(EDITOR’S NOTE: Before I get doxxed by every Brewers fan on earth, please know I love the Brewers, I want them to make it to the World Series, I want to take my Dad to a World Series game at Am Fam field and I want them to win it all. I love this team and I think everyone on it is great. This is about the writing, not the catch.)
One of the bad things about getting older is that I don’t have the late-night stamina I used to, so when Game 4 of the Brewers/Padres series was reaching past 11 p.m., I fell asleep before the end. When I woke up, I not only found out they won, but I was greeted by an alert to this story that captured a key moment I missed:
For five and two-hundredths of a second, from bat to glove, Petco Park waited in nervous, loud anticipation as the ball soared off of Machado’s bat in the bottom of the eighth, seemingly ticketed toward the few rows of seats beyond the right-center field wall for what would have been the latest October right-hook to the jaw of the Milwaukee Brewers.
The Brewers center fielder made one of the greatest defensive plays in franchise history given the moment, vaulting the Crew to the National League Championship Series with his breathtaking snag to preserve a 3-1 win over the San Diego Padres Game 4 of the National League Division Series.
I immediately flipped to YouTube to see this glorious, amazing, miraculous, breathtaking snag, fully expecting something like this:
Or this:
Hell, based on that description, I was even thinking about this one:
What I got was this:
One of the good things about getting older is that I have historical perspective. It also helps being a journalist who understands that you can’t make everything go to 11 if you ever want your readers to take you seriously.
To be fair to Mitchell, it was a good catch.
It was an important catch.
However, it wasn’t what the sportswriter sold me in that description.
It wasn’t even the best centerfield catch in the series:
And then there was this one, which Brewers manager Pat Murphy clearly had an opinion:
(And this, kids, is the risk of doing a live shot…)
The point isn’t that the catch wasn’t good or that it didn’t matter. I love Garrett Mitchell and he’s one hell of a centerfielder. The point is for writers, because when you over-hype the hell out of everything, you desensitize your audience even as you attempt to come up with bigger, better and more hyped language for whatever comes next.
This leads to the throwback post today, where I’m pleading for better writing that doesn’t turn everything into the second coming of Christ.
Don’t Believe the Hype
A group of my sports writing students were asked to write a story about a football game between two fictional college rivals, in which one comes back from a huge deficit to win on the last play of the fourth quarter. A good number of them attempted to hype the story rather than tell it, especially in the lead:
Thanks to an unbelievable fourth quarter capped by a 28-0 run, (WINNERS) came back to defeat (LOSERS), 31-28.
It seemed like (LOSERS)had the game wrapped up going into the fourth quarter, but in football, you must play all four quarters to the best of your ability if you want to win the game, no matter what level you’re playing at.
In Wild and Wonderful fashion, (WINNER) roars back to score 31 unanswered as they knock off (LOSER) in the closing seconds of regulation.
The (GAME) ended in extraordinary fashion with a last second touchdown.
Others wrote about it being “incredible,” “super,” “amazing” and so forth. And, yes, according to the information they received it was the largest comeback in conference history, so it might well have been all of those things.
However, your job is to show the readers what is going on by presenting factual information, not trying to sell them something by hyping it up. If you do the former, you’ll notice that your readers will come to the conclusion you want them to all by themselves. If you do the latter, you’ll find that the readers will resist your efforts to get them to see the situation in the way you want them to.
Don’t believe me? Consider the Joke Theory.
My wife and I laugh about how we’re always so competitive. But I know I always laugh more.
OK, that’s a lame joke, but I was hamstrung a bit by trying not to insult men, women, college students, professors, animals, trees and some frat kid named Chad’s little brother. That said, a few of you might have laughed at that. I at least had a chance.
Now consider if I started it this way instead:
I’m going to tell you a really funny joke. It’s probably one of the best jokes you’re ever going to hear. You’re going to be laughing so hard, you’ll cry. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if you retell it to everyone you know. OK, here we go…
The hype kills the hope that I’m getting a laugh, just like the hype undercuts your position with your readers. Don’t tell them something is funny, amazing or whatever else. Show them the thing as it is and let them come to that conclusion.
Here’s an example of how this works:
Read this version of a story about a man caught breaking into a couple’s home, eating their food, wearing the wife’s Christmas “onesie” and dressing his cat, named Spaghetti, in a cashmere sweater he stole. What drives this story is the straight-up fact-based reporting that has you wondering, “What the heck is wrong with this guy?” (Well that and quotes like this: “No one leaves a dressed cat in a crawl space unless they’re coming back or they’re still here,” Smith told the paper. “So I got out and shut the door.”)
Now, if the writer, instead of doing this, had started commenting on this throughout the story, here’s what you might get:
“In the most bizarre case of burglary and home invasion ever known, a 38-year-old man was arrested Sunday night.
The odd fellow, who named his cat Spaghetti, which makes no sense, was caught in a crawl space in the home. A creepy crawler, indeed!
The weirdo put on the wife’s “onesie” night dress, which the woman obviously said she didn’t want the police to bring back for her. He also dressed Spaghetti in a cashmere outlet the couple had for one of its Chihuahuas, just adding to the weirdness of the night.”
Which version does the job better? Clearly the first one.
The point is that you need to have faith in your readers that they’ll see what you see when you write, without having to poke or prod them via commentary or hype. You also need to have faith in your own writing that you’ll get your point across well enough without having to use hype as a crutch to do the job.
The White House on Monday blocked POLITICO from boarding Air Force One and carrying out its print pool duties, marking the latest escalation in an ongoing battle over media outlets’ access to President Donald Trump.
“The White House has blocked today’s print pooler, Politico, from traveling on Air Force One,” Washington Post reporter Katherine Doyle wrote in a White House pool report Monday afternoon.
Doyle added that “since [the White House] was unable to find a replacement, there is no primary print pooler on this trip,” and noted that she would be making reports as “the secondary pooler” as Trump travels to Nebraska for a campaign rally ahead of the midterms.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump accused the three outlets of repeatedly publishing “FAKE NEWS” and warned that other news organizations could face similar restrictions.
“Effective immediately, I am banning Fake News CNN, MSNOW… and Politico… from the White House as a result of their constant ‘reporting’ FAKE NEWS!” Trump wrote. “Media Outlets shouldn’t be able to constantly write or report FICTION and LIES when they’re covering the President of the United States, the Trump Administration, or the United States of America.”
WHY YOU SHOULD CARE: First and foremost, the First Amendment issues here are obvious and staggering, so let’s skip past those and look at other things that might be somewhat oblique but just as important:
Your administrators are watching: Any media scholars worth their salt have seen the Albert Bandura studies with the kids and the Bobo dolls. If you haven’t, the gist of this is that Bandura had kids watch a TV program of a kid their age using a bat or stick to smack around a Bobo doll. Then, he put them in a room with a stick and a Bobo doll to see what they’d do. They grabbed the stick and started whacking the heck out of this thing. (There were a lot more studies and there is a lot more nuance to this, but you get the idea.)
When Trump pulls out his stick and starts whacking the Bobo doll that is the media, other people tend to think it’s a good idea as well. I can’t make a causal connection, but I can say I never saw this T-shirt before Trump started declaring journalists the enemy of the people:
Also, when the courts are the only recourse to reverse such things, only people who have the resources to access the courts can do so.
Administrators at high schools and colleges who aren’t all that keen on the work of their student journalists aren’t ignorant of the current climate regarding the media, so it’s not a stretch to think that the more the media can take a beating, the more willing people will be to give media folks one.
We’ve already covered a lot of those kinds of situations here on the blog, so the vibe is already out there in terms of administrators taking a stick to the student media. People tend to do as much as they can get away with, so knowing that one branch of government is trying to get away with this should be a concerning precedent.
When media become the story, the media become distracted:I’m never going to say that the First Amendment isn’t a core value of our society and our right to free expression. I will say, however, that the media folks who avail themselves of this amendment tend to become exceptionally myopic when their rights (or those of fellow media people) are violated.
I’m as guilty of this as anyone, in that when I see a student media outlet getting its rights trampled, I basically hit the Bat Signal on the blog and write about nothing but that for at least a few days. I’d argue that my focus is really student media and student-media related items, so at least I’m still in ballpark on this. However, I could be doing posts on how to make better leads, do better interviews or get a job instead of railing against the stupidity of some pea-brained administrator who thinks they are above the law.
When CNN or MSNow or whatever else gets drilled like this, it’s a lot bigger Bat Signal and so everyone is paying attention to that. Even more, the folks who are paying attention have a much wider range of things they SHOULD be paying attention to. Trump could be in the process of nuking Rhode Island because someone forgot to tell him there was a silent “h” in there, and we’d all be doing think pieces about the founders’ intentions regarding free expression.
In short, none of us wants to be the story, but when we are, it’s better to keep our eye on the ball than on our own egos.
The top of the editorial The Cornell Daily Sun ran about the allegations of rape and the school’s unwillingness to release certain information or pursue certain courses of action.
THE LEAD: The Cornell Daily Sun, the student newspaper at Cornell University, has put on a master class on how to cover an amazingly difficulty and incredibly important story on its campus.
The paper broke the news of a former student’s lawsuit against the university, several parts of the school’s greek system, a local bar and seven men she says gang raped her at the Chi Phi fraternity:
“What happened to me was horrific and deeply disturbing,” the plaintiff told The Sun. “Almost two years later, I still carry the weight of its impact every day and night.”
The plaintiff, identifying as Jane Doe, filed this lawsuit after an initial report was made to the Cornell community on Nov. 8, 2024.
The paper then followed up with a scathing editorial that named the seven individuals and took on a school that seemed willing to let this go until The Sun started making noise:
We refuse for this victim to be reduced to just another story. Cornell has failed to protect its students. Cornell has failed to address the growing issue of sexual assault on campus with its pathetic task force. Cornell has failed the student allegedly raped by those seven men at Chi Phi in October 2024. Cornell has failed her. Cornell has failed us.
(SIDE NOTE: I checked with a legal eagle friend of mine on this approach to see what kinds of danger the paper might be in taking this approach:
The main legal risk is if they turn out to be wrong and name someone who wasn’t involved or if they incorrectly describe their involvement. Then they’re deep into an expensive defamation lawsuit.
If it’s accurate, this is truthful and newsworthy – that would defeat any privacy tort claims the named students might consider.
In other words, if it’s accurate, the paper is safe and all it would take to run the names is the guts to do so. Obviously, the staff had them.)
THE FLOODGATES OPEN: In short order, every group, department and organization that had either ignored this situation or shrugged it off started circling the wagons.
The staffers have spoken to multiple media outlets about their efforts, but the best look at this is probably the Q and A on The Cut, where they outlined how and why this story mattered to them.
This group of journalists inspired today’s Throwback Thursday post, where we looked at the issue of HOW to go about digging into stories related to sexual assault. The level of care and compassion are crucial, but so are the reporting standards and fact-checking necessary to remain accurate above all else.
This ran in 2019, but it remains relevant as ever today, unfortunately.
As student journalists, how do you report on rape allegations? Pretty much the same way you report on anything else.
A friend of mine sent me a link to an article posted on a writing website that had her seriously concerned and had me grateful that I wasn’t in her shoes.
The college-aged woman who wrote the article stated that the head of a university’s student government had raped her. She outlined the history of their relationship, including previous consensual sexual interactions, discussed her own history of sexual encounters and detailed the incident in which she states the man had sex with her without using a condom and without her consent to do so.
In addition, she outlined specific allegations including:
She was not the only person with whom this man had non-consensual sex: “It appears that there are many more young women than just myself who have been assaulted or harassed by him,” she wrote.
She heard from another woman that this man had infected multiple partners with chlamydia. (She wrote that she underwent testing and her test came back negative.)
She heard from that same woman that this man had cheated on her with multiple partners.
My friend advises the student publication at the university where this woman attends (or attended) school and where this man serves as the head of the student government. In other words, this has massive ramifications for the audience her paper serves.
The question then becomes, “How does a student media outlet go about reporting on a rape allegation, made in this fashion, in a decent, fair and ethical way while also keeping a watchful eye on any legal ramifications?” The answer in the headline is a bit glib, but it is more true than not: Basically the same way you report on anything else.
Consider these basic building blocks:
Background research must come first: Nobody wants to look like an idiot when they get into a story where they have no prior knowledge of the topic. While really bad reporters kind of fake their way through a topic, good reporters dig deep to fully understand it well enough to speak intelligently on it. Consider this the first thing you must do for ALL stories, whether you’re trying to explain how the sport of curling works (my first “what the hell do I know about this?” story that required ridiculous amounts of research) or trying to figure out how to ask questions in an interview with a rape survivor.
The best way to not feel like you’re going to do something stupid in your reporting and writing is to make yourself as smart as possible on the topic.
If your mother says she loves you, go check it out: This is the first rule of all good journalism. In other words, go do some digging for yourself before you rely on anything you hear second hand. Ask for an interview with the woman who wrote the story so you can hear her story first hand. Ask for an interview with other people directly attached to the story, such as the man accused in this story. Look for things elements of the story that can be verified without traumatizing anyone or making it look like you have already decided who is right and who is wrong.
Cases involving false rape allegations are quite rare, but the premier example of a story like this that went off the rails in a horrifying way was the Rolling Stone story, “A Rape on Campus.” The piece told the story of “Jackie,” a University of Virginia student who told the writer she had been gang raped at a fraternity party. “Jackie” also stated that the administration wouldn’t do anything to help her and that it was more concerned in protecting the image of the school than investigating her situation.
A post-mortem analysis of the story by the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and commissioned by Rolling Stone found that the magazine had failed to do basic reporting to verify the claims asserted in the story and that the piece had basic facts wrong. The report stated the reporter never interviewed the friends “Jackie” had mentioned, instead relying on her recollections of what they told her. It also noted that specific parties and dates of events didn’t fit with actual events or parties, something that would have been easy enough to verify. The report also outline other similar things like this that could have been done to help put the magazine on a stronger footing or better decide how to proceed with the piece.
Simply put, you are a reporter, so report. That doesn’t mean you don’t believe someone, but you have to make sure you can support the content you publish to the best of your ability.
Check your legal liabilities:The Student Press Law Center provides student journalists with free legal advice on a wide array of topics. If you have concerns that a story might libel someone, a call or email to SPLC is worth your time. The “Dynamics” textbooks list off the key elements of libel as:
Publication: Did you disseminate the content to someone other than the person claiming to be libeled?
Identification: Is the person claiming to be libeled named or otherwise easily known based on how he or she is described in the story?
Harm: Can the person claiming to be libeled demonstrate serious damage to his or her reputation? This usually involves being accused of a crime or associated with “unsavory” illnesses.
Fault: Can the person claiming to be libeled show that the person publishing the content either did something wrong or failed to do something that should have been done to prevent the libelous content from being published?
In case you’re wondering, a story like this would go four-for-four in terms of these items. That means you’re into the defenses against libel, including truth, privilege and so forth. What also makes this interesting is the issue of what level of fault the man in this story would have to prove. Ordinary citizens only have to prove negligence, which is easier to show, while public figures have to demonstrate actual malice. In that instance, the public figure has to show the material was false and that the publisher had a reckless disregard for the truth. The SPLC is your friend, so give the folks there a call with questions before you publish.
The duty to report is not the same as the duty to publish: If you do your reporting and you aren’t certain you have enough of the story to tell the story, wait until you can gather enough content to feel more secure. If you find that your reporting hasn’t revealed enough to support or refute conclusions crucial to the story itself, don’t feel pressured to publish something because you are worried about “how it would look.” You are responsible for what you publish, so you need to feel confident you can stand behind what you put out there.
It’s always better to be late than wrong.
Once you get deeper into the writing, you should pay additional attention to style, word choice and clarity to avoid creating problems for your sources and your readers. In addition, having a legal eagle and an expert in the field give you a quick review for some thoughts and polish points to consider won’t hurt either.
This is obviously a serious and delicate topic, which means tact matters as does basic human decency. That said you can do all of this and adhere to quality reporting standards to make sure you put your best possible story forward.
As part of a class I’ve lovingly dubbed “Life 101,” we are drawing on the experiences of guest speakers to help students find their first steps into the world beyond college.
Karen Schneider, publisher and president of the Winnebago Media Group, served as our first speaker, providing students information about the world of “mom-and-pop” operations, hiring practices, expectations on both sides of the interview and other things along those lines.
(Minor Plug: She is looking for a news reporter and it would be a great starter job for a newly minted grad. She mentioned the papers in the group “launch ’em and land ’em” as their hiring philosophy. They “launch” newbies into the next phase of their careers and “land” people who are looking for something different after corporate life or retirement doesn’t do it for them. You can reach her through her LinkedIn page.)
Here are a few notes and quotes from her presentation that were exceptionally helpful to our students (and me), so I hope they’ll be helpful to you and your kids:
DEALING WITH NO: It’s hard for most of us to separate the rejection of an idea we have or a proposal we make from the rejection of us as a person. This is multiplied by 1,012 when it comes to trying to get a job, as “We had many fine candidates and decided to go another way,” can feel like, “You suck so hard, not even light can escape from you. Enjoy your parents’ basement, loser.”
The first thing Karen said about this situation will be included in every lecture I give on the topic of job-seeking from now on:
“Just because it’s a “no,” it doesn’t mean you’re not qualified.”
She also added this at the end:
“If you get a no, do not (panic). It’s not that you are bad. They just chose differently.”
I have been in that situation more times than I care to count and it never feels good, so to hear someone who actually does the hiring say this really helps put things into perspective. I’ve lost out on jobs where I had friends running the search or sitting on a committee and a large part of me was like, “What the hell? How is this possible?”
What is both reasonably logical and emotionally painful is that they just said, “No. We’re choosing differently.” Knowing that is important. Constantly reminding yourself of it is vital.
NETWORKING CAN GET YOU THERE, BUT IT WON’T KEEP YOU THERE: Karen was talking about her first job and how knowing someone who knew someone who knew her helped a lot. She said networking was vital in helping to connect with people who might need you and might provide opportunities you really value.
Her advice was classic:
“You have to network and know who is out there. Tell people what you like to do and don’t like to do.”
<SNIP>
“Become a bartender because they are the most well connected people in the world.”
The more important part, however, was that once you get there, you have to work hard and succeed. As she said, knowing people can get you in, “but you have to earn your place.”
IT’S A SMALL, SMALL WORLD: Karen talked a lot about connections and networking as a way to get ahead, but also that those connections know other connections, so mind your P’s and Q’s.
If the world is connected via “Six Degrees of Separation,” our field is likely going to be only two or three degrees. That means your hard work and attitude can help you get a step up in the field or your lousy reputation can follow you everywhere.
One of the bigger mistakes people make in job interviews, she said, was talking negatively about other places they’ve worked or the competition in the field:
“Don’t talk negatively about competitors. What happens when you leave me? Will you talk negatively about me?”
<SNIP>
“Be mindful of how you apply, leave and decline jobs.”
EACH STEP MATTERS: One key reason I wanted Karen to come to class is because she hires a lot of people who are in the position my students find themselves: First-time job-seekers who have little or no experience with the whole “start a career” process. She understands what it’s like to be on the other side of the table during that process and can better help them see both the short game and the long game.
A key theme she touched on was how every job, every opportunity, is a step toward something that’s next and that every step matters. She talked about how the experience students gain and the skills they hone matter more than the major they select and the grades they obtain:
“Just because your major is X, don’t worry that it won’t fit into industry A, B and C. I’ve worked in food manufacturing, consumer sales… It’s about developing and using your skill set.”
The experience a worker gets in that first year is often enough to move on to the next stage, she said. Even if that first or that second job isn’t perfect, it’s helping you get somewhere, she said.
“You may not get the dream job right out of college, but work and behave the way you would as if that’s the job you have and you’ll get there.”
The topper of the amazing story done by The Dartmouth on the AI use of their provost.
THE LEAD: The next time your professor tells you, “If you just let AI do all your writing for you, you’ll never be able to get a job,” you can now respond with, “Well, I could be the provost of Dartmouth…”
An investigation by The Dartmouth of academic articles and opinion pieces published by Provost Santiago Schnell in 2026 found a median “AI-written” text percentage of 96% using artificial intelligence detector Pangram.
Pangram — which was found to have a “near-zero error rate” by an October 2025 University of Chicago audit — uses a large language model neural network which is trained to recognize differences between separate datasets of human-written documents and AI-generated content, according to the company’s website.
The student journalists at Dartmouth University did an amazingly strong deep dive into this topic, relying on both the most accurate AI-detection program available and some strong reporting beyond that. This wasn’t a quick-hit piece on one thing Schnell wrote, but rather a comprehensive look at his work before and after AI chatbots became widely available.
In addition, they sought and received a comment from Schnell about their findings, but didn’t just give him a pass. Instead, they took each of his claims (it was for grammar only… AI picks on people who have ESL concerns… etc.) and debunked each one of them.
And as if that weren’t enough to make the point, they also found this:
In an email statement to The Dartmouth on Sept. 18, Schnell wrote that he uses artificial intelligence for “language refinement, copyediting, improving clarity and organization and making writing processes more efficient,” but “review[s] the final text and take[s] responsibility for its content.”
“I develop ideas and arguments, conduct the research, evaluate the evidence and sources, determine the structure, prepare drafts and decide what appears in the final text,” Schnell wrote. “I regard these technologies as assistive tools. They do not identify the problem, design the research project, guarantee the validity of research results, interpretations, citations, conclusions or substitute for my research, intellectual judgment or authorship.”
Schnell’s Sept. 18 email statement to The Dartmouth was itself “100% AI-written,” according to a Pangram test.
I imagine next time, the Dartmouth students will want to do a sit down interview with this guy, just to see if he’s capable of doing so…
Given this kind of stuff is now everywhere, even places we generally would expect to be a little more honest, here’s a throwback post that talks about how best to avoid AI fake-outs and keep yourself out of trouble.
How AI “expert sources” have duped journalists and four tips on how to avoid being the next victim
Meet Elizabeth Hubbell, a 25-year-old skin-care expert who is willing to be a great source for your next story on anything makeup or skin-care related. She’s actually completely fabricated. Her picture came from an AI generation site and her name is a combination of my car (Betsy) and a baseball player whose card I had laying around (Carl Hubbell). Careful. It’s dangerous out there…
When it comes to doing interviews, I always tell students they need to do them in person. In response, they often look at me like I’m asking them to use a teletype machine or some semaphore flags. It’s easier, faster and more convenient for both parties if they can do a text, a chat or an email interview, the students say.
I argue that the face-to-face interview allows for a deeper connection for profile and feature pieces. This approach also can prevent sources in news stories from weaseling out of answers they could otherwise work through via several drafts of an email. Plus, if I spend some time in the source’s environment, I can probably find a personal effect that could give us something to talk about, like a family photo, a kid’s drawing or a sports item. At the very least, it’ll help with scene setting.
Since the launch of ChatGPT in 2022, anyone can generate comment, on any subject, in an instant.
It is a technology that appears to have fuelled a rise in expert commentators who have appeared widely in national newspapers but who are either not real, not what they seem to be or at the very least have CVs which do not justify their wide exposure in major newsbrands.
The rise in dubious commentators has been fuelled by companies that charge the PR industry in order to share quotes via email with journalists who have submitted requests for comment.
Journalist Rob Waugh found that in a number of cases, digital outlets were mass-generating content from these supposed experts, giving everyone from news journalists to PR practitioners the exact the quote or information they needed on a wide array of topics. However, when challenged to engage more deeply regarding who they are or what they have done in life, the “sources” suddenly had difficulty:
When challenged via email to do something that would be difficult to do with AI image-generating software (send an image of herself with her hand in front of her face) or prove that she was an environment expert, Rebecca stopped communicating.
One AI source, “Barbara Santini,” was particularly prolific in the volume and array of topics she could cover for journalists. Waugh found this roster of publications that had included Santini quotes:
Despite her ability to be all knowing and wise, Santini apparently couldn’t receive phone calls, a relatively easy giveaway that the “person” on the other end is AI. Waugh also found other examples of journalists who were getting taken for a ride by an AI source, including one case where the non-human pitched a sob story about breast cancer survival:
“Seeing my scarred chest in the mirror was a constant reminder of what I had lost,” Kimberly Shaw, 30, told me in an emotional email.
She had contacted me through Help a Reporter Out, a service used by journalists to find sources. I cover skincare and had been using the site to find people for a story about concealing acne scars with tattoos.
<SNIP>
Shaw’s experience may not have been relevant to my acne story, but it tapped into the same feelings of empowerment and control I wanted to explore. Thinking she could inspire a powerful new piece, I emailed her back.
But after days of back-and-forth conversations, something in Shaw’s emails began to feel a little off. After idly wondering to my boyfriend whether she could be a fake, he suggested that I run the emails through a text checker for artificial intelligence.
The result was unequivocal: Shaw’s emails had been machine-generated. I’d been interviewing an AI the entire time.
As a result of Waugh’s story, a number of these information clearinghouses have tried to cull their ranks of AI “experts” while the deceived publications have retooled or removed the stories with fake people in them. Although the founder of one of these “expert mills” blamed much of the situation on “lazy journalists,” he kind of gave up the game a bit when it came to explaining why these platforms don’t prevent the frauds from gaining access in the first place:
Darryl Willcox, who founded ResponseSource in 1997 and sold it in 2018, says that the simplicity and speed of platforms like ResponseSource is key to their appeal and that attempts to add authentication risk slowing down the system.
Willcox said: “The other factor which complicates things a little bit is that these platforms are quite an open system. Once a journalist makes a request they can be forwarded around organisations, and sometimes between them, and often PR agencies are acting for multiple parties, and they will be forwarded onto their many clients.”
In other words, “If we slowed down to make sure things were accurate, we wouldn’t be as appealing as we want to be.” Eeesh.
So what can you to to avoid quoting a fake person? The overarching theme is basically, “Don’t be a lazy journalist,” but here are a few more specific tips:
TRUST, BUT VERIFY: The old Russian proverb really comes into play here and for good reason. I often say that paranoia is my best friend and has kept me out of a ton of problems. To that larger point, not only did I click on every link I could find in Waugh’s story, I also Googled the hell out of Waugh himself. Why? I imagined that it would be the most epic “Punk’d” moment on Earth if the media world was flocking to this story about AI screwing with journalists, only to find out that Rob Waugh was also an AI fake. I found LinkedIn, X, Bluesky, media staff pages and at least a dozen photos. I wouldn’t bet the house on the fact he’s real, but I’d probably bet the lawn tractor.
This can be harder in situations like the one involving the cancer scammer, as regular people tend not to have as big of a social media presence or digital footprint. That said, even regular people under the age of retirement should have left a few breadcrumbs out there for you to find.
KICK THE TIRES: If you can’t find the person clearly through a digital search, feel free to play a little game of 20 Questions to see if you can get some things ironed out. Experts who have kicked the tires on a few bots can offer you specific ways to ask questions that will tend to ferret out fakers. The author in the cancer-scam story revealed that asking for specific photos based on prior conversations can be helpful as well.
I learned about this kind of thing in trying to defeat scams when it came to buying sports memorabilia. When unknown sellers offered either exactly what I wanted when I couldn’t find it anywhere else or provided me with a ridiculously low price for something I knew should cost more, the pros who had been around the block a few times suggested I ask the seller to “coin the image.”
What this meant was that I wanted the person to take a picture of the item with a coin (usually asking for either heads or tails, or maybe even a specific coin) so I could tell they had the item and weren’t messing with me. Turned out, that advice helped me dodge a bullet or two. As weird as it might seem, asking someone to take a picture with their left hand raised or holding a quarter with “heads” showing might help you avoid a problem.
If that can’t happen for legitimate reasons (the person lives too far away etc.), look for other ways to get some human connection with the source. That could be a Zoom/Teams/Whatever video chat or an actual phone call at an actual phone number. In the cases where the frauds proliferated, it was pretty clear that the only connection between the source and the journalist was through a keyboard. That’s especially dangerous when you don’t have a prior relationship with a source.
WHEN IN DOUBT, DO WITHOUT: At the end of the day, there is no journalistic rule that says you have to use a source, a quote or a “fact” just because you have it. If you don’t feel comfortable with how a source is providing you with information or you aren’t 100% sure this person is a person, it’s better to leave that source out of your story than it is to run the risk of getting bamboozled.
If you say, “Well, the whole story will fall apart without this one source and I can’t get anyone else to provide me with this information,” maybe that’s more revealing than anything else we’ve said here.
Student media and university officials tend to have relationships that range from somewhat cordial to downright vitriolic. This makes sense in a relatively adversarial system, in which the goal of the university is to present itself in the most positive light possible, while the goal of the student journalists is to present reality, regardless of how it makes the university look.
In the case of The Alestle at Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville, the relationship has devolved to the point in which a member of the school’s PR team filed a police report against the paper’s editor, claiming harassment via one line in an email. This is on top of a PR official saying her unfettered ability to sit in on interviews between student reporters and university personnel is “non-negotiable.” And those are just the most recent clashes over what is and isn’t acceptable under the First Amendment.
If you are behind on the story, there has been a TON of good reporting that can catch you up here:
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) has been involved in this for a while as well, and some key information, including a letter sent to the administration, can be found here.
The headlines of the story capture both the oddity and impact of this story: A clash over the First Amendment rights of student journalists ends up with an administrator essentially calling the cops on the editor, claiming harassment. What is getting overlooked however, reveals a bigger set of problems for the students, the university and even press freedom in general.
I exchanged a series of emails with The Aleste’s editor-in-chief, Dylan Hembrough and also conducted a phone interview with him, exchanged a series of emails with SIUE Director of Communications Nicole Franklin and did some deep dives into the background of this beef.
Rather than rehash what a lot of superior journalists have already reported, here are a few important things that are getting lost in the coverage of this story:
THIS ISN’T A ONE-TIME PROBLEM: A number of articles look at this moment as a singular incident, but it’s not. Although neither party could put a specific date on the start of the conflict, Hembrough, pointed to a story he wrote, regarding the university’s policy that resident assistants (RAs) were not allowed to talk to student media.
As the story made the rounds, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) caught wind of it and eventually wrote a letter to SIUE, explaining how the university couldn’t clamp down on students’ free speech rights if they were to speak as individuals, not university representatives. In response, the university noted The Aleste’s story was inaccurate, but did not elaborate on why it was wrong or what clarifications they had provided to student workers about media interactions.
Hembrough has been EIC for the past three years and said that he’s outlasted three head spokespeople, each of whom has been less than thrilled/cooperative when it comes to The Alestle, so clearly this isn’t a one-time problem.
(To be fair to SIUE, UW-Madison is ranked 61 and still has a grade of D, even though it’s a bastion of liberalism that has the reputation of “Two’s company, three’s a protest.” Probably the more telling thing is SIUE’s ranking of 243 out of 261 colleges and universities. Private institutions like Notre Dame and Marquette University rank better and they’re technically ALLOWED to do more suppression than SIUE if they felt like it.)
In addition, the school settled a free-speech lawsuit in 2023 with former student Maggie DeJong, who argued the university violated her First Amendment rights. According to the suit, DeJong wore a “Back the Blue” hat to class as a way to show her support of police and counter speech related to “defunding the police.”
In 2018, College Republicans sued the school over a free-speech policy that literally restricted free speech to 0.0013% of the total campus footprint. Even worse, the policy regarding that tiny “Speech Zone” required that the university approve the “free speech” offered in that space at least two days in advance if the planned speech was expected to be fluffy and happy speech. If the speech could be more “controversial,” students needed to get the permission 90 days in advance.
Long story short, it’s not just a liberal thing or a student media thing. SIUE just seems like a place that treats free speech like it’s a cockroach problem that won’t go away.
WHO GETS TO CALL THEMSELVES JOURNALISTS?: The two key media reps for SIUE during this situation, Franklin and Executive Director Paula Bridges, have leaned heavily on their status as former journalists with decades of journalism experience while condemning The Alestle.
(EDITOR’S NOTE: Bridges has left her position at SIUE as of Sept. 16, according to an article on The Alestle website. Links to her staff pages at SIUE are now dead and she has not updated her LinkedIn profile with new career information as of this writing.)
So as I navigated a career that straddled 30 years in television news and more than 25 as an indie filmmaker some would agree my work exemplifies a Black woman’s joy. I’ll take it. My desire to pursue communications in college in reference to broadcast media was what I saw as the only degree that made sense at the time.”
<SNIP>
“That’s an interesting question because I came to this role after working 30 years in news television as a video editor/engineer and more than 25 years as an independent filmmaker.
Bridges also calls herself a journalist on her LinkedIn page, noting experience in both print and broadcast. In the letter she wrote slamming The Alestle, she doubled down on that statement:
As a journalist with more than 30 years of experience with newspapers, news radio, magazines, and broadcast television, I will always defend First Amendment rights and freedom of the press. I also recognize the important obligation that accompanies the power to publish: verify facts before publication and correct errors when they occur.
I concluded my reporting career as an Emmy Award-winning news anchor, and served across various sectors including municipal government, public safety, the judiciary, and education. I am writing an open letter to our university community because I am deeply troubled by the direction and disposition of The Alestle as an exercise of journalism.
In digging into both of their backgrounds, it’s unclear to me how the math works and also how those experiences directly relate to any First Amendment support.
For Franklin, she lists the following items:
The big one, where she spent 17 years was a bit confusing, but in digging into her resume, it was a little clearer:
This was mostly production work, as opposed to news gathering or journalistic content creation. In addition the other two places where she worked that are categorized as “news” are basically morning programs where little in the way of hard-hitting news occurs. And again, I’d imagine she wasn’t responsible for the news reporting as a video editor.
In terms of Bridges, the experience brag is nowhere nearly commensurate with the resume she publicly shares. That “30 years” she opens her letter with really comes down to about eight or nine years of broadcast journalism at the anchor desk:
That’s actual experience in journalism, no doubt, even if it ended before a lot of The Alestle staffers were in grade school. Outside of that, however, her professional life has been on the PR side of the fence for numerous public institutions:
Add all that up and you more than double her time in journalism, not to mention it’s the most recent 17 years of her career, give or take. That’s not to criticize those jobs, as I teach students every day who want to take gigs like that, but I’d argue that those careers are more about reputation management and positive front-facing work as opposed to what news reporters do.
Also, given those positions, I’d wager a dollar to a doughnut that Hembrough and his crew have done more investigative, deep-dive, digging-around, according-to-Hoyle journalism stuff in the past three years than these two folks have done at any of their stops.
BELIEVE WHOMEVER YOU WANT, BUT CHECK THE RECEIPTS FIRST: In most cases like this, one side puts out a list of issues it has about free speech or conflict and the other side goes silent. If you look back at the multi-part series we did here in Indiana University’s fight with the Indiana Daily Student, I tried to get comments from at least five people in administration and the only response I got was a set of links to previous statements that didn’t answer my questions.
In this situation, both Hembrough and Franklin have been active in presenting their cases to the media. As is the case with most mainstream media stories, space is limited and reporters want to play fair, so they grab a quote from each and move on.
In the case of Hembrough, the quotes mostly discuss the way in which the admin has been dumping all over the paper in public without having the facts right. In the case of Franklin, the quotes mostly present a case of the students making mistakes and not correcting them, all while arguing she’s totally in favor of free speech.
For example, Franklin made what appears to be a completely reasonable statement in an email to me:
This has never been about free speech or freedom of the press. SIUE has a long history of sponsoring The Alestle and training student journalists, and that commitment has not wavered.
The real issue is the lack of journalistic principles of objectivity, truthfulness, and accuracy. Calling for accuracy is not interference. The Alestle has repeatedly published information that is inaccurate and, despite requests for corrections, has been slow or unwilling to make them.
That comment sounds fair, in that being accurate and following journalistic principles should be at the core of what student media does. When I asked Hembrough about those allegations, he did more than comment.
In this timeline of links, rebuttals and clarifications, he names names, documents dates and shows his work. In picking through this over the last week, I could easily see how some of the comments Franklin had made in various comments were either inaccurate or in service of the university’s narrative.
He also had emails to support his statements that Franklin had been presented with information about her presence at interviews being a First Amendment violation, as well as her reactions, such as her statement that her presence was “non-negotiable.”
And as Hembrough said, “Thereareonlysomanywaysyoucanslicethewordnon-negotiable.”
When it comes down to it, journalists are supposed to be objective, but we’re also supposed to be fans of reality. In other words, if one person says it’s raining and one person says it’s sunny, we aren’t supposed to just report both equally.
We’re supposed to look out the window and figure out who’s right, which is why checking those receipts is really important.
IT’S HARD TO SQUARE THE CIRCLE ON SIUE’S FIRST AMENDMENT TALK: What keeps coming up most in these discussions is the First Amendment and how it either is or isn’t being violated in this situation. In an email Franklin sent me, she noted:
Our position is straightforward: the University has a legitimate interest in ensuring that information it provides to the public is objective, truthful, accurate, and that factual errors concerning the University are identified and, where appropriate, corrected. That interest does not conflict with our commitment to free speech and free press.
Based on what I’ve seen of the coverage on this, the timeline Hembrough provided and my digging into the background on SIUE, the reporting is meeting those goals, with errors generally being corrected in what is a reasonable time period.
I’m uncertain as to how the university is parsing “truthful” versus “accurate” and it’s also interesting that the lack of objectivity seems to be focused on stories that don’t paint the university in the best light.
Setting those issues aside, experts in media law at multiple organizations have stated their concerns regarding the way in which the actions of SIUE’s PR folks are problematic in relation to the First Amendment rights of The Alestle staff. The response from the system’s lawyer doesn’t directly address the concerns.
If you’re really committed to the First Amendment, it means you have to support press freedom that is unfettered by governmental overreach, both direct and indirect. When experts in that field are telling you, point blank, you are in violation of the letter and spirit of that law, it might be time to reconsider your actions.
If sources are really concerned about accuracy, have them record the interview instead of having Franklin sit in. It’s a fair trade, in that both sides have a complete record of what happened and no governmental agent is there to potentially chill the exchange of information.
(SIDE NOTE: I emailed a couple people who have covered this story and a couple journalists who cover SIUE on the regular to ask one basic question: Does Franklin make a point of sitting in on your interviews as well? I’m trying to figure out if this is an Alestle-only thing or not. If anyone responds, I’ll add it here.)
Speaking of chilling, filing a police report against a student journalist feels an awful lot like a brush-back pitch. In our interview, Hembrough told me he got the email during class and his anxiety immediately kicked into overdrive:
Actions like these don’t tend to send a message that someone is totally in favor of free speech. If you’re really and fully committed to the freedom of the press, you need to let it ride at all times, not just when you’re happy with what the press is doing.
SIUE IS BULLYING ITS OWN STUDENTS: In my interview with Hembrough, he was talking about the juxtaposition of the allegations that he harassed Franklin and the way in which the school has been treating The Alestle:
When we read stories about university administrators attacking student media, it’s often hard to remember that the student journalists actually CHOSE to be at the institutions that are attacking them. In many legal ways, they are like any other journalists who are gathering information and telling stories. However, they are also tuition-paying members of the larger university community.
Every university marketing campaign I’ve ever seen is filled with platitudes about how the school will be this fantastic place for its students, complete with career prep, academic inquiry and personal growth.
I’ve yet to see an asterisk on any of that marketing material that says, “Unless you are a student journalist who ticks us off, at which point, buckle your chinstrap.”
A journalist has accused Cleveland.com — the online home of The Plain Dealer, Ohio’s largest newspaper — of publishing an article under her byline without her consent, knowledge, or approval. The article was generated by the “Cleveland.com Express Desk,” which “uses AI tools to assist in producing content” that the newspaper claims is “reviewed and edited by staff.”
The supposed writer, Kaitlin Durbin, was not thrilled about having her employer slap her byline on whatever the hell Cleveland.com’s robot overlords had decided to create:
(SIDE NOTE, PART I: This story could have used some actual reporting, as this literally reads like a press release that was copied and pasted into the paper. Also, anytime someone says they are quitting a job for “personal reasons,” I tend to believe that there’s something less benign happening that is just SCREAMING for someone to dig into it. )
Well, at least when our kids turn in their papers, they actually have their own names on them…
(SIDE NOTE PART II: The clip I desperately want to use here to express my feelings about this whole situation comes from the opening of “Another 48 Hours,” when Nick Nolte is questioned by internal affairs after he shoots a guy and accidentally blows up a race track. The people at Sage would have a full on aneurysm if I posted it, so instead, I’m linking to this clip, while also telling you that it’s number nine on the top 10 quotes. Watch at your discretion.)
IT’S “ONE TO GROW ON” TIME: As much as I doubt Chris Quinn will read this, I still think it’s worth the rest of us to dig in and learn something from this situation. Here are the best “One To Grow On” moments I can pull out of this:
You can’t let automation make you lazy: One of the biggest risks of automation is that the humans supposedly overseeing it tend to pay less attention to the details. When we had to look up every word instead of relying on spellcheck, we tended to edit more carefully and thus avoid headlines that proclaimed the opening of a “pubic library” or one like this:
Generative AI moves that risk even higher, because a) it’s capable of doing more complex stuff for us than traditional AI, b) We’re not as familiar with its risks and c) We don’t know how best to backstop it yet.
This means we need to be MORE diligent with this stuff, not less.
What is the true Cost vs. Value of AI?:In his magnum opus, singing the praises of AI, Quinn explained how reporters will benefit from all the time AI could save them, so they could do other more important things. (Apparently, in this case, it saved the reporter enough time to go on a honeymoon without actually having to file the story she supposedly wrote…)
He also opined on how the readers will benefit from better overall coverage and how the world will benefit because people are now part of an “energized electorate” that will engage like never before.
The idea of saving time, energy and resources sounds great in terms of value, but what about the cost associated with ticking off a reporter who is publicly wondering aloud if the paper thinks it owns her soul?
Some portion of your newsroom probably thinks you’re already selling them out for a sack of magic beans and the promise of fourth-quarter profits for the hedge funds that own the place. Now, I imagine they’re less likely to believe that “AI is your friend” and more likely to think “The T-800 is coming for your job and your soul…”
Also, what about the cost associated with the loss of readership confidence in ALL of your work now? Before, it might have been, “OK, don’t trust anything with that AI Buzzword byline on it, but we know Kaitlyn and she’s solid.” Now it’s “OK, did the person we thought wrote the story actually write the story, or was it even a person at all?”
Trust and credibility have always been built a grain at a time when it comes to the media’s relationship with the public, and it’s always been destroyed in an instant when someone makes a short-sighted decision to cut corners.
AI can do a lot, but it can’t change that.
You’re a journalist, not a cult leader: One of the biggest problems here was Quinn’s “nothing to see here” response when the byline situation broke:
After this story was published, Quinn told Futurism that the byline blunder was “a simple mistake, the result of a miscommunication between a couple of editors.”
“It was corrected as soon as we learned of it from the Tweet,” Quinn continued, adding that he’s “written extensively about our policies, practices and controls regarding AI content in my From the Editor columns this year” and directing us to a post containing links to his statements on Cleveland.com’s AI policies. “If you’re looking for information about us, it’s all there,” said Quinn. “I have nothing to add.”
Back when he first was telling everyone who would listen that AI was not going to be a problem, he was singing this tune:
If that’s true, where did this story come from? Clearly the reporter given the initial credit (Durbin) didn’t write it, and apparently neither did anyone else, as there’s no byline on it now. Also, way to throw those human editors under the bus, just to make sure no one was thinking about the AI’s role in this screw-up.
Guys like this remind me of the line, “Often wrong, never in doubt,” and as bad as that normally is, it’s really disturbing to see it from the editor of a major media outlet.
Journalists are supposed to play the skeptic, hedge their bets, play with caution and find balance. It keeps us out of trouble and allows us to see things as they are, not as we would like them to be. It also allows us to fess up when we’re wrong, something that (oddly enough) inspires confidence in the people we serve.
If Chris Quinn wants to talk up the positives and crap all over people who point out the negatives, that’s fine, but do it as a PR guy for an AI firm or as the prophet for some sort of futuristic tech cult.
Journalists don’t have the luxury of arrogant presumption.
A friend and journalism professor put this challenge to the hivemind recently:
“I have been teaching headline writing the same way for decades and I think headlines have changed drastically in the last 10 years and no longer are we writing headlines the same way as sentences with a noun and a verb, but we are writing things that are more like teasers, invitations and clickable phrases. Does anyone have any material on how to write headlines for digital media (not print)? I need to update what I am teaching my practicum and journalism students.”
As I’ve always said, the blog is about what you need, when you need it, so here goes our look into the world of headlines for digital media:
THINGS THAT ARE THE SAME:
A number of things that we tend to think of when we look at traditional headlines remain valuable in writing digital media headlines. In looking into a number ofmedia outlets and organizations that are working on headlines or studying them, here are some things that they are pitching for today’s writers that should look familiar to those of us old enough to remember the 1980s well:
Short and Simple/Clear and Concise: Depending on which way you want to play this, the authors of these suggestions are trying to get at the same basic thing: Make sense for your readers and don’t screw around while doing it. I’m more of a fan of “clear and concise,” in that clarity and simplicity aren’t always the same thing and in most cases it’s better to be clear than simple. Still, the idea is all about not wasting your reader’s time or space on their screens.
Accuracy above all else: If it’s not right, it doesn’t matter. That means it’s important to do your research on the topic, read the story fully, understand what the words you are using mean and double/triple/quadruple check your head for any mistakes before you push the big red button.
Concrete nouns and vigorous verbs: As much as passive voice has a space in headlines in print (Kennedy killed; Trump elected president), you get a little more room in digital heads to work in noun-verb-object format and really nail down those first two items.
Answer “Why do I care?” above all else: If people don’t know why they should care about something, they’re not going to pay attention to it. In some cases, it’s an easy sell, while in other cases, you have to rub their nose into it like you’re training a dog that keeps pooping in the house, but it needs to be there in a meaningful way.
Consider the headline that just showed up in my feed while writing this:
US House passes funding bill to avert government shutdown
It hits most of the marks pretty simply: Short/simple, (9 words, 57 spaces including blanks) accurate, (House passed the bill, it was a funding bill, without it we would likely shut down the government) concrete noun/vigorous verb, why you care (no government shut down)
Now consider these other ones:
House passes short-term funding bill to prevent a shutdown before the election
House sends government funding bill to Trump to avert shutdown ahead of Midterms
Congress passes funding bill to avoid October shutdown, pushing fight past midterms
U.S. House Passes Homeland Security Funding Bill Ending Shutdown For All Department Of Homeland Security Agencies Except ICE and CBP
The verb in three of the four alternatives is the same (passes), with three of the four focusing on the House (vs. Congress). The alternatives tend to focus on the election while the original didn’t. All are longer than the original, but each has something more than the original included in there (in the case of that last one, way, way, way too much…)
THINGS THAT ARE DIFFERENT:
The digital world gives us several challenges that are crucial to be aware of when we’re moving away from print heads.
SIZE, IN A DIFFERENT WAY, DOESN’T MATTER: We talked about the importance of keeping things short in both digital and traditional headlines. However, there’s another size issue we need to consider. In newspapers, we refer to headline copy as “the big type,” as it was traditionally larger than body copy and the idea was that the bigger the story, the bigger the headline size. Look at some of the headlines written when World War II ended and you get the idea.
The end of World War II was a big enough deal to cover everything above the fold (and at least an inch or two below it) with two letters and a hyphen.
In the digital realm, size doesn’t matter in terms of the font, because search engines and news aggregators treat all words exactly the same. They don’t stop and say, “Oh, wow! This headline is huge! I better move it up in my results list.”
PEOPLE ARE ATTUNED TO HYPE SO AVOID IT: Like most things we are inundated with, people have gotten over being enticed or impressed with “EST” claims. THE BEST BRAND! THE FASTEST WAY TO MEET WOMEN! THE CHEAPEST AIRFARE IN THE WORLD!
In fact, using this approach will actually activate defenses of readers who will now be less likely to trust you and will be more likely to push back against you. It’s like when your lazy stoner roommate comes to you and says, “Hey, I want you to know I just did everyone’s dishes, cleaned the bathroom and put in a little extra for rent this month.” If your Spidey Sense isn’t going off at that point, something is wrong with you.
FOCUS ON “U” ELEMENTS: To generally write effective headlines, experts at American Writers and Artists offer the “4 U” approach:
Be USEFUL to the reader,
Provide him with a sense of URGENCY,
Convey the idea that the main benefit is somehow UNIQUE; and
Do all of the above in an ULTRA-SPECIFIC way.
Beyond the maxims and cute little clusters of advice, however, headline writing comes down to applying the basic skills you’ve learned within your writing classes to this point. Let’s get into the nitty-gritty stuff and look at some key ways to do this:
Identify your point in six words or less: One of the best bits of advice I have been given about writing is to boil everything you are doing down into one simple, declarative statement before you begin. If you can’t do that, you don’t know what you’re doing yet, and you need to go back to the drawing board. The more sure you are of the point you want to make, the easier this is and the more clearly you can do this. When you are kind of all over the place, you don’t know what you’re trying to say in the headline. When that happens, it’s probably safe to assume you’re going to be all over the place when it comes to everything else as well.
Start with a few words that define what you’re trying to accomplish. Don’t worry if they don’t form a perfect noun-verb-object structure. Also don’t worry if you’re not using declarative statements at this point. As you will learn later, these variables take on different values in your writing here than they have in everything else you’ve written to this point.
Custard is superior to ice cream
Write a better blog post
Study more effectively for finals
Avoid 8 a.m. classes
Is 4-wheel-drive worth it?
Selena Gomez or Taylor Swift?
In each case, we’ve identified a lane we intend to drive in and we did it in less than six words. This means we focused. Some focus could be better. “What does “worth it” mean?” or how are we comparing these singers? It’s all not perfect, but it gets us off the tee and into the middle of the fairway.
Usability experts talk about the 3 and 3 rule, which states that people scan headlines in the same way they scan text: They basically catch on to the first three words you write and the last three words you write. In the middle is kind of a mess of letters that they’ll go back to if the first three and last three words grab them.
With that in mind, you want to start strong and end strong on your headlines for the digital media world. If you’re lucky and keeping things tight, the middle is tiny compared to the first three and last three words. If you go back to the example head, you’ll see a good example of how this works:
Front 3: US House passes
Back 3: Avert government shutdown
If we dodged “US” it might be a bit stronger with “House passes funding” so, that’s something else to think about.
Focus on benefits: When you are doing feature pieces, particularly those in the “how to” range, you want people to see your story as the solution to all their problems.
People will smartly employ aggressive attention filters while scanning headlines and you’ll get through that filter much more easily if you spell out your benefits rather than imply them slyly in a nuanced fashion. The big type is supposed to hit you in the head with a hammer, so make sure it does.
Ask yourself, “What possible good will come to my reader from spending time with this thing that I’m writing?” Then focus on that:
Dinner for a king on a peasant’s paycheck
Save time studying for finals
Build your savings account without depriving yourself
Avoid stupid Facebook arguments with redneck friends
Learn why Putin is your friend
In many cases, the idea of “how to” is implied in there while in other cases, it’s just about learning something you need to know. However, the goal is to really tell people, “This has value. Read me.”
Pick words other people would pick: The easiest way to be found is to put yourself out there in a way that people would look for you. Let’s say your roommate had a really rough night and threw up in the kitchen sink before going to bed. You wake up the next morning and find this disaster of Jagermeister and Taco Bell has coagulated in your sink and has somehow after about 30 seconds of trying to run the garbage disposal, it stops and you’ve got no idea what went wrong, but you still have a mess on your hands.
You can’t call the landlord and you don’t have money for a plumber, what are some words you would choose to google to get you out of this jam? (garbage disposal, sink, plug, stuck, broken, fix MORE).
The point is, you wouldn’t Google “Lousy roommate” and “food death spiral in the sink” even though those would likely be the first words out of your mouth in describing this disaster to anyone who would listen to you. Those other words are what you need to get out of this jam.
In many cases, we would call the words you would pick out keywords or SEO-driven search terms. What you need to do is figure out what words go with your topics as part of the headline. In marketing, people often refer to these kinds of terms as part of a word bank or a brand dictionary, but either way, you want to find them and use them. Basically, pick words other people are going to pick.
Follow the formula: Certain headlines match up with certain types of digital pieces, much in the same way that certain topics lend themselves to certain types of stories and blog posts. Here are some examples of what I mean:
Instructional post: “How to avoid talking politics with racist relatives at the holidays.”
Listicle post: “10 things only children of the 1980s will understand about watching movies.”
Profile post: “The Finnish Farm Boy who held the Russian Army at bay for six months.”
Analysis post: “A deeper look at why US/Iran nuclear deal will lead to Armageddon” or “Five things the Iranians didn’t ask for in the nuclear deal but should have.”
Cheat Sheet: “A helpful series of MS Word quick-keys that will speed up your typing.”
Certain words match up with certain topics: Numbers with lists, “how to” with instructions, “helpful” or “easy” or “simple” with cheat-sheets. Analyses rely on “deeper” or “smarter” or what have you. When you think of the types of posts you read, you can now see how the words match up with the types of posts.
Lenka Istvanova analyzed blogs that got the most clicks based on headlines and found a simple formula that tends to relate to most of the things we want to see in a headline:
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.
(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.
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.
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.
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, documentedhistory 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.
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 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 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:
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.
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.
