Exploring Mass Communication

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now… On with the show…

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

We then both had a good laugh about it.

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

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

 

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

Hope they are helpful or enjoyable or maybe even both!

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

An open letter to college students: Please learn to give a shit

Dear students,

I know that there are a solid number of you out there who actually abide by the request in this post most of the time. That said, that number appears to be dwindling significantly recently, so I need to make this plea.

I’ve always believed that as a professor, I owe it to you to try to explain things so that you can understand them. I also believe that if I don’t actually SAY something in explicit terms, it’s my fault when you screw up. If I do my best to lay it out, like I’m trying to teach a dog how to do calculus, and you still screw up, well, then, that’s on you.

I felt the need to put this post together after the first half of a semester that had me utterly vexed and befuddled at the current state of my courses. This isn’t a typical semester in which I have a couple kids who skip class constantly, a few others who fake their way around a few things and some dumb-ass behavior that makes me question the functionality of at least one student’s frontal lobes. There will always be one kid who shows up late so often I swear they’ll be late for their own funeral.

And it isn’t about the life events that get in the way for all of us. I still get the “I’m sick” emails or the notes about emergency surgeries and funerals. That happens all the time and, honestly, any professor who doesn’t understand this is someone I don’t want to know.

No, this appears to be a pandemic level of “I-Don’t-Give-A-Shit-itis” that has hit in a way I’ve never seen before on the college level. I had students miss deadlines for quizzes, writing assignments and even exams. Students were given days and even weeks to meet those goals, only to let the deadlines go by like a knee-buckling curve ball.

This isn’t just affecting my intro-level students, as several folks who are in their senior year have forgotten about midterms. The excuses are of the “I have no excuses, but let me fix this anyway” variety, with a steady stream of “I was unaware” emails, which appeared strange to me, given that I’d posted the information in the syllabus, flagged the deadline in the LMS and spoken repeatedly about it in class.

I keep thinking that these folks are suffering from whatever the hell Guy Pearce had in “Memento” and I’m strongly considering bring tattoo kits to class:

This also isn’t just affecting the students here at UWO, as I asked the hivemind of educators I trust if they’ve seen this as well. It turns out this is hitting states across the country, even those that haven’t recently legalized weed or consider a pub crawl to be a national holiday. A constant stream of attempting to spoon-feed students review questions, examples, instructions and extended deadlines has not proven to be a panacea for this situation.

Some educators speculate that this might be some sort of “long COVID” impact, with the idea that college students who spent their formative years merely trying to survive what we all assumed was the end of days weren’t properly prepared for self-reliance in their education. Others wondered if students felt their college efforts lacked value, given the high number of good-paying jobs that are currently available, sans a college degree. Still others pondered about the effects of artificial intelligence, as students looked for easier ways to get out of work. My sister-in-law, who teaches dance, had this insight:

“People are just lazy. We have a new generation of stupid on our hands.”

The cause and the cure are outside of my scope of knowledge, as I’m really not that kind of doctor. That said, please consider the following advice, as you move forward into the second half of the semester. Some of this may seem like it’s stuff you heard in second grade, but that’s probably because we need to dive that far back into the realm of education to properly reboot a few folks:

GIVE A SHIT: This is really the core of everything I’m going to say below, but again it bears repeating. If the way in which my 8 a.m. class tends to listen, I might have to say this six or seven more time before we’re done here.

I have told students over the years that the one thing I absolutely cannot teach them is how to care about a course. I can teach the basics of all sorts of rudimentary journalism skills and quite a few higher-level elements at that. I can teach students how to be tough, or brave, or nosy, or a dozen other “soft skills” that can aid them in their work.

The one thing I can’t make them do is “wanna.” If you don’t “wanna,” I can’t help you.

I get that not every course is your muse and that every class is not an Academy-Award-winning performance on the part of your instructor, but I know that a lot of us are really trying to make a difference. However, if you don’t care, it doesn’t matter.

And, if you don’t care, you should probably think about why you’re sitting in that classroom, spending a boatload of money that you’ll spend decades of your life paying back.

READ DIRECTIONS: When I was growing up, we were inundated with ads for a program called RIF: Reading Is Fundamental. The idea was that if you couldn’t read, you probably weren’t going anywhere in life:

This is really true in college, as you should be somewhere further along in your personal literacy than the crew of kids surrounding a relatively young Ed Asner here. Reading directions is a fantastic way of figuring out how much content you have to write, how many citations you need to include or even when something is due.

It might not be as much fun as if we did the directions in a TikTok, but when the Feds block this app for fear that the Chinese government is using it to figure out how stupid we all are, those literacy skills might come in handy.

PAY ATTENTION: College professors often have difficulty when we see you on laptops and tablets during class, because we’d love to pretend that you’re using these items to take copious notes and add deadlines to your calendars. However, when we call on you to verbally add your thoughts to the topic under discussion and your head pops up like a prairie dog getting electroshock therapy, you kind of give up the game.

Look, I get that we’re boring, despite how hard we work. I also know that not everything will apply to any one student in class. That said, you are PAYING for this. It’s like buying entry to the Golden Corral buffet and then quietly sipping a water in the corner. If that’s all you’re doing, why the hell did you come here?

Paying attention in class is a great way to actually learn stuff. This is particularly true if you are opposed to reading directions. I’m a big fan of both, but you need to do one or the other in order to survive in college. Neither of these things is asking too much or should come as a massive shock to you. We showed you the library, the classrooms and even professors’ offices during your campus tour: Books and lectures were not hidden from you.

Unless, of course, you were on your phone the whole time…

STOP PSEUDO-APOLOGIZING: I can’t tell you how many emails I’ve gotten that start with “I’m sorry” and then follow that up with a detailed outline of some easily avoidable screw up. I finally went and looked up what an apology actually entails and this is what I’ve found:

The Three A’s of Apologies
  • Acknowledgement. Acknowledge the situation and say you are sorry for what happened.
  • Acceptance. Hold yourself accountable and work to rectify the situation.
  • Amends. Talk about what you will do and start working on corrective measures.

What I’ve come to realize is that most of the apologies I get had none of those elements to them.

You’re not really sorry, in the idea that you are acknowledging the situation. Hell, some of you wouldn’t realize you’ve been hit by a bus until your phone told you as much or your Apple Watch stopped tracking your pulse. You just don’t like the negative outcome of what occurred and you want some way out of it.

You aren’t really accepting anything. Some of the emails I get say that the sender “will accept whatever punishment” I have in mind, but quickly following that up with “but I would really like it if (Fill in way of getting away with screwing up here).”

Also, I’m looking for amends. Maybe the sacrifice of a fatted calf would be a bit much, but some actual contrition and showing up on time for at least a week or two would help.

DON’T LIE: Journalists deal with weasels for most of our lives. This is why we have such great BS detectors and why we love nailing liars to the wall. In most cases, the lies students tell are so frickin’ unnecessary that they boggle the mind.

Case in point: I had a student tell me last week that she was going to miss class because she was sick. Totally fine, as they get two skips the whole term, and I don’t care what they’re for. I even go out of my way to say, “Look, if you want to tell me, ‘I got totally ‘faced last night and I reek of vomit and vodka sweat, so I’m skipping,’ I’m fine with that.”

However, when I got home, I found out from my kid that she met one of my students, who was applying for a job at the Olive Garden where Zoe works. It was my bed-ridden sickly waif who couldn’t make it to class, because it turned out her interview for the job was at that time.

The same thing applies to using AI to write your papers. We read enough college writing to know when something comes from a college student and when something comes from a computerized dictionary that spasms content. We also know that nobody writes to EXACTLY 500 words, so stop telling AI to write you a 500-word paper on a given topic.

I have worked ridiculously hard to be an empathetic ally to my students, so when I’m doing that and you lie to me, it makes me want to bring down a raging storm of hellfire upon you.

QUIT WASTING OUR TIME: After all of this, if you STILL can’t find it in your heart and soul to give a shit, that’s fine. Just stop wasting our time.

Believe it or not, some of your colleagues out there are desperate for help. They are applying for internships and jobs, but need help with resumes and cover letters. They are trying to bend their brains around this new form of writing that will be the foundation upon which a lot of their work after college will depend. They actually mean it when they stop by the office and start the conversation with, “Sorry to bother you, but…”

Every time you turn in some AI bullshit, you make us waste time determining how you cheated and filling out paperwork to have you penalized somehow. Every time you skip a class because “OMG earleeeee,” you make us waste time catching you up. Every time you blow a deadline and beg for forgiveness, you make us waste time taking a moral index of ourselves to see if we should bend a rule and help you out.

That’s time we could be spending on people who actually and honestly need our help and want to do the work. You’re not just annoying us, but you are actively depriving other people of an education they paid for and value.

If you can’t get to the point where you’re going to become one of those people, fine, just don’t make the rest of us suffer because of it.

I would tell you to just go work at Olive Garden, because I know they’re hiring, but something tells me their standards are probably higher than those we have here at the U.

Sincerely,

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

 

Is News Dead?

THE LEAD: The New York Times took a look back to a time when newspapers were viable media operations, in an attempt to find that fork in the road where traditional media zigged and the future zagged. This piece by David Streitfeld relies on media icon and digital Cassandra Roger Fidler as its narrative thread through the past several decades of journalistic decline.

During the salad days of the 1980s and 1990s, Fidler foresaw a world in which newspapers would be cut free from the strictures of print and digital media would make everything easier to access. Content would come more quickly, sharing would take place more easily and everyone would benefit from being more fully informed. He was pretty close, except for, of course, that last part.

It’s hard to take him to task for not foreseeing dank memes and cat TikToks.

Streitfeld notes that not every aspect of journalism has died quietly in pulp-based pages, but the essential content that is “news” appears to be the last passenger on the Titanic:

The slow crash of newspapers and magazines would be of limited interest save for one thing: Traditional media had at its core the exalted and difficult mission of communicating information about the world. From investigative reports on government to coverage of local politicians, the news served to make all the institutions and individuals covered a bit more transparent and, possibly, more honest.

The advice columns, movie reviews, recipes, stock data, weather report and just about everything else in newspapers moved easily online — except the news itself. Local and regional coverage had a hard time establishing itself as a paying proposition.

WHAT HAPPENED? If you want to know HOW and WHY traditional media is dying, put three drinks into your average journalist and make sure the kids are out of earshot before you ask the question. A few of the answers are both easy and complex:

  • Traditional media drastically underestimated/didn’t think hard enough about the impact digital media would have in the world.
  • Media outlets and owners misinterpreted the reason why ad money flowed to them so freely, only to find out too late that ads are all about buying eyeballs, not supporting an important public endeavor.
  • The once-private newspaper industry went public, with shareholder value being a driver of budget cuts and staff slashing.

These are just a couple things in that realm, but the bigger issue isn’t how the newspapers themselves came to land on the endangered species list, but rather why it is that local and regional news content hasn’t made a successful leap to the digital marketplace. Here are a couple possible reasons:

  • People are no longer as strongly tied to geographic areas as they once were, making local or regional news seem less important in their lives.
  • Journalists who once had a stranglehold on what people saw and read incorrectly assumed that what the journalists saw as valuable mattered to the readers and viewers out there. With more options now, the “I write, you read” model isn’t as steadfast as it once was.
  • News isn’t as sexy as other things that captures the public’s attention, and there are plenty more “junk food” options out there. The readers who once got a well-balanced meal from a newspaper now can just grab whatever fun or weird stuff they want like a kid in a candy store.
  • The fractured nature of our society has readers seeking out content that is supportive of their opinions and positions, rather than looking for a balanced source of information. (I can’t tell you the number of times when I’d write about an issue featuring X and Y positions, only to have X tell me that I was biased toward Y and Y tell me the opposite.)
  • News was never financially viable. Being so is important these days.
  • News hasn’t changed. We have.

That last one hit me when I was looking for a definition of news and found things like “reports of current events” and “information about important happenings” and “formal reports of events considered likely to be significant to the target audience.”

By these definitions, Taylor Swift winning Time’s “Person of the Year” award is news. It’s current, it’s a report, it’s information and it’s likely to be significant to a target audience. Traditional journalists might not LIKE that this is the case, but that doesn’t make it any less on point.

DISCUSSION STARTER: If there is one thing I think can pull a “Mia Wallace/Pulp Fiction” moment for news, it would be going back to the most basic human driver: Self-interest. If we can do a better job of telling people not just what is happening, but also WHY it matters to THEM personally in a much, much better way than we do, news has a chance.

Case in point: A few years back, our school’s foundation and fundraising arm was in trouble and was looking at a potential bankruptcy. I walked into my 8 a.m. reporting class and asked the students what they thought of all this.

Blank stares.

“How many of you are on a scholarship here?” I asked. Everyone of them raised a hand.

“OK, so WHERE do you think that money is being kept?” I asked.

The blank stared turned to terrified looks. When I gave them a break in the middle of the class, they all immediately started googling the name of their scholarship and the foundation’s role in it.

This requires us to know our audience extremely well and put in the extra work of constantly explaining “this matters because…” but in considering the alternative, it’s probably worth the effort.

 

How “Who The F— Did I Marry?” Broke A Ton of Media-Related Rules And Still Built A Massive Audience

This is the first TikTok video of 52 on the playlist called, “Who TF Did I Marry?” More than 28.8 million people have already watched this piece.

When I teach content creation and distribution to students, there are some really simple maxims I use that help them do the job well:

  • Tell me the most important stuff first.
  • Nobody’s going to hang with you if you’re really damned long.
  • Use the right tool for the right job.
  • It’s not about you.

The epic TikTok series “Who The F— Did I Marry?” manages to break every one of those rules and more, but somehow has become a runaway success online. Let’s look at what it is, how it broke so many “rules”  we’ve come to associate with today’s media experiences and some reasons why it actually worked:

WHAT WE KNOW: The TikTok-er, ReesaTeesa, tells the story of how she met, dated, married and divorced a man she calls Legion during the pandemic times of 2020-2021. (ReesaTeesa relies on pseudonyms for many of her characters and she never reveals her own name during the story as well.)

She says Legion claimed to be a divorced man who played football at San Diego State University, made good money as an Arena League football player and became an executive at a condiment company. Over the course of the series, she said she found out that none of that was true, and even more, he had been divorced multiple times, he lied about his connections with family members, he had a criminal history and he didn’t have the money he said he did.

That’s about the best I can do in shrinking this down. If you want a bit more expansive view of the series, feel free to read this piece in Glamour that does a bit of a deeper dive.

WHAT WE DON’T KNOW: As is the case with a lot of content online, we have some “don’t know” elements that add to the oddity of this experience:

  • We don’t know who this TikToker is: In most cases, we know the person who is telling the story, so we can get some background on them. In this case, she doesn’t identify herself and early media reports agree not to include her real name. (That said, TMZ has named both ReesaTeesa and Legion in its reporting, which came after the series blew up.)
  • We don’t know how much is factually accurate: People often talk about things like content being “substantially true” or “emotionally true,” so I’m not doing the true/not true thing here. I have no doubt that this woman went through a lot. What I’m talking about are facts that we can verify the way we would with a reporting story. For example, you know my name and you could use records to prove when I got married, to whom and so forth. You could also check me out for any pending litigation, property ownership etc. We can’t do that here.  (For his part, Legion is threatening to sue over this series, claiming it had serious factual inaccuracies.)
  • We don’t know the answers to things like “Why now?” for this story: For her part, ReesaTeesa has promised to do a “live” to answer all sorts of questions.

BREAKING THE RULES: Let’s walk through the maxims I outlined above and explain how this series doesn’t abide by any of them:

Tell me the most important stuff first: ReesaTeesa either never heard of the inverted pyramid or really didn’t care about it. Either way, she does this mega-series in pure chronological order.

Clearly, we know the situation isn’t going to be great for her, given the title of the series. I mean, nobody says “Who the f— did I marry?” and comes up with the conclusion “The best person ever!” That said, we have no idea of what depths of hell she’s going to face in this thing. In some cases, she’ll even tease future disasters with a “Don’t worry. We’ll get to that later.”

She does some brief recapping at various points, and she also does a few “resets” or “clarification” episodes when viewers have raised questions or asked about specific holes in her stories.

That said, if you decide to get into this, get ready to wait a long, long time to find out what happened. This leads to…

Nobody’s going to hang with you if you’re really damned long: ReesaTeesa is giving us a massive allegory, 10 minutes at a time. Think of the last time you actually sat down and watched something on social media that lasted 10 minutes. Then realize she did 50 of these things, which means it’s about 500 minutes long.

If you do the math on this, that means you are sitting through more than EIGHT HOURS of content to get to the end of the story. There are NetFlix mini-series that aren’t this long, and those things have actors and budgets and scenery and such. This is literally nothing but ReesaTeesa sitting in her home or her car and talking to the camera for that amount of time.

This thing is ridiculously long, and yet even the later pieces have upwards of 5-6 million views. That’s not counting the views of her videos that fans have reposted or the YouTube versions where people mercifully pulled multiple posts into one larger video.

I know people watch a lot of TikTok, but this seemed like a lot for this platform, leading to the next key point…

Use the right tool for the right job: The idea of using the right tool for the right job goes all the way back to my days as a “convergent journalism apostle.” In short, if you can tell the story best with a video, do that. If a graphic does the job better than a text story, do the graphic. If photos work better than graphics in conveying meaning, use the pictures.

In today’s era, we can expand that idea by saying that certain platforms do better than others for certain things. Blogs like mine that rely on text are set up a certain way while people who tell stories via photo tend to use Instagram etc.

In terms of TikTok, the average video ranges between about 38 and 50 SECONDS. People tend to think of “big” TikToks as close to three minutes.

ReesaTeesa has picked the absolute wrong platform for her story, as she maxes out the limit (10 minutes) 50 times to tell the tale of Legion. Doing this on TikTok is akin to writing the novel “Shogun” on Twitter/X in a thread of 280-character posts. A YouTube channel would be a better pick and even that’s a stretch.

It’s not about you: Whether someone was building a blog or doing a photo series, I’ve repeatedly explained that the audience has to come first. In short, you can’t make it about yourself. It has to be about them.

ReesaTeesa stated that she wanted to tell her story, with the goal of it helping at least one other person out there who might be experiencing something similar. In each episode, she repeats the idea that she’s trying to tell her story, and that we are all kind of just riding along with her.

WHY IT WORKS ANYWAY: Even with what should be a long list of fatal flaws, the series is a massive hit. I can’t speak for everyone, but I can tell you what I’ve observed in listening to all 8+ hours of this (I had a couple long drives with time to kill…):

  • She’s a good storyteller: First and foremost, she tells the story well. Between emotional anguish and moments of levity, ReesaTeesa is just really good at weaving a yarn. If I had the option of editing this thing, I’m sure I could cut it down by one-third without batting an eyelash and not lose anything, but the excess content doesn’t come at the risk of losing the audience.
  • She stays on point: As long as this thing is, she doesn’t drift into other random tales or bring in unrelated content. It literally is a single story told in 50+ parts.
  • She connects with the audience: Her general vulnerability and unvarnished approach really makes her connect with people. I felt like I was part of a friend group, listening to a good friend bare her soul. She would often start parts of the series by answering questions people asked in the chat or clarifying things based on comments people had. In making this a two-way street of communication, she made it work.
  • She’s honest: I distinguish this from factual accuracy, in that I can’t PROVE certain things she said, but I can tell she honestly believes what she says when she’s offering opinions or reflections. That’s never more true than when she describes parts of the story that don’t make her look great. She talked about how she wanted a specific car (it had a “cognac interior” is all I can recall) and how that made her sound really bougie. She said she fell into this mess because she wanted it to be “her turn” to get married. She admits to her faults, which make us feel like she doing more than throwing a pity party online.
  • She gave a damn: When it came to telling the story, I could tell that she cared about telling it. Her approach, her content and everything else was so compelling because she felt so compelled to tell the story. Because SHE cared, WE cared.

UW-Madison gets sued to produce athletes’ NIL agreements, likely leading to an open-records battle with UW Foundation

THE LEAD: A journalist is suing UW-Madison after the public university refused to release documents related to name, image and likeness (NIL) contracts it has in place with student athletes. The university is playing a fantastic shell game here, claiming it doesn’t have the contract, but rather the UW Foundation does. The Foundation thus argues it doesn’t have to release the contract because it’s a private entity:

“There’s no good reason why UW-Madison should be using its foundation to effectively offshore public records,” journalist Daniel Libit told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Spokespeople for both UW-Madison and the UW Foundation said they hadn’t received the complaint and wouldn’t comment on pending litigation.

(ED NOTE: To clarify, the contract under discussion is the one between the UW and Altius Sports Partners, “a firm other large universities have hired to support student-athletes who can now profit from endorsement deals they strike.” Individual deals like athlete Bill Smith agreeing with Vince Filak Ford to appear in commercials are private contracts between private individuals and private companies and not subject to open records law.

If, however, athlete Bill Smith signed an NIL agreement of some kind with a PUBLIC institution, the public entity would would be required to fork over the paperwork. Bill Smith could still tell you to go to hell and take a left.)

BACKSTORY: The true NIL set up is about three years old, but it traces its history back to a lawsuit filed by former UCLA basketball player Ed O’Bannon in the early 2000s. O’Bannon discovered that his likeness was being used in an NCAA video game and he was not provided with compensation for that.

The NCAA argued (as it had for generations) that O’Bannon was a “student-athlete” which meant he didn’t get paid in cash, but rather got a really cool scholarship and the ability to be exploited… er… part of a team sport. The courts thought differently and rendered a judgment of more than $44 million in legal fees. The upshot of that was that the universities were either going to have to stop making money off of student athletes (Hard No) or find a way to compensate athletes (Not thrilled, but grudgingly complied).

Thus, the NCAA let the students have say over their usage in commercials, endorsements and more. This is why you now see commercials like this one, with Iowa star Caitlin Clark:

 

CHAOS ENSUES: Name five things that happen when money gets involved in anything where money wasn’t there before, and at least four of them will not be pleasant.

Over the past three years, the NIL experience has fallen in line with maxim this for a number of reasons:

  • Laws differ from state to state and with no federal law on it, it’s the wild west.
  • Schools differ in terms of resources, so basically one place can essentially “buy” a college kid with the promise of a sweeter NIL agreement than wherever they currently play.
  • People have always taken advantage of student athletes for their own nefarious interests, only now the money getting thrown around is bigger and at least quasi-legal.

Long story short, the NIL situation is like spotting a cockroach in your house: Whatever you saw, chances are the problems you didn’t see are much worse. Thus, the need to pry records out from under whatever rock these institutions are keeping them to figure out what is going on.

DOCTOR OF PAPER HOT TAKE: First, I really hope Libit wins because what little experience I have had with foundations and private money has shown me that there is likely a LOT of shady stuff going on related to the NIL situation.

I remember trying to find out how a coach’s contract was bought out, only to find the money came through a foundation. I tried to figure out how a student newspaper was staying afloat, only to find out that the money came through a foundation. In my own institution, we had a ridiculous game of three-card monte that almost landed our foundation in bankruptcy and our former chancellor in jail. In each case, the foundation pulled the “we’re a private entity” card and it wasn’t until everything went to hell in a speedboat that we even got a sniff of what had happened, if we found out at all.

Second, Libit is absolutely wrong about there being “no good reason” why UW-Madison is stashing these contracts somewhere that open-records requests can’t get them. It’s the same “good reason” people go out to eat at a conspicuous place, pay with a credit card and make sure everyone at the bar talked to them from 7-9 p.m. on a Tuesday, the exact time a hit man is whacking one of their enemies.

If I had a dime for every time a public official used some weaselly dodge to avoid creating or turning over public records, I’d probably be able to NIL my way into a great team here at UWO in every sport. There was Sarah Palin and Scott Walker using private emails to dodge open records when they served their respective states. There was Missouri’s governor, Eric Greitens, who had his staff using an app that destroyed messages after they were read to avoid open records requests.

And then there was the time Ball State told us that the documents pertaining to a provost search weren’t “open records” but essentially an “inter-office memo” only intended to be shared with the 35, 000 people at or around the university.

Third, and most importantly, if I were the people at Foundation, I’d give them the damned Altius contract right now. As it stands, courts haven’t ruled that foundation records are public. If these chuckleheads let this go through a court system and some judge (or multiple judges, as I’m imagining they’d appeal a loss) decides ALL their records ARE open, that’s not going to bode well for foundations everywhere. That’s not just me yammering. The pro journalists know it:

It’s like when people in the state of Wisconsin wondered, “Gee, why are the Republicans agreeing to Democrat Gov. Tony Evers’ redistricting maps after fighting against them for years?” The answer was, the court was going to make its own decision and it was likely going to screw them more than if they just signed off on Evers’ maps.

Of course, I’m guessing the Foundation isn’t going to be this smart, so it should be a fun fight to watch.

The ‘Exploring Mass Communication’ textbook is officially available. Give it a look to get a free T-shirt (and more)

“And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the book swaddled in recyclable brown paper, lying in a cardboard box…”

I don’t know if I can fully describe the feeling I had when my kid lugged this box into the house recently and said, “It’s heavy as hell. It must be a book thing.”

It was, and at that precise moment, “Exploring Mass Communication” became real for me.

Never mind that I’d seen links to digital versions on Amazon and Sage’s website.

Never mind that I’d seen cover mock-ups, proof editions and various Vantage versions.

Never mind that I had put together an hour-long presentation to Sage reps on the book about a month earlier.

That box was proof this whole thing wasn’t a St. Elsewhere Kid/Fever Dream situation. I wanted to just scream and cry and jump around and roll around in the snow while cradling a copy of it.

I quickly reached out to the folks at Sage and the conversation went something like this:

Me: I got my copies of the book! Can I tell people it’s out now?
Them: Yes!
Me: You sure?
Them: Yes.
Me: It’s not gonna be like last time, right? This is a real “go for launch” for the book?
Them: Yes… In fact, if you could write a blog post to tell people to adopt it for their classes, that would be great!
Me: Um… No…

I never wanted the blog to be a book-pimping tool because a) nobody wants to read that kind of stuff and b) I can’t promote myself worth a damn. Other people’s accomplishments, student media successes, good causes and great organizations, yes.

Me promoting myself, no.

That doesn’t mean I’m not ridiculously excited about this book and what I think it can do for people. Here is the link to the Sage page for the print text and digital version that lays out all the features, options and fun stuff we poured into “Exploring Mass Communication.” When I read it, even I was like, “Damn… I did all that?”

I have to say, though, the coolest thing about this whole thing is the Sage Vantage system. This is honestly a real game-changer for anyone teaching any course with any Sage book.

When I first heard about Vantage, every conversation went like this:

Me: I want to do (X).
Sage: Um… You can’t. It won’t translate into Vantage.

Now that I see how it works, I totally get why my weird ideas needed to be streamlined. Here is a 90-second video that explains Vantage. It impresses the hell out of me. The knowledge checks, the plug-and-play with any LMS, the ease of grading and more are all part of Vantage and this book was written specifically to work with that system.

That’s about as much self-promotion as I can handle: Bragging about someone else’s tools that make my textbook a “immersive digital learning experience.”

I have no idea how to tell you that I love this book and that I want you to love it too. So, I’m just going to offer you a bunch of bribes to make your life better in some way and perhaps get you to look at the textbook/digital-immersive-learning-experience thing.

 

BRIBE 1: REQUEST A REVIEW COPY OF THE BOOK AND GET A FREE “FILAK FURLOUGH” T-SHIRT

The folks at Sage are looking for people who want to adopt the book for a class. Me? I need to look cool in front of my publisher while simultaneously moving an excess supply of T-shirts.

So here’s the deal: If you’re teaching an intro to mass media/mass com class and you would be willing to take a look at the book, hit me up on the contact link here and I’ll get you on “Staci’s Magic List of Wonder” for a free copy. (Most folks like the digital version with all the Vantage toys to play with. If you’re old school or just need a new coffee coaster, I’m sure we can get you a print text.)

Send me your name, your school and your school email address. Also, send me the size of T-shirt you wear and a snail mail address and I’ll send you a “Filak Furlough Tour T-shirt.” All freebie. I’m covering shipping costs on my end.

(If you are thinking, “Vince, I’d love to see the book, but having your name on my body in any way feels profoundly creepy…” you can feel free to pass on the shirt. I totally get it. I still have trouble hearing my name as a descriptor as in, “Don’t forget to read Filak Chapter 5!”)

The shirts are a result of CustomInk doing an awesome thing and reprinting them after they made a mistake on the back of the first batch. Sage bought a bunch for a promo at its annual sales meeting, which was back in December, so when the reprinted shirts came, it was too late. Thus, I told the the Sage Folks I’d take the shirts and do something positive with them.

Sizes are somewhat limited and first come, first served. They are available while supplies last, but if that many people are that jazzed about this book that I run out of shirts, I might just do another order.

As you can see, I’m a total dork.

 

BRIBE 2: TELL ME WHAT I MISSED AND I’LL WRITE IT FOR YOU ASAP

The key reason I want you to look at the book isn’t to adopt it for your class.

Hyperventilating Breathe GIF - Hyperventilating Breathe Sheldon GIFs

Hang in there, Sage reps… I know this isn’t what you’re used to for a book launch…

My rationale is this: I know that despite five years of my life, 27 edits, five complete reboots, 128 reviews and innumerable prayers to St. Jude (the patron saint of lost causes) for intervention, I probably missed more than a few things in here.

If you have ever written anything, you know that eventually you read it over and over and over until you basically go blind to it. Over the course of this journey, we added, removed, reworked, replaced, added again, removed again and reconfigured everything in here at least twice. That means I need some people to tell me what works and what doesn’t, which is where you call come in.

If you read this thing and see something that needs to be there and isn’t, tell me and I’ll write it for you and post it on the blog. It doesn’t matter how big or how small. I’ll start a complete new section of the blog called “The Exploring Mass Communication Hotline” and post all fresh content to fill in any holes, add any additions, improve on any thin spots and generally augment what you get in the textbook, regardless of if you plan to adopt the thing or not.

I’ll also credit you on the blog. If the book gets picked up for a second edition somewhere in the future, I’ll fix the problem and you’ll be personally thanked in the Acknowledgements section.

People often think I’m kidding when I say stuff like this, but it’s real. Case in point: After the reporting book came out a few years back, a rep got a hold of me and said he had some feedback from a professor. The professor told him that if I had included a section on freelancing, the book would be much better.

So, I got in touch with several former students who were working various aspects of the freelance game and wrote a three-part, 8,000-word series on how freelancing works. I then sent the professor the links to use in the class, even if she hadn’t planned to adopt the book. We then took that series and tweaked it out for an appendix in the second edition. Her response? “This is great, but you’re crazy. Why would you do this for ONE PERSON?”

Well, because you asked. I just like helping folks.

Which leads to…

BRIBE 3: IF YOU TRY THE BOOK AND HATE IT, I’LL HELP YOU PUT YOUR CLASS BACK TOGETHER USING ANY BOOK YOU WANT

I would be honored and humbled if you’d consider my book for your class. Over the past few years, I’ve come to know a lot of great folks I otherwise never would have met if I hadn’t decided to turn my life into a series of book deadlines and giant Post-It Notes.

I use a giant Post-It to keep track of each book I’m working on at any given time. Yes, this was when things clearly got out of hand…

I understand that if you’re trying out my book, it means you’re not entirely happy with the one you’re using or looking for something specific. Nobody just switches books because they’ve got six weeks of stress-free time to kill or because they’re trying to help out a friend. The goal, I assume, is to plug a hole, fill a gap or generally improve upon whatever it is you’ve been sticking with through the last five or six editions.

That said, over the last 27 years of teaching college, I’ve come up with two universal truths:

  1. Rewriting a class for a new textbook is a massive pain in the rear.
  2. I am not everyone’s cup of tea.

In combining these two truisms, I realize I’m asking a lot of anyone who might be considering adopting “Exploring Mass Communication” for a class. In short, it’s like trying out a new hairstyle: It might be awesome or you might spend the next six months saying, “How long until I can get rid of these bangs?”

(I have been bald since I was 20, so I’m mostly guessing at how hair works…)

So, here’s the best deal I have for you: If you find yourself interested in trying this book for your class and it turns out it’s like eating sardine-flavored ice cream for you, I will work with you to rebuild your class in any format using any other mass-com text out there. I will literally fill in gaps, plug the holes and improve SOMEONE ELSE’S TEXTBOOK, based on what you tell me you want so that you can use it to fulfill your needs.

(Cut to a reaction from the offices of Sage…)

The first thought you might have is, “Vince, that’s a cute idea, but I’m using (NAME)’s book and I’m sure you haven’t read it…”

Hold my beer. Here is a sample of what I read in preparation to pitch Sage on this book:

I read everything in that photo at least once, most twice and one three times. I’ve read multiple editions of all of these, and these were just the ones I could still find on Amazon with a quick search of my internet history. That’s not counting the dozen or so other texts I borrowed from people or checked out of the library. In short, I know what’s out there because it informed on what I did or didn’t do when I wrote “Exploring Mass Communication.”

The second thought you might have is, “Vince, this has to be the stupidest thing you’ve ever done. Why would you actively improve your competition?”

Well, to start, it’s not even close to the stupidest thing I’ve ever done. This is comfortably below the “free tequila slammers” night and the “hey, let’s work on a pinball machine’s electric transformer without unplugging the game” situation. You could also ask my wife about the time I bought a beer can collection if you want to get me in real trouble…

Second, in answer to your question, I am constantly driven by two basic needs:

  1. Help people
  2. Make things work right

This is why Amy hates it when I see a broken lawnmower or vacuum cleaner on the side of the road. She knows I’m grabbing it and fixing it, even though we have no need for another lawnmower or vacuum cleaner. It’s also why I have a bunch of dead pinball machines in my game room and a garage full of dilapidated furniture: I’m bound and determined to fix them.

The whole reason I got into the textbook game was to help people. That’s why I did the blog, the Corona Hotline, the “Filak Furlough Tour” and pretty much everything else. To me, there is nothing that is more gratifying than feeling like someone who came to me with a problem actually left my presence with a solution.

When kids come to my office for help, they often say, “I’m sorry to bother you, but…” I immediately disabuse them of that notion: “You’re never a bother. Whatever you need is more important than what I am doing right now. Helping you is the best part of my day.” And I mean it.

So, that’s the pitch: Get a free copy of a book, get free stuff for doing so and get free help even if you don’t want to adopt the book. It should be clear from this proposal why I never went into sales and marketing.

In any case, operators are standing by, so thanks for being part of this journey with me.

Best,

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

 

 

 

Super Bowl Shuffled Off: The ad game for the big game is seeing big changes

THE LEAD: Even as companies continue to dump ridiculous amounts of money into Super Bowl ad spots, a recent examination of this year’s ad buys has shown a significant shift in who is doing what:

The most interesting thing we found may be who’s not advertising. Gone are the Big Four automakers – Ford, General Motors, Chrysler parent Stellantis and Toyota – which have chosen to dedicate their ad dollars to more tightly targeted marketing campaigns. Only Kia and BMW are stepping up to promote their new electric vehicles, while Volkswagen has advertising lined up to celebrate its 75th anniversary in the U.S.

Also missing this year will be GoDaddy, whose Super Bowl ads have generated buzz over the years. Its management has indicated that the company is exploring other marketing options that create more engagement for their target markets.

Instead, the majority of buys are going to food and beverage companies. The authors of this piece noted that these kinds of things tend to have a much broader appeal across an array of target markets.

In short, a wider range of people can be similarly persuaded about how good M&M’s taste or why Bud is the beer to drink, thus making a mass-market ad worthwhile for these brands.

RISKY BUSINESS: Companies take a huge risk that can amount to more than $20 million to develop, create, shoot and display a 30-second spot. Granted, the ad itself can be teased on social media, shared on YouTube and promoted through various other platforms prior to the game, so it’s no longer just a one-shot wonder.

Also, if you end up hitting a homer, it can live on forever. Just think about Apple’s 1984 ad:

 

Still, if you swing and miss, most of the country is watching and it can be an ugly fall from grace. This is among my all-time ad fails:

Because nothing says, “Hey, buy a car” like misogyny…

SAFETY AND VALUE IN NICHES: Like we’ve talked about before here, audience-centricity is crucial to all forms of media, and the fragmentation of audiences has led to a lot of shifts in media.

A recent demonstration that the old model of general content to a large audience is failing was the recent announcement that The Messenger would be closing after less than a year. The founders of the site planned to do something akin to a “60 Minutes” or major metro paper model, in which it was all things to all people. Clearly that’s not where media consumers are at.

This is what advertisers have known for a while and it’s being reflected in the approach to the Super Bowl ads. Rather than take one giant $20 million whack at a massive win, advertisers are diversifying among various smaller platforms, with smaller ads for smaller audiences. The idea is that with this kind of investment, they can do more with less while avoiding the big risk of a Super Bowl failure.

DOCTOR OF PAPER HOT TAKE: The Super Bowl isn’t hurting for money, so this isn’t a “Titanic is going down” kind of concern. All the ad spots were sold for the ungodly sum of $7 million well before we even knew who would be playing in the game.

That said, this is an alert that there are icebergs out there, and other ships have hit them, so it’s worth taking notice of this situation. Newspapers, which are continuing to self-immolate at the hands of hedge funds, ignored similar warnings when the internet came along. Cable and TV folks didn’t pay as much attention to streaming as they probably should have and are continuing to course correct well after the fact.

It’ll be important to watch the continuing shift moving forward, especially as things change in terms of AI and influencer culture. The one thing media folks who aren’t in advertising forgot about folks in advertising over the years is that ad folks are buying eyeballs. Their loyalty is to that principle, which means you can’t say, “Well, they’ve ALWAYS bought (time/space/impressions) so I’m sure they will again.”

MOMENT OF ZEN: My favorite Super Bowl ad of all time still remains the one for Fidelity, featuring Mr. Britney Spears (Kevin Federline) making fun of his fall from grace. To this day, when Amy or I drift into a daydream on the other, one of us will say to the other, “FEDERLINE! FRIES!” and then laugh hysterically.