a guy who claimed to be the Grand Dragon of the Wisconsin KKK about his intent to stage a march on the Capitol for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. All I really wanted to know was if the guy had a parade permit, as it was essential for attempting this act. The door was open a crack with the idea that he might tell me, “Yes, and here’s why a march is protected speech and here’s the inherent value of what we’re doing.” The first six seconds of the interview slammed that door shut when he used words I won’t repeat here, but the point is, even in the most likely scenario in which I could ABSOLUTELY say, “This guy is a chucklehead,” I gave it a shot.

 

GO WHERE THE STORY TAKES YOU: In talking with the former student, we hit on a piece he did about football and brain damage.

“That was the longest time I ever spent on a story,” he said, noting it took at least a year or so. The funny thing? When he got the initial call from one source about the topic of the NFL denying an old player benefits, he figured the story would take about two days.

A lot of students have a preconceived notion of where they think a story is going to go, which can be a good thing if that’s based on significant research. Still, good stories can have a lot of twists and turns to them, so keeping an open mind (see the above point) can really help those stories develop into what they actually are, as opposed to what we might want them to be. Those stories also tend to benefit the readers more, as they reveal things that they hadn’t previously considered.

 

Some great interviewing tips from the folks running “The Interview” and an Exercise Opportunity

If there’s one common thread among all of my media classes, it’s the fear of doing interviews. Students in the earliest media-writing classes and the senior-level seminars will confess that they feel they don’t know how to do interviews, that they don’t feel they do them well or that they feel exceptional levels of anxiety while engaging in interviews.

In discussing this, some educators and writers consider this a generational thing: “Kids these days” tend to do everything digitally, so the idea of talking to someone with their mouth (in person no less!) is out of their comfort zone. I’ll disagree with that to the extent that I have had those same levels of anxiety and concerns about interviewing whenever I’ve done journalism. In the 1990s, I remember calling people for interviews and praying that they didn’t pick up the phone so I could leave a message and move on. I also remember more than once punching in six of the seven digits of a phone number, only to hang up and go for a soda.

I’ll agree with the larger point, though, in that we don’t do interviews enough, especially in person, to become proficient at them. After all, if you want to be good at anything (playing an instrument, shooting free throws), practice improves the performance. That said, the line “PERFECT practice makes perfect” really nails the key concept here: The better effort we put into each attempt, the better we will become.

Observing people who perform a task excellently is also a great way to learn how to better yourself at that task, which is where the New York Times podcast “The Interview” comes into play. The podcast/YouTube channel began a little more than two years ago and has already amassed more than 250 videos. David Marchese and Lulu Garcia-Navarro have extended discussions with all sorts of people, ranging from actors and musicians to political figures and economic experts. 

In this brief clip, the journalists discuss the things that they think makes for a great interview:

 

In terms of outcomes, absolutely, but in terms of how to get to that point, the videos themselves reveal a lot of value for anyone hoping to better themselves at this skill. Here are a few things to watch for and then adopt into your own efforts:

PREPARE LIKE IT’S THE FINAL EXAM FROM HELL: If you think about going to take a test, when are you most anxious? It’s likely when you feel like you don’t know the material and the test is in a subject you feel isn’t your best. Conversely, when you have prepped like heck for an exam in an area you know well, it’s like, “OK, stop talking and give me the damned test so I can rock this thing.”

Same basic principle applies here.

In reviewing a lot of the interviews, it’s clear the journalists have not only done their homework, but they’ve also read the book, studied the review notes and worked through some practice exercises before they got to the interview. They know all the nuts and bolts stuff about the source that they need to know before they get there and they’re often able to surprise the source with insights.

Case in point, this interview Garcia-Navarro conducts with actor and comedian Robby Hoffman walks through multiple areas of Hoffman’s life that are well-known: Growing up poor, being part of the Jewish community, taking on comedy and more. However, Garcia-Navarro touches on a key turn in Hoffman’s life when the family moved to Florida for a brief time, which leads to this exchange:

It’s not about trying to have a “gotcha” question, but rather demonstrating that you have a full view of the subject and that you left no stone unturned in trying to find out what you can. Not only will this make you feel more grounded in your interviews, but this kind of granular level research prep might even impress your subject.

CONNECT BUT REMAIN OBJECTIVE: In a number of the interviews, the journalists have some small talk prior to the recording to put the subjects at ease. They also tend to do the interviews in a place where the subject feels comfortable (a home, an office etc.). All of this is about attempting to find ways to connect with the subject and make the process feel less like an oral exam and more like an opportunity to learn some things in a relaxed (or semi-relaxed) environment.

The thing I like most about these journalists is that they are engaging and personable without trying to fawn all over the subjects they interview. They ask both simple questions as well as difficult, complex ones from a position of objectivity.

The Scott Pelley interview is the one that really drew me into the series and I have to say that Garcia-Navarro does a good job of digging into everything from the current state of CBS news to the precipitating incident that led to Pelley’s firing. She didn’t try to commiserate with him in the “Hey, I’m a journalist, you’re a journalist, we’re cool…” kind of way.

In a number of cases, she presses him on what appears to be either his naivete or ignorance in regard to how he remained incredulous that crap-talking his bosses in a staff meeting to the face would lead to his firing. When he shifts into the “Hey, ’60 Minutes’ had a lot of weird stuff happen back over my 37 years,’ discussion, she focuses him on the present. 

There is nothing wrong with having a sense of empathy and humanity in any interview, but it shouldn’t obscure reality or limit your ability to press a source when pressing is required. Always remember, you can be friendly, but you’re not friends.

ACTIVE LISTENING AND SHIFTING GEARS: The journalists have a series of questions they plan to ask over the course of the interview, but you can tell they take pride in paying attention to what the source is saying, thus giving them both a better connection with the source and giving them opportunities to learn more.

I often joke that when introductory journalism students come to my office for their five-question interview about me, they clearly are viewing me as nothing more than a slab of talking meat that helps them fulfill a course requirement. I’ve often been asked the, “Why did you come to UWO?” question and just once I’d like to say, “Well, our kid was getting older and we wanted her to have the “grandparents experience” my wife and I had, so being closer to home was good. Besides, I knew they didn’t conduct background checks, so those six students I murdered and buried in a cornfield outside Muncie, Indiana wouldn’t be a problem…”

I often imagine the student then saying, “OK, great. So, what do you like best about being here?”

Watch this clip of Marchese interviewing actor and author Lena Dunham and you can see how active listening opened a door that otherwise would have likely remained closed:

In listening to Dunham describe herself as a “slip of a person,” Marchese becomes interested in digging a little deeper on that concept. Not only does he look to Dunham for more information, but he also uses her own words to guide the discussion. All of this is part of active listening and it leads to both better answers and also better connections with the subjects.

GO BACK FOR MORE: One of the better elements of this series is that it’s really two parts: The big interview in person and then a follow-up interview to clean up some things or to allow for some rumination on the questions and answers. In a lot of those second interviews, the subjects feel more confident in their answers and also have had an opportunity to really think twice about what they said.

There isn’t a sense of “Wait don’t tell people I said that” but rather a “I’m not sure I said what I wanted to” or “I thought more about it and want to add something” or “I really find myself reflecting on that part of the discussion.” All of these elements lead to some good additional content and the reflections can help create stronger bonds between the journalist and the subject for future conversations.

EXERCISE TIME: Pick one of the videos from “The Interview” channel and watch it at least once. Instead of looking at the interview subject’s responses, look at some of the techniques the interviewer uses to connect with the source, garner information, engage in active listening and more. Also, if the interviewer hits a sour note (source reacts poorly to a question, source won’t answer the question etc.), how does the interviewer react to this? Write up some of your findings along with some thoughts on how you can use these techniques to improve your own interviews.

Indiana University Releases Its “IU Media School Task Force Report” Five Months After The Media School Ran Roughshod Over Student Media’s Rights

(A brief-and-yet-way-too-accurate explanation of how IU got into this mess in the first place.)

 

THE LEAD: Indiana University released its “IU Media School Task Force Report” late last week after a five-month process of determining how best to preserve student journalists’ rights while providing the various media outlets with governance and financial support.

The task force and subsequent report came after IU fired Indiana Daily Student adviser Jim Rodenbush in October when he refused to violate the students’ First Amendment rights. Shortly thereafter, the Media School tried to kill the still-profitable print version of the IDS, for reasons that still remain pathologically stupid.

CATCHING UP WITH THIS DISASTERBACLE: After Rodenbush was fired, he filed a wrongful termination suit against the university. As that was unfolding, the students at the IDS were prohibited from printing a paper for homecoming, as the university didn’t want any news in it because, God forbid, the alumni returning for homecoming might think something unpleasant might actually occur in Bloomington.

Not only did the kids run a full online edition of the paper, but the student media folks at Purdue University kicked in with a major assist. The folks at The Exponent printed the IDS on their presses for free and then drove the copies down to Bloomington to be publicly distributed. For a perfect cherry on top, the front page contained nothing but news of the shady stuff IU was doing to the IDS in terms of censorship.

More recently, things have turned around for Rodenbush, as he got a professorial gig at Western Kentucky University:

I have no idea what this is in the photo, but I pray its a mascot of some kind for WKU or a melting wax statue of IU Dean David Tolchinsky performing his “Stayin’ Alive” dance.

Meanwhile, the IDS staffers continue to do quality journalism on everything from drug overdoses in the area to the media report itself. 

DOCTOR OF PAPER HOT TAKE: I was recently told I’d been getting overly long in my posts, so let’s keep this one short:

  • The report talks a good game, but let’s see what the media school does in its “refine and implement” stage. We’ve got a long, documented history of the administration here being somewhere between “completely inept” and “ignorantly nefarious” when it comes to student media. I tend to believe that the proof in the pudding is in the eating and IU’s media school brain trust has been serving up a lot of syrup of ipecac pudding lately.

 

  • Even if this whole thing comes out as fine as wine going forward, it doesn’t undo the damage done to the people involved here. Jim Rodenbush lost a job, an income and probably a lot of sleep as a result of this. His life was upended because of this, and just because we media folks know he’s a hero, it doesn’t mean this is OK. The staff at the IDS had to fight a fight they weren’t supposed to be in, all while doing the paper and school, which is more than plenty to cause burnout. Advertisers got shook, distribution people had to consider the impact of this and more. Fixing the future doesn’t un-mess the past.

 

  • The administration of the IU Media School needs to be held to account for every ham-handed thing they’ve done to this point involving student media. We were talking about the concept of “actual malice” today in class, in which people are held to account for libel when they know they’re doing something wrong and yet they do it anyway. I can’t think of a more apropos term to describe what’s been going on here in regard to the administrative action as it relates to the IDS.
    If you are in driver’s seat, you get the ticket for driving recklessly. Same basic concept applies here. Everyone on EARTH seemed to be telling these people, “Stop. What you’re doing here is wrong” and they didn’t seem to really care. If we don’t want to have another mess like this one, IU needs to mete out some punitive measures to make them care about the results of their actions.

 

ASU’s use of AI to build classes from faculty Canvas course materials has instructors saying “WTF?” (A Throwback Post)

THE LEAD: You can call it “experimental AI” or “educational innovation,” but where I’m from, we call this “theft…”

Arizona State University soft launched a web app earlier this month that allows anyone, for $5 per month, to create an apparently unlimited number of customized “learning modules” using artificial intelligence. The AI chatbot, called Atom, uses online instructional materials from ASU professors to create a course that’s tailored to the goals, interests and skill level of the user. After asking a handful of questions and processing for about five minutes, Atom debuts a personalized course that includes readings, quizzes and videos from a half dozen experts at ASU.

But several professors whose content Atom pulls from were surprised to learn that their materials—including video lectures, slide decks and online assignments—were being perused, clipped and repackaged for these short online course modules. The faculty wasn’t told anything about the app, ASU Atomic, they said.

(SIDE NOTE: I so DESPERATELY want to use a video clip here from “Ted 2” that smack talks Arizona State right now, given how stupid this situation is, but I think the editors at Sage might pop a brain bleed. The tamest thing said in that exchange was, “Do you say Arizona State University or just HPV-U?” Anyway… I digress…)

BACKGROUND: The university is doing everything to both say that tapping the braintrust of the faculty through this AI thing is the greatest thing on earth while also telling faculty this is just experimental and there’s no real concern here.

As with most things administrators SWEAR aren’t problems, the faculty members refuse to buy this bull-pucky:

As is the case for many AI chatbots still in their infancy, Atom gets things wrong. In the module it designed for Hanlon, it included clips from an old lecture he gave focused on the work and career of 20th-century literary theorist Cleanth Brooks. Throughout the course it called the critic “Client” Brooks.

<SNIP>

Ostling is worried that Atomic “will start being used widely, and I have content on my Canvas shelves that would be very inappropriate to show up without context in a course,” he said. “Not only do I think the students will be poorly served because they might learn things that aren’t true, but it could potentially get me in trouble.”

I’m feeling this as well, given that I often have students interview other students for classroom-only exercises that get posted to Canvas. So, for example, a student talking about their experience at the local Pub Crawl might not be all that thrilled if that info becomes part of a database of content for everyone to see.

Even more, I have to occasionally create “alternative timeline scenarios” for the students. For example, to have my students write an “announcement press release,” I make up the scenario that our current chancellor resigned a while back, the university did a search and today is announcing the hiring of the next chancellor. It’s a logical scenario that would be something students might be expected to do as PR practitioners (hiring news release) and it forces them to focus on what to include in a short space.

However, I obviously have made up the name of the person we hired as well as that person’s background and accomplishments. If AI slurps it up and treats it as gospel, that’s not going to be good for anyone involved.

This all led me to today’s throwback post about our system trying to steal faculty content for what I would assume could be a situation like this. Even if the Universities of Wisconsin folks double-pinky promise not to turn my work into AI slop, I still don’t want them co-opting my life’s work for all the reasons listed below.

I did a check on how this is going and the board of regents hasn’t passed this yet, but I’m always leery of summer months, as that’s a great time for universities to pass these “take out the trash” bills, because nobody’s looking.

 

The Universities of Wisconsin System is trying to steal faculty’s copyright rights to educational material. Please help fight this stupid power grab.

(The system says, “We would never look to diminish your rights or take your hard-earned work away from you.” What the system actually does is more accurately depicted in the scene above.)

THE SHORT, SHORT VERSION: The Universities of Wisconsin System is trying to rewrite its copyright policy and assign itself the rights to the educational work and scholarly materials faculty create. If this goes through, faculty who have spent years building and improving their courses could get the shaft and I have no idea if I’ll be able to share stuff that I’ve always shared with you.

If you think this is as stupid as I do, please email system President Jay Rothman at president@wisconsin.edu and tell him not to let this policy pass.

(UPDATE: Rothman is no longer the president, but that email address will still get you where you need to go.)

THE LONGER, MORE NUANCED VERSION: Here’s a deep dive on the way the system is trying to recreate its copyright policy in a way that disenfranchises its faculty:

THE LEAD: The Universities of Wisconsin has decided to rewrite its rules involving intellectual property, giving the system total ownership over pretty much everything faculty create:

The UW System is proposing a new copyright policy that professors say would eliminate faculty ownership of instructional materials. The revisions are stoking alarm among professors statewide who say such a move would cheapen higher education into a mass-produced commodity.

“This policy change is nothing less than a drastic redefinition of the employment contract, one that represents a massive seizing of our intellectual property on a grand scale,” professors from nine of the 13 UW campuses wrote in a recent letter to UW System President Jay Rothman. “It would allow any UW campuses to fire any employee and nonetheless continue teaching their courses in perpetuity with no obligation to continue paying the employee for their work.”

Aside from owning faculty syllabi, lecture notes and exam materials, UW would also have ownership rights over the scholarship faculty create:

A draft of the new policy, obtained by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, would eliminate existing copyright language and replace it with the assertion that UW System holds ownership of both “institutional work” and “scholarly work.”

<SNIP>

“Scholarly work” includes most of what professors produce, such as lecture notes, course materials, journal articles and books. The UW System transfers copyright ownership to the author, as is customary in higher education, but notes that it “reserves” the right to use the works for purposes “consistent with its educational mission and academic norms.”

 

DOCTOR OF PAPER HOT TAKE: Given that I’ve got about a dozen textbooks in the field, I edit a journal that needs scholarly work to keep it running, I spent seven years crafting hundreds of blog posts and that I’ve built a ton of courses over my nearly 30 years of teaching, this was basically my calm, metered reaction:

beaker from the muppet show is screaming with the words time to freakout above him

I’ve already sent a copy of the proposal to Sage for its team of lawyers to go over, so I’m hopeful that I receive an answer along the lines of, “Calm down… Have a Diet Coke… This isn’t going to destroy what you’ve spent decades creating…”

In the meantime, let’s lay out how stupid and problematic this is:

The quality of your courses depend on the people you’re pissing off:  We essentially went through this in my media-writing class today and a collection of sophomores and juniors understood it, so I’m hoping it might make sense to the Board of Regents.

I proposed the following scenario to one kid in the class: Let’s say you turned in a really good story as an assignment for this class. In fact, I thought it was so good, I took your name off of it, put my name on it and submitted it to the local paper. The paper then paid me $50 for the story.

I then asked the kid, “So, given that every time you turn in something good, I’m going to take it, put my name on it and make money from it, how likely are you to put forth your best effort in this class?”

The kid said, “There’s no way I’m going to do anything good for you anymore.”

Right. So, let’s play that out here: If every time I work REALLY hard on making good stuff for my class, the U is just going to claim it as its own, why would I bother to do anything more than the bare minimum to make my class work?

I guess you could make the argument that pride in our work and a desire to make things better for our students could inspire us to do great things, even in the face of a naked power grab by the system, but if you’re going to treat us like mercenaries, we’re going to behave that way.

This will stifle innovation, limit interest in developing new courses and create a general sense of animosity among faculty. It will also likely inspire professors to find new ways to hide stuff from the administration folks, as one person on social media suggested to me:

This stuff isn’t a product, but rather a process: Inherent to the system’s argument is the basic premise of work product: You built this stuff while you were employed by us and required to do so. Therefore, since we paid you for this, the stuff is ours.

That works in the private sector, where we’re tasked with specific outcomes and granted special provisions to create this kind of work product. For example, I know that when I worked at the Wisconsin State Journal, I wrote a lot of articles that the paper published. Implicit in my employment agreement was the premise that I was acting on behalf of the paper, writing things that the paper tasked me to write and publishing those things in a copyrighted publication. They own that stuff and I’m cool with that. I don’t think I’m ever going to want to republish a weather story I wrote in 1996, and if I did something cool I wanted to show my students, that’s acceptable use.

However, when it comes to my media-writing class, I didn’t get hired to write lecture notes and syllabi for that class. In fact, what I wrote was a tweaked version of something I’d been working on for decades. I’d drafted some of this conceptual stuff when I was working at UW-Madison, improved upon it when I was at Mizzou, reconfigured it at Ball State and then adapted it here. This isn’t like you hired me to bake a cake for your birthday. This is a tree I’ve been growing and tending for years and years.

 

The material might not be UW’s to steal: Even if you don’t buy the argument above, the instructors might not own the material they’re using in the first place.

Textbook publishers aren’t just sending out desk copies of a dead-tree books and telling fledgling professors, “Vaya con Dios.” They actually build a ton of back-end stuff into the educational packages they provide these days, which includes a lot of the stuff the system is trying to get its grubby little paws on.

I know for my books at Sage, we have sample syllabi, PowerPoint slides for lectures, notes for instructors, exercises and test banks crammed with questions. I might even be forgetting some of the stuff we provide.

(Shameless Plug: Sage really is amazing when it comes to this kind of stuff. If you ever need a book, check these folks out first, especially if you need some help with the shaping and molding of the entire class experience.)

These things are available to instructors because Sage built them to go along with the authors’ textbooks. The professors can use them as they are, add stuff, cut stuff or otherwise tweak what they receive. That said, it’s not theirs to sell or give away. Sage holds the copyright for this stuff and I imagine Sage and the other book publishers who pour a ton of time and resources into building these things would be more than a bit peeved if the UW System tried to claim it as its own.

 

The Coy and Vance Duke Theory of Education: When I was a kid, I loved “The Dukes of Hazzard” television show, which ran every Friday for about seven or eight years. The show involved two cousins, Bo and Luke Duke, getting into scrapes with the corrupt law enforcement of Hazzard County and doing amazing car chases in their 1969 Dodge Charger. Along with patriarch Uncle Jesse Duke and the lovely cousin Daisy Duke, the boys were “makin’ their way, the only way they know how,” to quote the theme song.

It was a simple show that drew a good audience and it seemed to work well. However, around the fifth season, John Schneider and Tom Wopat (who played Bo and Luke, respectively) got into a contract dispute with the studio over salaries. Rather than pay them and move on with life, the studio had the idea in its head that the car (the General Lee) was actually the star of the show, so it didn’t matter who was driving it and that they didn’t need these two pretty boys at all.

Enter new cousins: Coy and Vance Duke.

If ever there was a knock-off of a brand name, this was it. Like the original Duke Boys, one was blonde, one was brunette. They essentially wore the same wardrobe, had the same catch phrases and did the same insane driving stuff. That said, the ratings took a dump and after one season, Bo and Luke “returned from driving the NASCAR circuit” and Coy and Vance ended up fading from memory.

What the universities are doing here is essentially the same kind of thing. They figure, “Well, hell, if we have the notes, the syllabus and the PowerPoint slides, we don’t really need the professor who created them at the front of the room.” These folks assume that once we decide to leave, retire or whatever, they can just plug in an adjunct at a fraction of the cost and things will run like a Swiss watch.  And that’s not just me being paranoid, as other folks see it as well:

I pretty much know my notes aren’t going to be helpful to other people as I wrote them based on a lot of my experiences in the field. Notes like (BUS FIRE STORY GOES HERE) or (EXPLAIN DRUG DEALER SHOT THING) probably won’t work for a random Coy or Vance they bring in to teach my class after they decide they don’t need me anymore.

 

HERE’S WHY YOU SHOULD CARE: One of the biggest reasons I’m worried about this is because it impacts what I can do with my materials. That’s also the main reason why I think you should care about it, too.

I never took this job to get rich and I certainly don’t like the idea of coming across like Daffy Duck when he found the treasure room:

However, when I know stuff is mine to do with as I please, that tends to benefit a lot of other people as well. Whenever someone shoots me an email and says, “Hey, how do you organize your class?” I’m always happy to give them a copy of my syllabus. When someone needs an assignment I’ve built, I’m glad to share it with them or on the blog.

When we went into COVID lock down, I basically dumped everything I ever did that I thought would help people into the Corona Hotline section of the blog for free. All those goodies remain there to this day, so feel free to help yourself.

If this policy passes, I might not be as free to offer that kind of generosity any more, and that would really tick me off.

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.

 

Good Night, Dan Bice. You were truly an inspirational investigative journalist.

The headline from his home paper says it all. 

THE LEAD: This one really stings if you spent any time at all in Milwaukee:

A veteran political reporter, (Dan) Bice could conjure a politician’s personal phone number in seconds and never feared knocking on the door of someone he was trying to reach.

Bice, who worked for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for 33 years, died from complications of esophageal cancer on April 21, his birthday.

He had just turned 62.

 

THE BACKSTORY: I know my mother absolutely loved reading Dan Bice’s stuff and I found his relentless digging to be the kind of reporting every newspaper desperately needed. His most recent iteration of his investigative impulses ran as a column titled, “No Quarter,” which I always took to mean that he didn’t play favorites when it came to his desire to dig. Republican, Democrat, Whig, Federalist, whatever… If you did some shady stuff and he found out, he was coming for you.

I still use him as an example of how a great journalist gets inside information and how the PR machines of various organizations and departments feared him. In one case, he was banned from attending certain police press conferences, as the chief feared Bice would ask about allegations of an affair the man later admitted to having.

I also was really grateful that he was willing to help out almost anyone who had questions or concerns about journalism, including me. One of my earliest posts looked at his battle with then-Sheriff David Clarke. Bice asked Clarke about a $226,000 taxpayer-funded bill related to Clarke’s request for security around his home. Clark responded in true Clarke fashion, noting Bice and “the horse he rode in on” should go do something to themselves that is anatomically impossible.

After the post had gotten around and Bice even “liked” it on Facebook, I took a shot and emailed him some questions about his experiences with these kinds of situations. He was recovering from pneumonia, but still was willing to email me some thoughts that I could share with up-and-coming journalism students.

Here is that post, and it’s just as relevant and helpful today as it was almost 10 years ago.

Bice had posted about his cancer situation a while back and it was one of those, “Man, I hope he beats it, not just for him, but for all of us” kind of deals.

Given what we are seeing these days that passes for journalism, as well as the way in which just screaming at each other seems to pay better, I doubt we’ll see many more people as dedicated and driven as Dan Bice.

 

 

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)

 

The Joke’s on You: Three reasons why student media outlets should never, ever publish April Fools’ editions (or similar pranks)

I built this about 15 years ago for the cover of a student media helpers guide for a high school news conference. Other than a few language tweaks, I don’t think much has changed…

 

THE LEAD: Humor is a personal, acquired taste that is hard to tap into on a broad scale, something the students at UNC’s Daily Tarheel learned the hard way this month:

On April Fools’ Day, the paper published a series of satirical articles, including one with a subheadline that said the paper had rebranded as The Daily Woke Heel. Others read “UNC brings back DEI—for whites,” and “A new way forward for the Dean Dome: a two-stadium solution.” Another, published on the website, said “Satire: Trump orders ALE in Chapel Hill to be replaced with ICE agents.”

The jokes did not go over well with some students, and the paper’s editor in chief immediately issued an apology. She wrote that the paper heard students’ “critiques and outrage.” She added, the paper’s “insensitive decisions and oversights” were “made by a newsroom and leadership team that undoubtedly exist in positions of power and privilege on this campus.”

JOKE’S ON YOU: Every April Fools’ Day, I thank the Lord I’m no longer a student newspaper adviser. When I was one, I found myself begging, pleading, cajoling and griping in hopes of keeping the students from making a colossal error in judgement by thinking they were funny.

To be fair, it wasn’t always just the April Fools’ Edition that led to problems and UNC is not alone in the “Oh… So, THAT happened” moments of dumbassery that have advisers going gray and bald before our time and strongly reconsidering truck-driving school.

One year, we did a bracket for “Bar-ch Madness,” in which we listed off the top 16 best places to get hammered around campus. The chancellor wasn’t pleased at our idea of promoting problematic drinking, but he was even less enthusiastic about us including one of the freshman dorms as a “dark horse” candidate.

Year-end issues are also a major concern, as students are usually either burnt to a crisp or at that punch-drunk level of euphoria that comes with nearing the end of the year. In one case, the student newspaper at the University of Utah reminded us that using drop-caps in design isn’t always just an aesthetic choice:

If you noticed the “more” in the headline and wondered if the other staffers’ columns had a more dignified and direct approach… well… not quite…

I could spend days showcasing stuff like this but as the opening graphic seeks to demonstrate, but that would be hypocritical at best. It isn’t like we were so great back in “my day” and now “these damned kids” are somehow sullying the greatness that was present back when typewriters clicked in newsrooms and everyone wore their Sunday best to cover the news.

(One piece I cannot find from “my day” ran here at Oshkosh, in which the staff photoshopped the chancellor’s head onto the famous Demi Moore pregnancy photo. He was not amused, I’m told.)

Instead, here are three reasons that might help prevent the next disaster, which is already on the clock, if that graphic is right:

YOU ARE NOT THAT FUNNY: Humor is one of the greatest talents in the world, in that to make someone laugh can be among the most amazing feelings we have as humans. Someone once explained that if you can tap into something funny, you force people to have an involuntary response to it that creates true joy within them.

Taking that talent and honing it takes years, and even then, it requires a deft touch and a lot of failure. When Richard Pryor died, his family found thousands of reels of tape in his home that provided a timeline of his efforts work-shopping his act.

He’d be at one club one night, trying to see if this bit would land or if tweaking this accent would improve the audience reaction. It took him days, weeks, months and sometimes years to tweak and improve little things that led to those epic, uproarious moments on stage.

If a guy with that level of talent and skill had to work that hard for that long to make even half of his stuff work, what are the chances that a group of college students, trying this on the fly is going to pull it off on the first pass?

As much as I have laughed in newsrooms over the years for a variety of reasons, I can assure you, nobody I’ve met is good enough to pull off humor on a mass-media scale like this. Trying it publicly is going to lead to more harm than good.

 

HUMOR IS A PERSONAL TASTE: If you don’t believe me, listen to the following comedians:

  • Richard Pryor
  • Taylor Tomlinson
  • Sam Kinison
  • Ali Wong
  • Jeff Foxworthy
  • Nikki Glazer

At least one of them will probably make you laugh and at least one of them will likely offend the hell out of you. Some of them are throwing out bits that you can completely relate to while others are likely not landing a single joke for you. Some feel too tame while others are dropping more F-bombs and slurs than a drunk Boston sports fan after watching an ESPN Hot Take show that gives the Patriots no shot at the playoffs this year.

Newsroom humor, in particular, is a special kind of humor. It’s a mix of sarcasm, mortician’s humor, snark and insult comedy. It’s also full of inside jokes and other things that make people still laugh 20 years after they’ve graduated. I’ve seen newsrooms post weird things on the walls, engage in meme-battles and develop quote books as survival-level defense mechanisms.

(To this day, I’m still somewhat scarred by the humor fight that happened at Ball State between my features desk and my design desk. It started when someone in design left a presentation for a class open, and someone on features stuck some weird images into the design kid’s PowerPoint.

The design kid then stuck a photo of a morbidly obese female adult film actress on the side of the monitor at the features desk. The features kid then responded by essentially iron-gluing an inappropriate image to the side of the design computer, something nobody noticed until the head of the Indianapolis Star came down with my boss for a tour of the newsroom.

The guy paused while visiting the design pod and then asked no one in particular, “Hey… Is that monkey blowing itself?”)

The point is, humor is in the eye of the beholder and few people outside of newsrooms really are beholding what we behold in there. If you want to amuse yourself, turn the place into your own little den of wiener jokes, dank memes and memorable quotes. Just keep it out of the paper (and the public eye in general).

 

YOU NEED TO TREASURE YOUR CREDIBILITY: Student journalists take on all the risks associated with journalism at any level. They can be attacked, threatened or arrested, and many already have been subjected to these measures.

They can be sued for any one of a dozen reasons, including libel and invasion of privacy. They also suffer the same insults and mistreatment all journalists receive for merely doing their job.

The one thing that makes it suck so much more is that they are often treated as second-class citizens in the field, even by those folks who should know better. I’ve heard of numerous examples of student journalists being told by professors and even professional media operatives that they’re “just playing journalist.”

Like they broke out a “Fisher Price ‘My First Reporter'” kit and asked Nana for an interview about her chocolate-chip cookies or something.

As student journalists, you have to fight so much harder to be taken seriously. You have to defend your work more vigorously than “professional” journalists when you break stories that upset people.

You also have those same “professionals” trying to swipe your stories, bogart your sources or otherwise treat you like some sort of minor-league baseball affiliate that they can raid when the “big team” needs something.

You earn your credibility a grain of sand at a time, knowing that any mistake can wash the whole sandcastle away and force you to start over. It’s so damned important, as it truly is the coin of the realm.

Doing “humor” like the things we showcased here is like dousing your reputation with gasoline and lighting a match, just to watch it burn.

And you’re not just burning down your own house, you’re making it impossible for the next generation to live there or even build on the ashes. Sources (particularly professors) have long memories.

Don’t give them a reason to think poorly of you if you can help it.

 

How to write the best obituary possible (A Throwback Post)

My reporting class today took a look at obituary writing, and I knew I wanted them to write something about the experience. Rather than having them write either a mock obit on a fake person or (perhaps more awkwardly) writing their own obituary, I asked them to simply tell me what they learned that they felt would be most important to remember when they eventually had to write an obituary.

Here were some of the more interesting ones:

“You have to be able to balance fact-based reporting with some of the aspects of a feature. Being accurate to the public record while being respectful of the memories that are being shared by the deceased’s loved ones can be tricky to do, but it is essential to writing a proper obituary.”

 

“Being overly flowery with word choice is not going to improve a poorly researched story.”

 

“It’s not just about having the facts right and accurately describing someone’s life. It’s also about getting the right vibes and the human elements of why that person matters and the impact they had.”

 

“I learned that when writing you want to focus on the life of the individual more than the death. This is important because you are not writing obituaries like a true crime story, but rather as a way for people to potentially connect to the fact that they knew this person, and also as a way for people close to the deceased individual to grieve in a manner that allows them joy.”

 

“I think it is important to understand and recognize when writing obituaries because it serves as a reminder to the journalist each time they are tasked with writing one, and don’t forget their human side when honing into their journalist side.”

 

With that in mind, here’s a throwback post that talks about the bigger issues in writing obits that we covered in the class today. Hope it helps.

Obituary Writing: Telling truths, not tales, in a reverent recounting of a life

In a discussion among student media advisers, one person noted that obituaries are probably the second-hardest things journalists have to do frequently. (The hardest? Interviewing family members about dead kids.) When a person dies, media outlets often serve as both town criers and official record keepers. They tell us who this person was, what made him or her important and what kind of life this person led. This is a difficult proposition, especially given that people have many facets and the public face of an individual isn’t always how those who knew the person best see him or her. Couple these concerns with the shock and grief the person’s loved ones and friends have experienced in the wake of the death and this has all the makings of a rough journalistic experience.

The New York Times experienced this earlier in the week when it published an obituary on Thomas Monson, the president of the Mormon Church. The Times produced a news obituary that focused on multiple facets of Monson and his affect on the church. This included references to his work to expand the reach and the population of its missionary forces as well as his unwillingness to ordain women and acknowledge same-sex marriages. The obituary drew criticism from many inside the church, leading the obituary editor to defend the choices the paper made in how it covered Monson. (For a sense of comparison, here is the official obituary/notification of death that the church itself wrote for Monson.)

You will likely find yourself writing an obituary at some point in time if you go into a news-related field.  Some of my favorite stories have been obituaries, including one I did on a professor who was stricken by polio shortly after he was married in the 1950s. I interviewed his wife, who was so generous with her recollections that I was really upset when we had to cut the hell out of the piece to make it fit the space we had for it. Still, she loved it and sent me a card thanking me for my time.

Some of my most painful stories have also been obituaries. The one that comes to mind is one I wrote about a 4-year-old boy who died of complications from AIDS. His mother, his father and one of his siblings also had AIDS at a time in which the illness brought you an almost immediate death sentence and status as a societal pariah. I spoke to the mother on the phone multiple times that night, including once around my deadline when she called me sobbing. Word about the 4-year-old’s death had become public knowledge and thus she was told that her older son, who did not have AIDS, would not be allowed to return to his daycare school. Other things, including some really bad choices by my editor, made for a truly horrific overall situation in which the woman called me up after the piece I co-wrote ran and told me what a miserable human being I was. She told me the boy’s father was so distraught by what we published that he would not leave the house to mourn his own son and that she held me responsible for that. Like I said, these things can be painful.

No matter the situation, there are some things you need to keep in mind when you are writing obituaries:

  • Don’t dodge the tough stuff: Your job as a journalist is to provide an objective, fair and balanced recounting of a person’s life. The Times’ editor makes a good point in noting that the paper’s job is to recount the person’s life, not to pay tribute or to serve as a eulogist. This means that you have to tell the story, however pleasant or unpleasant that might be. One of my favorite moments of honesty came from hockey legend Gordie Howe who was recalling the tight-fisted, cheap-as-heck former owner of the Detroit Red Wings:

    “I was a pallbearer for Jack,” says Howe. “We were all in the limousine, on the way to the cemetery, and everyone was saying something nice, toasting him. Then finally one of the pallbearers said, `I played for him, and he was a miserable sonofabitch. Now he’s … a dead, miserable sonofabitch.’”

    It’s not your fault if the person got arrested for something or treated people poorly. If these things are in the public record and they are a large part of how someone was known, you can’t just dodge them because you feel weird. Check out the Times’ obituary on Richard Nixon and you’ll notice that Watergate makes the headline and the lead. As much as that was likely unpleasant for the people who were closest to Nixon, it was a central point of his life and needed to be discussed. In short, don’t smooth off the rough edges because you are worried about how other people might feel. Tell the truth and let the chips fall where they may.

 

  • Avoid euphemisms: This goes back to the first point about being a journalist. You don’t want to soften the language or use euphemisms. People don’t “pass on” or “expire.” NFL quarterbacks pass and magazine subscriptions expire. People die. Also, unless you can prove it, don’t tell your readers that the person is “among the angels” or “resting in the arms of Jesus.” (Both of these euphemisms ended up in obituaries I edited at one point or another. They obviously didn’t make it to publication.) Say what you know for sure: The person died.

 

  • Double down on accuracy efforts: People who are reading obituaries about loved ones and friends are already on edge, so the last thing you want to do is tick them off by screwing up an obituary. I don’t know if this was just a matter of newspaper lore or if it was a real thing, but I was told more than once at a paper where I worked that there were only two things that would get us to “stop the presses:” 1) we printed the wrong lottery numbers and 2) we screwed up an obituary.
    True or not, the point was clear to me: Don’t screw up an obituary.
    Go back through your piece before you put it out for public consumption and check proper nouns for spelling and accuracy. Do the math yourself when it comes to the age (date of birth subtracted from date of death) and review each fact you possess to make sure you are sure about each one. If you need to make an extra call or something to verify information, do it. It’s better to be slightly annoying than wrong.

 

  • Accuracy cuts both ways: As much as you need to be accurate for the sake of the family, you also need to be accurate for the sake of the public record. This means verifying key information in the obituary before publishing it. The person who died might told family and friends about winning a medal during World War II or graduating at the top of her class at Harvard Law School. These could be accurate pieces of information or they could be tall tales meant to impress people. Before you publish things that could be factually inaccurate, you need to be sure you feel confident in your sourcing.
    Common sense dictates that you shouldn’t be shaking the family down for evidence on certain things (“OK, you say she liked to knit. Now, how do we KNOW she REALLY liked knitting? Do you have some sort of support for that?”) but you should try to verify fact-based elements with as many people as possible or check the information against publicly available information. Don’t get snowed by legends and myths. Publish only what you know for sure.

 

  • Don’t take things personally: Calling family, friends and colleagues of someone who just died can be really awkward and difficult for you as a reporter. Interviews with these people can be hard on them as well as hard on you. I found that when I did obituaries, I got one of three responses from people that I contacted:
    1. The source told me, “I’m sorry, but I really just can’t talk about this right now.” At that point, I apologized for intruding upon the person’s grief and left that person alone.
    2. The source is a fount of information and wanted to tell me EVERYTHING about the dead person. I found that for some of them, it was cathartic to share and eulogize and commemorate. It was like I was a new person in their circle of grief and they wanted to make sure I knew exactly why the person who died was someone worth knowing.
    3. The source was like a wounded animal and I made the mistake of sticking my hand where it didn’t belong. I have been called a vulture, a scumbag and other words I’ve been asked to avoid posting on this blog. One person even told me, “Your mother didn’t raise you right” because I had the audacity to make this phone call. I apologized profusely and once I hung up, I needed a couple minutes to shake it off. I knew it wasn’t my fault but it wasn’t easy either.

Your goal in an obituary is always to be respectful and decent while still retaining your journalistic sensibilities. It’s a fine line to walk, but if you do an obituary well, you will tell an interesting story about someone who had an impact on the world in some way. I like to think a story about this person who died should be good enough to make people wish they’d known that person while he or she was alive.

The Anchoring Bias, The Leak and The Scoop: Why First Is Often Considered Best

(I acknowledge that this phrase is trademarked to Ricky Bobby Inc.)

Since the beginning of competitive media, immediacy has been a core value for all practitioners. As much as it was about “leaking” information to a source to get your position out ahead of competitors or finding the “scoop” to make you and your outlet look great, bigger things are actually at stake in terms of credibility.

Anchoring bias is a psychological theory that states people will always compare all subsequent information they received to the first piece of information they see. In simplest terms, the first piece of information “anchors” one’s opinion of a topic to a point of view or a sense of reality, with everything else simply relating to that concept.

For example, Dad and I were doing a card show this weekend, where we sell sports stuff and generally enjoy just hanging out together. Like most weekends, people come to the table and offer to sell us some of their old cards or memorabilia. The problem we usually have is that the people have “done some research” (read: I checked eBay for the highest priced version of whatever it is I have) and then ask us to buy their stuff.

I can explain until I’m blue in the face that the price on eBay is an “asking” not a “someone paid this amount” price or that the 1951 Mickey Mantle online is in perfect condition while the one they have looks like it was run over by a lawn mower, but it never seems to matter. They are stuck on that price, which rarely leads to a fruitful negotiation. They then try the same thing with a dozen other dealers and are continually disappointed with the outcome.

Anchor bias has a strong hold on people’s minds, which is why being the first voice people hear is crucial in several fields. Let’s take a quick walk through them:

PUBLIC RELATIONS: Messaging is always crucial in public relations, and it’s usually vital to get that message out first. For starters, if news reporter are trying to tell a story and nobody is talking, they’ll listen to those folks who are. That gets you a foot in the door that waiting around won’t.

In crisis communication, good practitioners have adopted the 15-20-60-90 rule, which states that within 15 minutes of a crisis, the organization needs to acknowledge the situation and begin communicating. The faster you get out there, the more your voice will be considered the anchor.

KEY DANGER POINT: When you wait too long and someone else gets to set the agenda and establish the anchor position, you will end up not only playing from behind, but also look like you’re lying. If you are reacting to someone else’s statements, you’re caught in a crouch and you might not be able to convince people what really happened.

Here’s a great scene from the movie “School Ties,” in which one of the students at a prestigious boarding school has cheated, but the students are told they must determine who it was:

 

In stepping up to say that he saw David cheat, Dillon established the anchor point. After that, it becomes a debate. Had it gone the other way, the arguments that followed would have been much different. If you care to know how it all ends, you can watch it here.

Get out front so you can tell people your side of things while they’re still open to new ideas instead of being anchored to whatever they heard from someone more willing to step up and say their peace.

NEWS FOLKS: Being first has been the gold standard for news people since the concept of a scoop began. I can honestly tell you from experience, being first felt great (only when I was right, however, so accuracy remains a bellwether for what we do here.

Research has found that when people find a source of information that fulfills their informational needs, they’ll keep going back to that source as they build a habit of content consumption. If you can get to something important first, you can demonstrate your value to the readers and viewers. You can also outdo the competition by becoming their “go-to” source of information.

This is why you need to establish sources in the field that will trust you and seek you out as a vessel of content. If you can prove to enough people in enough places that what you do is good, fair and helpful, you’ll become that person who gets the text, email or phone call with the latest information. If you prove the opposite, you’ll be out in the cold.

KEY DANGER POINT (Part I): Being first is great, but even anchors can get pulled up when faced with a torrent of opposing forces. People are likely to believe you as the anchor, but you have to be RIGHT above all else. Otherwise, you might win the battle and lose the war, having them trust you until they literally can’t anymore on this one story and then deciding they need to find a better source going forward.

I’ve told people for years that I’d rather be slower and right than fast and wrong. Fast and right is obviously what we’re shooting for here, but in the end, if you don’t have the goods, don’t make a move.

KEY DANGER POINT (Part II): Keep an eye on how you approach your stories based on what information you got first or which source you interviewed first. If the anchor bias works for the audience in terms of the first piece of information being considered gospel, you are likely to find the same thing happening in your reporting.

For example, let’s say that a developer wants to build a set of apartments for lower-middle-class people in your town. A local environmental agency is opposed to it because the folks there say it will damage a fragile ecosystem in a nearby lake and will also contribute traffic and garbage to the area. A local politician is in favor of it because it will bring much needed homes to his district, along with a strong tax base to help keep the city coffers filled. A local activist is opposing the building, saying the politician and the builder are cutting backroom deals to make money for themselves, while screwing over renters and taxpayers.

When you reach out to contact these people, how much will you be relying on what the first person to respond has to say to you? If the activist gets back to you, will the story shift to one of public corruption? If the developer responds first, will it be about housing for people who usually get priced out of the market? What about the other two?

I can honestly say that there have been times when I contacted a couple sources for comment on a story and I trusted the person who got back to me last the least. In some cases, it even shifted my questions: “I just heard from Alderperson Smith that this is nothing but a financial scam meant to benefit you. What do you have to say in response?” (read: I think you’re a weasel, but I’ll let you try to weasel out of it if you think you can…)

Coming to a story with an open mind is always a good thing, but it can’t just stop at that starting point. It needs to continue throughout the reporting and writing process to give everyone a fair shake.