So… That Happened

It’s time for some unpleasant honesty for journalism folks based on the Olivia Nuzzi/Ryan Lizza/RFK Jr. debacle

Believe it or not, this post is still up on Olivia Nuzzi’s X account… 

THE LEAD: As much as I wished this weren’t the case, we aren’t finished learning all the lurid details of the Olivia Nuzzi/Ryan Lizza/RFK Jr. debacle: 

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote disgraced political reporter Olivia Nuzzi an outrageously raunchy “poem,” which was dramatically revealed by her ex-fiancé and reporter Ryan Lizza in the second part of his series exposing the secrets of his ethics-challenged ex.

“Yr open mouth awaiting my harvest,” Kennedy Jr., the current Secretary of Health and Human Services, wrote to Nuzzi in undated texts recounted by Lizza in a piece published on his Substack early Saturday.

The poem was included in Lizza’s second part of his series about the affair between his former fiancee and the current Health and Human Services secretary. The post titled “Part 2: She did it again” is available on Lizza’s Substack.

I’m not linking to it here for three specific reasons:

  1. The piece is behind a paywall and I can’t in good conscience promote this as journalism or something worth spending $10 on. I would rather set fire to a ten dollar bill than pay for whatever the hell is back there.
  2. The teaser paragraphs alone introduced enough “explicit content” that would have my editors at Sage literally having aneurysms.
  3. My mother reads this blog and I don’t know what would be worse if she clicked that link: Having her asking me what certain sexual terms Lizza uses mean or having her tell tell me she completely understood everything and didn’t need a translator.

    Either way, it’d feel like this:

 

THE BACKGROUND: Oh, hell, where to begin?

Nuzzi was booted from her job with New York magazine after her “inappropriate relationship” with RFK Jr. came to light. Nuzzi had written a glowing profile of the Kennedy offspring, while also finding herself infatuated with him to the point of having a long-distance-messaging-with-sexy-photos-but-we-pinky-swear-we-didn’t-bang relationship.

Lizza, Nuzzi’s fiance at the time, who has his own history of icky sex allegations, broke off the engagement and made some very public statements about Nuzzi and this situation.

Both mercifully dropped off the map until this month, when Nuzzi’s “American Canto” book hit the shelves, leading to a “little girl lost” style profile on her by the NY Times. In response to some of the stuff in the book, Lizza took to his Substack to publish a response titled, “Part 1: How I found out.”  In that post, he pulled a “Sixth Sense” twist at the end to reveal his whole “I can’t believe she’s cheating on me” build up wasn’t about RFK, but instead about former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford.

Meanwhile, Nuzzi is now working for Vanity Fair, and media folks are a-flutter discussing this situation.

 

DOCTOR OF PAPER HOT TAKE: It’s too easy to crap all over Nuzzi, Lizza and everyone else involved in this situation. Right now, this feels like staring at a multiple-vehicle car wreck on the interstate. Instead of taking the easy path, consider the following difficult advice:

 

BASIC ADVICE TO FELLOW EDUCATORS AND MEDIA PROS: We need to be honest with ourselves, the public and our students, even though it really sucks.

Whenever a situation like Nuzzi-gate (as we’re apparently calling it now) pops up, a common refrain that emerges is, “Female journalists don’t sleep with sources.” I know a number of professors, former journalists and current journalists who hate it when this kind of thing happens, because it reinforces thread-bare stereotypes about women and it debases the work quality female journalists have done.

Here’s the problem: Lousy examples exist in almost every field and they create misery for the rest of the folks in that field. I don’t like it any more than you do, but it’s the reality of our surroundings.

Trust me, every time some jagwad professor decides to treat his undergraduates like a sexual charcuterie board, I want to die inside a little. I hate that I find myself second-guessing every interaction I have with students for at least two weeks, wondering if they think I might be “one of those.”

That said, I can’t tell students, “Professors don’t sleep with students,” because despite the ever-present blank stares they give me in class, I know they aren’t completely unaware of reality. I’ve even overheard students I know talking among themselves about skeezy professors hitting on them or their friends.

I also can’t just say, “Well, I don’t do that…” because that’s just really creepy to make them think that I’m thinking that I have to tell them that and too damned specific to make anyone feel better about it. It’s usually why I just shake my head and say, “What the hell is wrong with people?”

In regard to journalism, I’ve met multiple former and current journalists who “engaged in inappropriate sexual relationships” with people they cover. In one case, a local reporter who also worked at a local university was accused of sleeping with someone she had profiled. A friend told me that his wife worked with her years earlier, so I asked what she recalled about the reporter. The response: “Tell Vince she was a whore who occasionally wrote stuff.”

Another friend who worked with this journalist in another newsroom told me the majority of the staff knew about multiple similar indiscretions, so they referred to her by a nickname that merged part of her last name with the word “rabbit.”

In another case, one guy confessed to me that as a student journalist he “accidentally” slept with a student athlete while he was a sports reporter and editor at the student newspaper. The following is my recollection of the conversation:

Him: “Um…” Blank stare. “This is not good, right?”

Me: “Well, I wouldn’t add it to my resume… I don’t get how you “accidentally” slept with her. Did you trip and fall on something?”

Him: “No, I mean I didn’t know she was on the team until just before we… you know…”

Me: “I’ve got so many questions, not the least of which would be, ‘How did her athletic affiliation come up at that exact moment?’ ‘How little did you know about her before you decided to sleep with her that this nugget of information didn’t come up?’ and ‘Did you maybe think about not doing this when you became aware of this situation?'”

It went downhill from there…

I don’t think I’m that special that I knew at least a handful of people who had violated this basic tenet of journalism, so I imagine more than a few other folks reading this have a “Hooo boy…. not good…” story of this nature.

We need to stop pretending that this kind of thing doesn’t happen and be more on point about what we want to say here:

  1. Most journalists do not sleep with sources period, let alone to gain special access for stories. A small number of journalists are bad actors, but to paint all journalists with a wide brush because of them is unfair to those who aren’t.
  2. None of us who don’t violate the rules are thrilled by the people who do, particularly when their actions reinforce negative stereotypes against people who have already had to work harder than they should to make it in the field.
  3. Those of us who take this job seriously are not going to pretend that those people don’t exist, but we are going to make damned sure you know we aren’t like them.

I’m sure there’s a better way to say this, but at least we’re being honest and letting people we aren’t thrilled by this, either.

 

BASIC ADVICE FOR STUDENT JOURNALISTS:  I can’t stress this enough, but for every situation like this, where it seems like the world turns out great by flouting the rules, there are dozens more that are just god-awful disasterbacles that never get a book deal.

Colby Hall of Media-ite made the case that Nuzzi, his DM buddy, really just learned how to play the game based on the way the system has shifted, so we can’t really hold it against her:

The glamorous photo shoots, the Lana Del Rey cosplay with the white Mustang convertible on PCH, the literary ambiguity about Kennedy’s identity in her book, the defiant framing that positions her as a victim bearing witness to power.

But here’s what I’ve come to understand: This isn’t tone-deaf. It’s the only move that makes economic sense in 2025.

Nuzzi has correctly read our current media ecosystem. There is no path back to institutional credibility for her—those institutions are dying anyway, and they were never going to reward rule-following in the first place. But there IS a path forward through celebrity, through controversy, through the monetization of scandal itself.

The Vanity Fair job. The book deal. The rehabilitation tour that’s a Klieg light away from what it really wants to be. She’s not trying to rebuild her reputation as a journalist—she’s building a different kind of brand entirely, one where being interesting matters more than being ethical, where attention is the only currency that still spends.

Please don’t buy into that line of thinking. She’s the “it” thing at the moment, but that fades pretty quickly and even if it doesn’t for her, it doesn’t follow it will work for you. If you don’t believe me, ask anyone who tried to become a millionaire starting an “Only Fans” account.

As much as it might seem like a great idea to be that rule-breaking, cool-as-hell rebel in the moment, these things don’t end well. As someone who has watched almost every VH1’s “Behind the Music” episode, I can pretty much guarantee short-term career thinking leads to some long-term misery. And unlike video games, you can’t just hit the reset button once things start going bad.

Follow the rules, behave better than the attention-seeking toddler at the grocery store and do the job to the best of your ability. You might not become famous, but that’s likely to be a good thing.

 

BASIC ADVICE TO PROFESSIONAL MEDIA OUTLETS: Watching Vanity Fair hire Nuzzi is like watching pro sports teams picking up troubled players who have talent, arguing that, in their system, the player will thrive. What they fail to realize is that even if the talent is in there somewhere, the human foibles are going to massively undercut it and you’re essentially just buying trouble.

With that in mind, I’m begging you. Stop buying trouble.

First, the juice is rarely ever worth the squeeze. Everyone is out there thinking they are buying the next Hunter S. Thompson. Instead, they’re buying the next Ruth S. Barrett. Hiring people like this has the same internal logic of cashing in your 401K and using it to buy lottery tickets to secure your retirement.

Second, you’ll make my job a lot easier as a professor because I won’t have explain to students that to get their dream job, they should work hard, play by the rules, and then pray they don’t lose out to someone who banged a source and now has 2.3 million followers on Instagram.

I’m having a hard enough time getting them avoid bias in their writing, abide by grammar rules and attribute the hell out of things, what with all the god-awful crap that’s passing journalism these days. I don’t want to have this conversation:

ME: You can’t write a profile story about your best friend. It’s not ethically sound.

STUDENT: So, why can (REPORTER X) sleep with a profile subject and land a job with a six-figure salary?

ME: Go read your AP style book.

Third, you need to understand the “Cockroach Theory of Terrible Behavior.” When you see one cockroach in a house, rest assured it’s not the only one around, like he’s on vacation or something. For every one you see, there are several more just waiting to show up.

I remember being at my college newspaper during an editor election, where one candidate was trying to justify some bad behavior, explaining, “Oh, that was an isolated incident.” Once we retired to debate his candidacy, the one guy piped up with, “I counted 10 or 11 ‘isolated incidents.’ How many does it take to make a trend?”

Vanity Fair is already playing defense on the hiring, as they were “take by surprise” at Lizza’s accusations about Nuzzi’s nuzzling with Sanford. The magazine is “looking at all the facts” in this situation as it decides how the hell it’s going to get out of this situation before another cockroach comes crawling out of the corner.

If you want to see the best of journalism, hire good quality people. Promote and showcase them as what’s worth doing in the field. Let us in the classroom highlight the good work done in the right circumstances.

None of this will stop another Nuzzi situation, but at least you can help us point to this as a cautionary tale and not a smooth career move.

The Junk Drawer: The Big, Beautiful Edition

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

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

 

SCORE ONE FOR THE GOOD GUYS

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

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

Suits against the city and other individuals are ongoing.

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

 

STOP TRYING TO MAKE “FETCH” HAPPEN:

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

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

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

<SNIP>

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican

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

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

This clearly must stop.

PERHAPS THEY’LL RELOCATE TO NEW JERERSEY:

 

And finally… 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

An Open Letter to the Staff of the Indiana Daily Student: Thank you for reminding us of what we used to be

Screenshot of the IDS website, announcing the paper version will print again.

Dear Mia Hilkowitz, Andrew Miller and the rest of the IDS crew,

First and foremost, I want to congratulate you on your success in demanding the press freedoms your university sought to steal from you. It was heartening to see how you refused to back down when they fired your adviser, killed your print run and tried to shut you up. After the uproar that came from every corner of the media world, IU’s leadership finally decided to back off and let you start the presses once again.

As much as I would like to call this a win, it’s clear to anyone with half a brain that this isn’t over by a damned sight and that there are still significant problems with the leadership at the IU Media School. I know you know this and I know you’ll remain vigilant against the next stupid thing these folks try to pull on you. They clearly can’t help themselves, so I hope you know that all the people who have your back now will continue to do so.

But the main reason for this open letter is that I want you to know is how grateful I am for your strength and courage at time in which media operations all around us seem to be folding like cheap tents in the rain and so-called adults are more willing to quietly acquiesce to outrageous demands than to stand up for what’s right.

There is a concept in finance that one reporter told me about called “F— You Money.” It basically meant that some people are so rich, they literally don’t have to care about what anyone thinks and they can do whatever they want, regardless of the cost.

For example, if two people in an auction setting want the same thing, the person with “F— You Money” can radically overpay to get the item, even if doing so makes no sense. Another example would be what a lot of us thought would happen when Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post: The paper could courageously cover anyone and everyone because Bezos had “F— You Money,” and he didn’t need to worry about ad revenue or currying political favor.

However, a funny thing happened on the way to fiscal freedom. A lot of people with “F— You Money” decided it would be easier to just give up and pay off whatever loud idiot seemed to want to start a fuss rather than using it to stick up for what was right. It was ABC kicking in $15 million to avoid a lawsuit regarding who was mean to whom in a TV show, YouTube ponying up even more for suspending accounts after the Jan. 6 riots, Paramount paying $16 million for exercising editorial discretion on “60 Minutes” in a way that displeased Donald Trump and more.

Even though a boatload of legal experts said these cases had literally no merit,  these media giants came up small and just settled the cases. They essentially decided it was better to give the mouthy kid in the grocery store the candy they screamed for instead of putting a stop to this once and for all.

This is the reason we owe the IDS staff a debt of gratitude. You did what others refused to do and stood up for what’s right, even though you were at a decided disadvantage in this power dynamic. You chose not to think about all the scary things that might happen if didn’t cow tow to the powers that be. You fought for your rights, even if it meant you might get crushed by the academic behemoth that is the IU Media School, because you couldn’t live with yourselves if you didn’t.

You told the bully, “F— you. You’re not getting my lunch money. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not ever.”

The reason so many people came running to your aid and voicing support for you wasn’t just because you are right, which you are. It wasn’t just because what was happening to you is unadulterated bullying, which it is. In so many ways, we appreciate you for one simple fact:

You help us remember who we used to be, so many years ago, and what we wish we could be again.

In all honesty, I don’t miss my sleep-deprived college years of subsisting on ramen and cheap beer. I also don’t miss the rundown apartments, the anxiety-driven dating scene or cobbling together several part-time jobs to make ends meet. What I do miss, however, is the courage that all of those experiences seemed to embolden in me, a courage I feel I lost somewhere along the way to middle age.

When I was in college, I was working at the Daily Cardinal student newspaper, trying to dig the place out of $137,700 in debt with nothing but a few bucks in the checking account and a gung-ho iguana’s attitude about my odds. We did some truly adorably naive things, like asking banks for loans against future advertising sales, negotiating debts for pennies on the dollar and sending out hundreds of billing statements with a “we think this is right” letter attached.

Some of those things worked, while other failed, but we were as unrelenting as a toothache and as stubborn as an ink spot on white carpeting. As time went on, we won more than we lost, after we kind of figured out how the game itself worked. Basically, we realized that the adult on the other end of whatever we were trying to do had a job that came with a boss who had bigger bosses and nobody wanted to get in trouble. It was much easier for that person to just go along with us, make some concessions, spin it for their boss and move on.

Now, I am that adult in so many ways and so are so many of us out there. For every journalist who quits because a newsroom situation is untenable, there are dozens more who stay put because the mortgage isn’t going to pay itself. For every journalist who quits because their bosses are bowing to outside pressure that is forcing content changes, there are dozens more who know how hard it is to get another job these days, especially when you’re too old to be young, but not old enough to retire. For every adviser like Jim Rodenbush who is willing to lose a job rather than sell out their student media operation, there are many folks who would try to massage the situation in an effort to find “peace with honor” and avoid getting canned.

(SIDE NOTE: Rodenbush is suing the university over his termination and I’m pulling for him all the way. If I were running things at IU, I’d pay the man rather than have all of the blatant illegality and stupidity that happened here laid bare in the public. Then again, if I were running things at IU, this situation wouldn’t have happened in the first place…) 

I don’t know if I’m the only one who does this, but sometimes I look at myself and think, “This is a heck of a good life you’ve built here. Don’t screw it up.” I love so much of what I do and what I’ve been lucky enough to accomplish, that it feels like any risk of upsetting that apple cart might not be worth it, even if I know I’m right or even if I see something wrong happening.

The cliche of how “with age comes wisdom,” is a hollow platitude that gives us a pass when we decide not to put ourselves on the line and call out wrongdoing. The winds of time erode our certainty of purpose and wear away our willingness to fight. We learn to self-censor, rather than be censored. We bite our tongues, nod along and keep the trains running on time. It’s easier that way and guarantees less of a personal cost.

You folks at the IDS are special because you don’t just fight the fights you can win. You fight the fights that need to be fought, regardless of outcome. You understand absolute right and absolute wrong, and refuse to convince yourself that the juice isn’t worth the squeeze when it comes to standing up for what matters. You say, “I know what’s happening here. I can’t stand by and let it happen. This is the hill I’m willing to die on if that’s what it takes to fix this situation.”

When people like me see this, we can’t help but rush right in and do our best to help. We admire the hell out of your courage and wonder if we were ever that young and that brave, or if it was just a hazy bit of self-mythologizing that puts us in your company. We are grateful to see that what we really liked about ourselves back then is alive and well in this oft-maligned generation of students.

We do this for you, because we support you, but we also do it because you give us something much more important in return. You help us reach back to a time where we didn’t politely apologize and then go stand in the corner, awaiting our punishment. You help us remember that the best of us isn’t gone for good. It’s just waiting for the inspiration you provide.

Thanks for this. It means more than you know.

With admiration,

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

Seven Simple Questions that Help Answer the Question: “Should I Go To Grad School?” (A throwback post)

As a lot of students around here are signing up for their final semester’s worth of classes, we’ve been hearing the “Should I consider grad school?” question a lot more often. In some cases, it’s about trying to extend the life of a college student, while in others, it’s based on fear of the unknown.

As I’ve said a million times before, if you want a good example of how to find yourself entering and exiting grad school, don’t look at me. That said, I have managed to pull together a number of good thoughts on the topic based on stuff that did or didn’t work out for me or others. Thus, the theme of today’s throwback post.

Hope these will help someone in your area.

 

How to answer the question “Should I go to Grad School?” when your journalism students ask it

The question in the headline has come up a lot recently, both on the Filak Furlough Tour and from my own students. The way some folks talk about grad school, it sounds like a way to delay life a bit more, or at least push back some of those student loans. For others, it’s an opportunity to become part of a cadre of lifelong learners, who will some day become the “sage of the stage” themselves at a fine institution of higher learning. Reality, as is usually the situation, will vary on a case by case basis.

As I have told my students repeatedly about so many things, you don’t want to look at me for an example when it comes to making a decision about grad school.

At the time, I had about a year’s experience under my belt as a part-time night desk reporter at the Wisconsin State Journal. When I asked if that position could become a full-time job, the answer was less than encouraging. Even more, every job that I wanted to apply for required about three years of newsroom experience.

The job market stunk and I had one actual offer from a newspaper in Kirksville, Missouri, which would have paid me less than I was making as a cashier and grease monkey back home at the Mobil station. Even worse, the paper was terrible, the publisher was chain-smoking during my interview and the job came with no insurance benefits.

At the time, if you kept up with school and didn’t stop being a full-time student, you could stay on your parents’ insurance until you were 25. Also, my boss at the State Journal offered to kind of weld two part-time positions together and give me nearly full-time hours, but not the benefits or a true salary. Add that with the potential to teach a college class, already knowing the area and figuring that I’d finish a master’s in two years, I went for it. It turned out fine in the end, but to explain the whole process requires several beers and a non-disclosure agreement.

Based on what I’ve seen others do over the years, here are some helpful questions you might want to consider if you’re thinking of grad school or to ask anyone who asks if they should consider this path:

ARE YOU CHANGING FIELDS? This is the easiest one to figure out. If you got your degree in journalism, but you took a class in computer coding, psychology or biomedical engineering and found your muse, grad school makes sense. The goal of any form of education that you are going to pay ridiculous money for is to teach you something of value that you can use somehow. Usually that means it helps you get a job. I wouldn’t hire a welder to do journalism or a journalist to do welding, so making sure you have field-specific education makes sense.

IS THERE A SPECIALTY YOU DIDN’T GET IN YOUR UNDERGRAD? In some cases, you find that you want to really dig into a specific area of a field. A “regular” journalism degree might include one class on graphic design or 3D rendering or something that really piques your interest and you only have a base-level understanding of that topic. Going to a different place for grad school where they specialize in that might make a lot of sense. I often make the case that students who go here and find that they really like design or graphic arts in media might do well to get a master’s in that area at Ball State, which has a TON of great profs and resources in this area.

IS THERE A FINANCIAL BENEFIT TO THE EXTRA DEGREE? The question of if a higher-level degree helps or hurts a candidate varies widely based on the field and the employer. However, if there is a clear-cut financial value to getting this upper-level degree, it makes sense to bite the bullet now and go for it.

Case in point, when my mom was teaching, salary bumps were determined in “steps” and “lanes.” If I recall correctly, each step was based on years of experience while the lanes were determined by level of education. Hopping into a higher-ed “lane” got you more money faster. Mom still had to take credits to keep up with something else related to her contract, but she never got a master’s, despite probably having more credits than I have now with a Ph.D. She mentioned more than once if she had just gone for it earlier in her career, the master’s would have really turbocharged her earning power.

If you know that’s the case, or if your company is paying for it in hopes of paying you more when you get it, go for the grad gusto.

DO YOU WANT TO TEACH COLLEGE AT SOME POINT? When I got my master’s it meant I could teach at a college or university in my area of expertise. Many of my family members were teachers and I thought I would like to be like them and help people learn, so the master’s was a smart call. That said, my boss in Missouri told me that the Ph.D. was basically the “union card” for getting a stable, tenure-worthy job, so if I wanted to do this for the rest of my life, I probably should bite the bullet and get the doctorate done.

Today, master’s degrees are fine for both adjunct teaching and a lot of universities have opened up teaching faculty roles that don’t require the full collection of alphabet soup after your name. That said, the master’s is the “you must be at least this tall to ride the ride” measurement, so if standing in front of a room trying to explain the difference between “farther” and “further” or why you spell the word “lead” L-E-D-E, grad school makes sense.

ARE YOU RUNNING TO SOMETHING OR AWAY FROM SOMETHING? This gets a bit deeper on the personal end, but it’s an important question to ask. I often ask this of the kids who come back to see me when they’re about 25 and they say something like, “I think I’m going to grad school” or “I think I should change jobs” or “Do you think the circus is hiring?” When a quarter-life crisis hits, a massive change in life seems like the best idea, which is why I ask them this question.

Change bothers me a lot, just because of who I am and how I feel about it. That said, I know some changes are better than others. I can also attest to the importance of understanding WHY you’re changing something, which comes down to the question above. If you are running toward something (pay raise, new educational opportunities) and the grad school question comes up, that is a good change. If you’re running away from something (I don’t want to be an adult, I’m scared of getting a job that I’ll hate) and the grad school question comes up, it’s probably not a great idea.

It never hurts to ask, “Why are you considering doing this?” and then try to figure out which way you’re running.

ARE YOU GAINING MOMENTUM OR BURNING YOURSELF TO A CRISP? When I was growing up, taking a break anywhere before the completion of all of your schooling was considered verboten. The thinking was, “If you don’t go straight from high school to college (or college to master’s or whatever), you’re never going to go back.” And for a lot of people I know, that turned out to be true.

That said, concepts like “a gap year” never really existed as a positive opportunity to plan and recharge. The “keep moving ahead” approach also conflated the idea of continual motion with positive outcomes.

I truly believe in momentum, and if you don’t, go watch this recap of the 1993 Bills/Oilers game. Thus, if you’re in the zone when it comes to studying, learning and knocking out homework, great. Keep rolling. I also believe in the concept of burnout, so if school to this point has turned you into a charcoal briquette, pouring more work on top of yourself for meager/no pay while adding to your student loan debt and living in what passes for student housing these days makes no sense.

WHAT IS THE FLIP SIDE OF THE GRAD SCHOOL COIN? Instead of saying “Should I go to grad school?” consider asking “What will I do if I DON’T go to grad school?” In other words, what’s the other side of the coin on this one.

I’m a big fan of pro-con lists in making big life decisions and I’m also a big fan of not getting myopic on a choice being either/or. It’s not “grad school or no grad school” but rather “grad school or (OTHER PLAN).” In approaching it this way, you can figure out what else might be out there and avoid thinking of grad school as the only lifeboat off the Titanic.

I’m sure there are many other good questions to ask, but these should comfortably get you out of the “deer in the headlights” mode and toward making a solid decision, or helping someone else make a solid decision.

It’s all fun and games until 2,900 pages of you participating in racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic chat get leaked (and a few suggestions on how to avoid this situation in the first place)

Screenshot of the Politico header on the story about racist chats. 

THE LEAD: While we here at the blog were dealing with the Indiana University situation involving censorship and free speech, another story involving way-too-freely speaking and stuff that probably someone should have censored came to light:

NEW YORK — Leaders of Young Republican groups throughout the country worried what would happen if their Telegram chat ever got leaked, but they kept typing anyway.

They referred to Black people as monkeys and “the watermelon people” and mused about putting their political opponents in gas chambers. They talked about raping their enemies and driving them to suicide and lauded Republicans who they believed support slavery.

William Hendrix, the Kansas Young Republicans’ vice chair, used the words “n–ga” and “n–guh,” variations of a racial slur, more than a dozen times in the chat. Bobby Walker, the vice chair of the New York State Young Republicans at the time, referred to rape as “epic.” Peter Giunta, who at the time was chair of the same organization, wrote in a message sent in June that “everyone that votes no is going to the gas chamber.”

THE BASICS: Politico got its hands on nearly, 3,000 pages of chat messages that span nearly nine months of discussions among Young Republican group members. These people apparently range in age between 18 and 40 years old. Reporting on this material states that these chats feature people saying so much terrible racist, anti-Semitic and violent stuff, it’s likely Quentin Tarantino will be optioning it as a script for his next movie.

The disgust at the chat has garnered bipartisan anger, with members of both major parties stating they disapprove of this kind of language, regardless of who said it. On the other hand, Vice President J.D. Vance said he refused to take part in the “pearl clutching” over the use of language like this.

He also had a somewhat different angle when it came to giving his kids some fatherly advice in a situation like this:

The father of three said he would caution his own children, “especially my boys, don’t put things on the internet, like, be careful with what you post. If you put something in a group chat, assume that some scumbag is going to leak it in an effort to try to cause you harm or cause your family harm.”

So, kids, always remember, keep your seething racism in private, personal conversations, lest some “scumbag” out there find it and make a big deal out of it.

KEY LESSONS BEYOND THE VANCE THEORY OF “DON’T BE RACIST IN PUBLIC:” Hopefully, for most of us in here, that first lesson is kind of like me telling you, “Don’t commit a ritual human sacrifice on the break room table at work:” Even if I didn’t say it directly, I hope that human decency and public decorum would have made this concept obvious to you.

Beyond that, here are some important things to take with you:

If the only thing keeping you from saying or writing something is, “I’m pretty sure I won’t get caught,” think a little harder before you do that thing:  I remember reading a number of psych studies that assessed to what degree people were or were not willing to do things they knew to be wrong, based on a variety of factors.

In some cases, the idea was to make people feel cheated out of something they deserved and then provide them with an opportunity to do something negative to the person they believe had wronged them or some other person at random. In other cases, it was about measuring the underlying guilt built in through various social systems including things like religion.

The one thing that ran through all of these studies was perception of being caught: “If you were completely sure you would never get caught, and thus have a consequence-free outcome for your actions, would you do X?” This variable always radically shifted the way in which people chose to act, leading a lot of the scholars to debate the natural human state of decency.

In the situation outlined above, these people didn’t stop and say, “Man, we really should not be saying stuff like this because it’s wrong.” They essentially said, “Man, if we get caught at this, we will have HELL to pay here!” And then they did it anyway, meaning they thought that as long as there continued to be no consequences, they were going to be fine.

A good way to prevent consequences you want to avoid is to not do the things that could lead to those consequences. If, for example, I wake up in the morning and think, “Gee, it’d be great to have my wife bludgeon me to death and bury me behind the chicken coop,” I’d probably try to have an affair with someone. Since I know that this action is wrong and I don’t want to die, I should avoid taking that action. If I instead think, “I know it’s wrong, but I’ll be extra sneaky,” I’m setting myself up to be fertilizer.

Ask yourself, “Would I say this to someone’s face?” before you put it in the public sphere: Things can jump up a notch on social media and through digital communication. Trust me, I know I’ve bitterly complained about myriad things online that I probably would not have done if I needed to do it in public. In most cases, they involved things like people being too slow in line at the grocery store, people texting while driving and the way in which the Cubs stole my team’s World Series in 2016. (Yes, I’m still bitter.)

Digital media is like the beer goggles of communication: it warps your sense of what is and isn’t acceptable and when you’re forced to confront your choices in the cold light of day, you usually aren’t all that thrilled about them.

This is one of the reasons when a student complains about something in an email, I tell them to come by the office and chat. Part of it is that there’s a lot of bravado on their end that probably isn’t going to hold up during a one-on-one conversation and another part of it is that I don’t want to start a digital land war over a B- or something. It’s a good way for both of us to have a cool-down period and to then deal with things like two regular people, as opposed to two methed-up coyotes.

There is no such thing as privacy anywhere anymore, so act accordingly: I tend to think that this should be common sense at this point, but then again, if it were “common” sense, everyone would have it.

We have cameras everywhere, recording everything. We have GPS and tracking on our digital devices that can let anyone who wants to know exactly where we are at any point in life. We put stuff out into the world through all forms of social media that can be shared millions of times over in the blink of an eye. The concept of living a quiet, private life is as unlikely as the Cleveland Browns making the Super Bowl this year (or at any point in my life time, I suppose…)

If I wanted be EXCEPTIONALLY GENEROUS in translating some of Vance’s statements into something less dismissive of this godawful situation, I’d say that it is important to realize that people need to be more aware of how they express themselves in general because it might not fully represent the best versions of themselves.

Being an idiotic poser by trying to out do the last stupid thing someone else said is rarely a good idea in any situation, which, yes, a lot of us learned somewhere along the way before the world could record everything we did and share it with the world. However, we don’t live in that world anymore, and thanks to the ability to share everything, we have all seen the consequences of being that kind of idiot.

With that in mind, you either need to be all in on what you say or you need to make sure you’re giving yourself a beat before you let random stuff you don’t honestly mean come flying out of your head and landing on a screen.

“This was never about money, and I think that their actions prove it.” A Q and A With Fired Indiana Daily Student Media Adviser Jim Rodenbush (Part I)

Jim Rodenbush from the IU website

In the span of one week, the Indiana University attempted to censor the Indiana Daily Student newspaper, fired student media adviser Jim Rodenbush for not enforcing the censorship and killed the IDS’s print publications when it was clear the students would not yield.

The story of this has blown up beyond the confines of Bloomington, with The New York Times, NBC News, The Guardian and others following the situation. The Indiana media, including the Indy Star, and WTHR keeping track of things as well.

Rodenbush was nice enough to have about a 45-minute chat during an airport layover, as he was flying to Washington, D.C. for the college media convention MediaFest25. Instead of hearing ABOUT Rodenbush, we thought it would be better to hear FROM Rodenbush, allowing him to walk everyone through what he has gone through this week.

Below is part one of a transcription of our Q and A, with edits to the material to tighten and clarify parts of our discussion, as well as make more sense of my questions, which somehow Rodenbush understood among the many Midwestern “Yeah… Yeah… No…” interjections I put in there.

I don’t even know where the hell to start, I’ll be real honest with you, but can you give me a sense of what the last week has been like? Start me off with (Monday), the day before you got fired.

JIM RODENBUSH: “Literally, nothing happened on Monday. Not a word about anything.”

“It was Tuesday morning that I went to go get my IU fleet vehicle because I was going to drive to DC, my reservation was still active, and so I’m like, ‘Well, that’s good.’ So then I get to work, and then I learned about the email that my editors had sent, either like the night before or that day. And I didn’t actually see the email, but my general understanding was it was one of those, like, ‘Hey, we know what you’re wanting us to do. We have a print publication coming up this week. We’d kind of like for you to roll that back.’”

“So, I knew that that email had been sent, so I was thinking, I’m going to email my supervisor, the Director of Public Media, and just remind him that I’m going to be out of town the rest of the week. I sent that email to him, and then I did, just did a bunch of things to get ready to not be in the office. Around 12:30, I got an email from a human resources representative at the IU level, telling me that I needed to be in a meeting with her and (Dean) David (Tolchinsky) at 4:30 that afternoon.”

“And I wish I had connected the dots. I swear to you that, in my brain, the idea (of being fired) was a possibility. But I wasn’t locked into that, because I had literally just learned about the editors’ email. Every time, the IDS editors said anything to anybody upstairs, I had to go into a meeting to explain journalism to them. So, I just thought that maybe this whole, ‘We need you to roll this back, or else,’ email the students sent led to this situation escalating.”

“But I was wrong.”

“I did reply to the human resources person asking for clarification that maybe, could you let me know about an agenda? Could you maybe let me know what’s going on so I could be prepared? And she wrote back that David had concerns he wanted to share. So, I knew I wasn’t going to get an answer, but that’s standard reply. So, I just continue getting ready to leave town because I was scheduled to drive to Washington (Wednesday) morning.”

“When 4:30 came, I went to the meeting, and I made small talk with the HR representative. I saw that she was from the St Louis area, so we talked St Louis for a couple minutes, and then David showed up, and he began with, ‘This is going to be an uncomfortable meeting.’ Then he just read from the termination letter. That’s it. He just read from the termination letter.”

“When he was done, my response was, ‘Is that it?’ And then the human resources person, on the spot, collected my keys, collected my IU ID, told me I had to be escorted from the building and that my personal belongings would be sent to me. She also said that I needed also hand over my IU laptop, but my IU laptop was at home because I was packed to leave. So, I had I had to drive in my IU rental that I already picked up over to my apartment to pick up the laptop and then drive back to campus to give this HR representative my laptop and the IU rental keys.”

 

Given the way you were fired and then removed from campus, were you also given any ultimatum about not talking to the kids at the IDS or any of the staff? Were you told not to reach out or were the kids told to shun you or anything?

JIM RODENBUSH: “I wasn’t given any, ‘Stay away from campus’ statement. I wasn’t getting any ‘Don’t talk to anyone’ thing. I have a daughter who is an IU student, so the whole time I’m processing being fired, I was in the back of my brain thinking, ‘If you tell me I can’t talk to students, that might be a little weird.’ But there was (no demand regarding communication). I have been in communication with the students, and the professional staff. I stayed in touch with everybody.”

“What’s funny is that I went back on campus and the public media outlet called me for an interview, and they said they wanted to put me on camera. And I said to the guy, ‘You want me to go into the into the TV building?’ And they’re like, ‘Yeah!’ I’m like, ‘Are you sure?’ They were like, ‘Yeah! If they say anything to us, we’ll just pitch a fit.’”

 

The day after you get fired, the second shoe drops and the Media School folks announce that they’re killing the print edition. Every indication I’ve gotten from anything I’ve seen is that the special print editions were making money, so what does this decision really say about the school’s motives here?

JIM RODENBUSH: “This proves that this was never about money, because you have effectively killed a massive amount of revenue-generating opportunities at this time. You’ve also done severe damage to the IDS’s relationship with the housing community, a big collective of advertisers. So much of my advertising director’s foothold that he has made here has to do with some of the print products that are produced. And so, you have made his job both harder and easier in a weird way. You just eliminated half of the half of his work. That’s the easier part. The harder part is you have eliminated massive revenue opportunities. So, this was never about money, and I think that their actions prove it.”

 

I still can’t figure out why the school wanted to do all of this to the IDS. I never got a sense that there was a particular like moment of, “Well, you guys ran X story, so we’re coming after you.” It just kind of seemed like there was this overwhelming push to get rid of true reporting overall. Am I reading this situation right?

JIM RODENBUSH: “I was not aware of any particular story that caused this situation to accelerate. We had an update this semester on (accusations that the IU president plagiarized parts of her doctoral dissertation). The story that ran was really good, but it was nothing more than kind of an update on where we are right now. It wasn’t anything particularly scandalous or something that people didn’t know. Otherwise, I’m not aware of anything problematic.”

“Almost every media outlet is asking a version of this question because it’s rational. The immediate thought is, ‘What are they trying to squash?’ Or ‘What story are they trying to prevent from coming out?’ And there’s nothing. This just appears to be about the media school not wanting traditional newspapers on the newsstands anymore.”

 

Maybe my brain is going in the wrong direction, but by saying, “Get rid of the print edition,” the Media School basically made it so that everything is digital and their actions are drawing way more attention than anything that could run in the print publication. I guess the simple question is:  What is their beef with print? 

JIM RODENBUSH: “I would be speculating, because through all of this, I’ve never been in these meetings. I told people that a lot of my job toward the end was middle management. I simply took orders from the media school administration and did what I could do with them. I was not in the room when these things were being talked about.”

“So I’m lacking even some sort of explanation as to the motivation behind this. The general idea has just been, ‘We need to transform to digital, and we need to eliminate prints, and we need to coincide with the real world.’ That’s been the message, and that’s hard to take, because, of course, newspapers are still being printed, and we had already transformed the digital first.”

“Newspapers are a lot like malls. The general idea is that malls are dead, but if you go to certain communities, the malls thriving. It’s not a black and white kind of thing. And when it comes to the printed newspaper, it all depends on your community, and it all depends on your audience.”

“We were down to a weekly paper, but we still had an audience for that. We still had pickup rates. We still had a strong print audience, particularly in the general business area that’s right off campus. We couldn’t keep the paper on the stands. So, them saying, ‘You must get rid of print’ was a sweeping order that still doesn’t make any sense to me, because if it’s about money, then why would you halve your revenue?”

 

In looking back to the discussions we had last year, when the school was launching its media plan, I remember several of the folks involved being on a radio show, talking about money. Your editor said, “It costs us 60 grand to print and we’re making 90 grand on the deal, so we’re making money,” something (an administrator) disputed without being able to support his disagreement. Tell me, based on your experience, was the paper was making money as a standalone product? 

JIM RODENBUSH: The paper alone as a standalone product, debits and credits, looking at a spreadsheet, it’s in the black. The cuts that we made, I’m comfortable saying that the savings we actually realized from the spring was possibly $20,000 by printing seven times instead of weekly.”

 

By cutting print, they cut the revenue, but not all of the costs associated with running the whole operation. I mean, you still have expenses like payroll, web stuff, travel and all that. I guess the question then becomes, what other revenue streams does the IDS have that will help meet all those expenses?

JIM RODENBUSH: “You’ve got professional staff there that are working, that are still getting paid, and they’re still getting benefits. You’ve got the students still getting paid. So, salary is part of the process. And as everyone with experience knows, you don’t sell digital advertising at the same rates that you do print advertising. I don’t see an immediate replacement for what amounts to half of the revenue.”

“The blanket response has always been, ‘Think innovatively! Think new ways! Think enterprise!’ and that’s great to say, but in in reality, you’re still operating in Bloomington, Indiana.  It is a wonderful town, but it’s still a midsized town in southern Indiana. There’s only so much money available there and (the ad manager) has done a wonderful job in the advertising community, building relationships all by himself, and making more money than I would ever would have expected. But now, he can only sell a certain thing, and there are going to be people that won’t be interested in that. So, he’s really been given a difficult task at this point. And you can piecemeal some things that could bring in additional money but cutting print? That was a tremendous amount of money that you just let walk away.”

“A homecoming section that was supposed to print today was sold, and so, they’re going to have to refund people. It’s not just this issue, but the other three that were scheduled for this year. We have health and religious directories in these printed products, and these people aren’t going to want to go online, so all these things are going to have to be refunded.”

 

NEXT: Part II

An Open Letter to The IU Media School: Please spare us your bullshit and leave the Indiana Daily Student alone

The top of the IDS’s letter explaining how the university killed print.

(EDITOR’S NOTE: Sage has always asked me to avoid any “unnecessary cursing” on the blog, as it tends to offend the sensibilities of some delicate readers. I promised I’d only use “necessary cursing,” and today it’s called for. Sorry, guys.)

Dear Dean David Tolchinsky and the rest of the administration at the IU Media School,

You have made it clear over the past several years, and even more so over the past few days, that you have absolutely no idea how journalism, student media or the First Amendment work, or that you don’t care about these things.

Either way, nobody is buying your bullshit anymore.

The decision to demand students not print news in the Homecoming edition, then fire adviser Jim Rodenbush when he would not force this upon students and then kill all printing 24 hours later in response to the editors’ concerns has drawn negative attention from all corners of the country. The Student Press Law Center and Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression both condemned your actions. News outlets across the state and beyond are digging into this situation. Even the alumni aren’t happy.

Free press and editorial freedom can’t be a “when we feel like it” thing, or else you are supporting neither a free press nor any editorial freedom. I’m not even sure your chancellor gets this, based on his most recent statement:

“Indiana University Bloomington is firmly committed to the free expression and editorial independence of student media,” IU Bloomington Chancellor David Reingold said in a statement. “The university has not and will not interfere with their editorial judgment.”

“In support of the Media School and implementation of their Action Plan, the campus is completing the shift from print to digital effective this week,” he continued. “To be clear, the campus’ decision concerns the medium of distribution, not editorial content. All editorial decisions have and will continue to rest solely with the leadership of IDS and all IU student media. We uphold the right of student journalists to pursue stories freely and without interference.”

OK, but see, you all actually DID interfere with editorial judgment when the powers-that-be demanded that no news content be placed into the homecoming edition. Furthermore, you made it clear that you WERE trying to censor by having two editions: One on campus for the alumni that was filled with only unicorns and rainbows and Homecoming parades, and another one for the city that would be allowed to wrap a news section around it.

The IDS quotes Assistant Dean Ron McFall essentially saying that the school knew this was censorship and interference:

“How do we frame that, you know, in a way that’s not seen as censorship?” Ron McFall, assistant dean of strategy and administration at the Media School, asked in that meeting.

And Dave, you can’t throw this guy under the bus with a “poor choice of words” or “one bad apple” thing, given what people know about you and your approach to student media. People at IU know that you are “clueless” about the First Amendment and you “don’t know the first thing about journalism,” to quote a non-student source close to the IU situation.

A source also relayed a story about one of your first encounters with the IDS upon your appointment as dean. The paper had written an editorial that had ruffled some feathers and you were confused about your power over the situation.

“He wanted to know why he couldn’t just make them apologize,” the source said.

You have tried your damnedest to frame this issue as one of finance, and finance alone, because this is the best defense you have against your indefensible actions. Even if the IDS students and the rest of us who understand how media works were to grant you this premise, which we don’t, dozens of examples of censorship through financial means exist in student media. Trust me, I’ve researched this a bit.

If money were the motivating factor, there would be no reason for killing off ALL print editions, including those special ones you were so excited to force the kids to produce. In their letter from the editors, Mia Hilkowitz and Andrew Miller explained that you now refuse to let them publish the homecoming edition, which fit the bill of what say you wanted, namely a special issue that turns a sizeable profit.

In addition, the editors have pointed out that the three issues that the IDS produced to this point have turned a five-figure profit, that the IDS has advertising contracts for future publications and has contracts for advertising to be placed on public-facing news stands where the print edition is distributed.

Those things all sound like money to me, and any reasonable human being who understands how money works. And if you’re worried about money, maybe you shouldn’t piss off IU alumnus billionaire and donor Mark Cuban, who also is not happy about this situation.

The problem with all of this is that you can’t un-ring the bell. Bringing Rodenbush back or opening the door to printing won’t solve the underlying problem: A complete lack of trust between the IDS and this administration. The students aren’t stupid, so they know that anything you do right now will only be to shut people like me up for the moment. Once you feel we’ve moved on and the outrage has died down, you’ll pull another stunt like this and the cycle will start all over again.

The only solution is the simplest one: Quit. Leave. Go away.

And take your band of merry administrators with you, who apparently have no interest in actual journalism and actually have “neutered the reporting curriculum,” to quote a source. I’m sure you’ll all land on your feet at some nice, private college where they’ll overpay you to keep the kids in line as they write hard-hitting stories about a local dog named “Pooch” that barks at the campus squirrels.

In the mean time, maybe the chancellor can put his money where his mouth is and hire someone capable of restoring the IDS to its previous state as a venerable, formidable journalistic enterprise.

Sincerely,

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

P.S. – No, I am not angling for your job, Dave. If this letter makes anything clear, I lack the bullshit-osity to be an administrator anywhere.

 

 

“How do we frame that, you know, in a way that’s not seen as censorship?” The IU Media School Fired Student Media Director Jim Rodenbush For Not Censoring Student Media

THE SHORT, SHORT VERSION: David Tolchinsky, dean of the IU Media School, fired student media director Jim Rodenbush for refusing to violate the First Amendment rights of the Indiana Daily Student staffers.

The powers that be in the administrators in the school have been trying to force the IDS into a series of short-sighted moves that would both damn the paper to irrelevancy and undercut the students’ rights to self-governance.  

If you would like to speak up on Rodenbush’s behalf, please email Tolchinsky at: mschdean@iu.edu or call him at: 812-856-4513 to let him know you stand with Rodenbush and the students at the IDS, who could also use your support (ids@indiana.edu).

 

THE LONGER, MORE NUANCED VERSION: Jim Rodenbush, who had been the director of student media at IU since 2018, was summarily fired on Tuesday after he refused to tell the staff of the Indiana Daily Student what they should publish in the homecoming edition.

A formal termination letter, signed by Dean David Tolchinsky, was making the rounds on various media outlets late Tuesday night:

DOCTOR OF PAPER FLASHBACK: The media school spent more than a year trying to force all of its student media outlets to work together, as part of a “converged” model that everyone else in the media world has figured out can’t work. We covered the rigamarole that the IDS was facing around this time last year in our “Hostile Takeover” series. 

Multiple generations of student editors at the IDS were adamantly against this approach, as well as opposing the idea that the free and independent media outlets they ran were going to be kind of “folded into” the media school.

At the time, I’d been in contact with Rodenbush, who was more than polite in his refusal to crap all over this idea, telling me he had faith in the kids and was working within the system to keep the ship afloat.

 

THE STUDENTS SPEAK: If you ever wonder where all the guts in journalism has gone in today’s world of media giants folding like a cheap tent in the rain, look to student journalists.

In a blistering letter on the IDS website, co-EICs Mia Hilkowitz and Andrew Miller explained exactly what happened to Rodenbush, bringing the receipts with them. In pulling quotes from emails and multiple meetings, they outlined the brazen attempts of the administration to force the students to bend to the school’s whims:

Telling us what we can and cannot print is unlawful censorship, established by legal precedent surrounding speech law on public college campuses.

Administrators ignored Rodenbush, who said he would not tell us what to print or not print in our paper. In a meeting Sept. 25 with administrators, he said doing so would be censorship.

“How do we frame that, you know, in a way that’s not seen as censorship?” Ron McFall, assistant dean of strategy and administration at the Media School, asked in that meeting.

Not to put too fine of a point on this, but if you have to ask how to “frame” something so that it doesn’t look like censorship, you’re committing censorship and you damned well know it.

And the students know it too:

IU will attempt to frame this censorship as a step toward a balanced budget. The IDS, along with the Student Press Law Center and Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, see it very differently.

“The Media School’s order limiting the Indiana Daily Student’s print edition to homecoming coverage isn’t a ‘business decision’ — it’s censorship,” the Student Press Law Center said in a statement to the IDS. “This disregards strong First Amendment protections and a long-standing tradition of student editorial independence at Indiana University.”

If administrators disregard our rights as student journalists now, what will stop them from prohibiting the IDS from publishing certain stories on our website and social media, should they deem it appropriate?

 

AN ALUMNUS SPEAKS: In looking for Tolchinsky’s contact information on the IU Media School website, I came across a familiar face in the “Proud Alumni” section of the site.

Andy Hall is a 1982 graduate of the IU journalism program and former editor of the IDS, and we worked together for a bit at the Wisconsin State Journal. The media school gave him a well-deserved write up, where he discussed the foundation of Wisconsin Watch, an investigative journalism outlet here in the Badger State.

I’m not sure if IU full grasps the irony that the Media School is literally championing a free and independent media outlet, founded by a relentless investigative journalist, at the same time it’s trying to undermine the place that helped launch his career.

(SIDE NOTE: Here is my best Andy Hall story. Every year, staffers at the WSJ were assigned a high school graduation to cover as part of their duty to civic journalism. Andy’s assignment coincided with a planned trip back to IU for a reunion of some sort, so he hit me up to ask if I could cover for him that weekend.

Andy explained that not only would I get paid for the work time and mileage, but that he’d kick in a six-pack of some Indiana beer and a bucket of Tell City Pretzels as a pot sweetener. After I agreed to do that, word got around the newsroom pretty quickly that the college kid could be bribed into taking your graduation story gig if you ponied up some free beer. I think I wrote like 10 or 12 grad stories that year and had the best beer fridge of anyone my age.)

I got a hold of Andy late Tuesday night and filled him in on the situation, asking what a guy who cut his teeth at the IDS thought of the school’s actions. He didn’t mince words:

“As a former editor-in-chief of the Indiana Daily Student, I am deeply disturbed by this apparent attempt to censor the decisions of its student editors. The IDS charter specifies that ‘final editorial responsibility for all content rests with the chief student editors or leaders.

“I hope that the Media School leadership finds ways to work productively with the IDS editors to ensure that the student news organization retains the full independence granted by its charter. Ultimately, that journalistic independence is in the best interests of the school, the students and, most importantly, the public.”

I wonder whose profile the school will be taking down first, Jim’s or Andy’s?

DOCTOR OF PAPER HOT TAKE: This is what happens when you train great student journalists and then try to play them for fools. The level of ham-handed stupidity involved in not just what was done, but how openly it was discussed in various meetings where journalism folk were present makes some of the Watergate stuff look nuanced by comparison.

I mean, even the mob knows better than to talk about how they plan to whack a guy in terms this blatant.

As far as Rodenbush is concerned, he’ll be getting the red carpet treatment on a national stage, according to Mediafest 25 Convention Director Michael Koretzky:

Jim Rodenbush is coming to MediaFest. SPJ is paying his way.

Jim will be recognized during Friday’s keynote, and we hope to get video of the room applauding him – then make sure it gets back to campus. (Two IU TV students are attending MediaFest. Hopefully, they’ll record the moment along with the rest of us.)

If you’re coming to MediaFest, please say hello to Jim at Friday’s CMA/ACP reception and around the Grand Hyatt halls.

We have other things planned for Jim upon his arrival. SPJ president Emily Bloch is excited to host him, and SPLC’s Jonathan Falk will invite Jim to speak at one of his sessions. CMA leaders haven’t gotten back to me yet, but I’m sure they’re just as excited.

Let’s stand with and for Jim.

As for what’s next for the IDS, I’ve got an email in to Tolchinsky and his admin crew asking that question. I’ve also got emails in to the co-EICs to see if they want to fill me in on anything. In the name of full transparency, I did get one reply:

I don’t know about you, but I can practically hear Langosa’s sigh of relief in that message from here. If anything else comes through, I’ll update it here.

Looking ahead, I don’t know who is going to take the job next, as this is the second adviser in a row to get canned at IU under some really awkward circumstances. Hall of Fame media adviser Ron Johnson got removed, with the university arguing it was a financial situation while the students arguing that this was an attempt to censor the publication. When news of Rodenbush’s firing hit the College Media Association’s listserv, more than two dozen folks chimed in with messages of condolence for Rodenbush and some version of “This isn’t right.”

It’s out of pure, morbid curiosity that I want to see the job posting for whoever the hell IU thinks is going to saddle up for this gig.

In the mean time, please feel free to email Tolchinsky at: mschdean@iu.edu or call him at: 812-856-4513 to let him know if you disagree with this act of censorship. Also, please feel free to offer your support to the IDS staff (ids@indiana.edu), because they definitely deserve better than they getting, but they aren’t going down without a fight.

“Record everything, always, and apologize later, if need be.” (A throwback post)

Having a literal videographic memory would really, really come in handy sometimes… 

 

This post came to mind after an email exchange I had with an administrator last week. Not to get too into the weeds, but a crisis hit and I was being asked to do something in exchange for a benefit of my choosing.

During a meeting, I got the verbal “OK, that’s fine,” with a promise I’d get something in writing shortly after. After a month or so, I hadn’t gotten the documentation or the benefit, so I made some inquiries.

Although things aren’t entirely settled, what bugged me the most was a line that an administrator wrote to me in an email: “I found no record that we promised (SAID BENEFIT).” 

At that point, I was reminded of the phrase I often tell students: “Record everything, always, and apologize later, if need be. In God we trust. Everyone else gets recorded.”

I’m not sure yet if I’ll be wiring my office like Nixon’s White House, but while I ponder that, here’s today’s throwback post, which looks at the issue of recording people, with or without their knowledge.

 

‘Can you?’ vs. ‘Should you?’ A secret recording of a Wisconsin government phone call that inspired five random thoughts for journalism students

In trying to explain ethics to my intro writing students, I often fall back on the line that, “Ethics basically deal with things that aren’t illegal, but can get you in a lot of trouble, anyway.” Another way we separate law and ethics is the line between, “Can I do X?” vs. “Should I do X?”

This concept came into focus in a strange way last week, as Wisconsin continued to put the “fun” in “dysfunction” at the state government level:

MADISON – Republican legislative leaders lashed out Wednesday at Democratic Gov. Tony Evers after his staff secretly recorded a May 14 phone conversation over how to respond to the coronavirus pandemic the day after the state Supreme Court struck down the state’s stay-at-home order.

The recording and the reaction to it all but ensures a permanently broken relationship between Evers and Republicans who control the Legislature. The two sides have rarely gotten along since Evers was elected in 2018 and Wednesday’s episode was characterized by GOP leaders as unprecedented.

Republicans referred to the recording effort as “Nixonesque,” referring to former Republican President Richard Nixon’s desire to record everything involving him at the White House. I’m uncertain if this is irony, self-loathing behavior or something just randomly laughable, but I’m at a loss for words while watching a Republican use the name of a former two-term (almost) president as an insult. I guess I’m also pretty sure that the relationship between Evers and the Republicans was permanently shattered like Waterford Crystal thrown off the top of the Empire State Building waaaaaaay before this incident.

In any case, here are a few random thoughts for journalism students that don’t delve into the political grandstanding in this case that makes soccer “injuries” look honest by comparison:

 

THIS SHOULD HAVE BEEN PUBLIC ANYWAY: Bill Lueders, president of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, made the best point about this situation. Why the hell was this a “private phone call” among three key governmental officials?

(Lueders) said recording a conversation without alerting the other parties isn’t illegal in this state, but is in bad form — and that the nature of the meeting should have pushed the three to talk publicly instead of privately.

“I wouldn’t do that as a journalist, to record someone without them knowing,” Lueders said. “On the other hand, I don’t know what would have been said in that meeting that needed to be kept private.”

Maybe if this is a public meeting, none of this becomes an issue in the first place. Sunlight is said to be the best disinfectant, and it would appear to be so in this case.

 

RECORD EVERYTHING, BUT BE HONEST: According to the numerous accounts I’ve read, Richard Nixon was paranoid as hell and believed people were always out to screw him over. If you have spent any time as a reporter in this day and age, I bet Tricky Dick starts making a little more sense in that regard.

I can’t tell you how many times I have written something I got from a source, quoted a source or provide information I got about a source, only to have the person who gave me that information tell me I was wrong. And I did most of my work before the era of people in power calling everything they don’t like “fake news.”

Thus, my advice to students? “Record everything.”

That said, recording is one of those key areas where law and ethics diverge. The majority of the states in the U.S. operate under one-party consent. This means that if you are on a phone call with another person, you may record it legally without letting that other person know. The others have some version of two-party consent, which means BOTH parties on the call must know and agree to the recording before it happens. (You can read more on your state’s rules and what happens if your recording across state lines etc. here.)

The law says, “Record them all. Let God sort them out.” Ethics, however, would dictate that secretly recording people kind of undermines trust, as Lueders pointed out. This is why I always tell the students to be up front about their recording. Tell the source, “I would like to record this interview. Is that a problem?” In most cases, sources will be fine with it.

Some folks will be reticent, so I tell the students to explain WHY they want to record the interview: “I want to make sure I don’t make a mistake,” or “I want to be sure the quotes are accurate,” or “I want to protect both of us.” However, the students want to explain it is fine, but at the end of the day, it’s about having a permanent record of what occurred so if the stuff hits the fan, and suddenly everyone is pulling a “Shaggy” on this situation, you have a complete record of what happened.

 

STILL, WATCH OUT FOR YOU FIRST: I totally get why the person recorded the conversation: The Evers administration and the Republicans out here who will rule the assembly in perpetuity, thanks to gerrymandering the likes of which we’ve never seen before, are constantly in a bombastic struggle to define “truth” for the public. I’ll read one story one day and think, “OK, they’re doing X” only to read the next day some recasting of the situation that makes me think it was a dream.

In the end, if you know someone’s going to try to screw you, get a permanent record of reality.

Honestly, I’ve recorded people without their knowledge. I don’t say this with a great deal of pride, but this is what happens when you run a crime beat in an area where people felt no compunction about calling you up to scream at you about coverage. After I almost got smoked once, I considered it an insurance policy.

The first time this happened, a person called the main desk at the newspaper, asking to talk to the person in charge of crime stuff. The staffer sent the person to me, and the caller spent at least five minutes screaming at me about a story we ran. It turns out her kid/brother/friend/whatever was “illegally arrested” (a phrase I still love to this day) and what we wrote needed to be retracted RIGHT NOW.

After mentioning places that I could put my head, which defied the laws of physics, and questioning the lineage of my parents, this woman was not happy with my decision not to acquiesce to her demands. She wanted to speak to my boss.

I gave her his number and he got a much different treatment: A lot of “sir” mentions and some polite questions and so forth. She mentioned how horrible I was and how I said horrible and unspeakable things to her. Of course, my boss brought me in to ask me about this. He bought my version of events, but I swore it would be the last “he said/she said” thing I dealt with at that paper.

I hooked up a tape recorder to the phone and kept it at the ready. When I got the next call transferred, questioning my approach to crime news, I recorded it. After my boss got the complaint about me, I offered to let him listen to the recording. Eventually, that became our routine:

Him: “I got a complaint that you were horrible to (SOMEONE) who was complaining about (WHATEVER I DID).”
Me: “Uh… No… Would you like to hear the recording of the call?”
Him: “Fair enough…”

Still, the most important moment of recording I can recall came when I was an adviser at Ball State University. The school was in the middle of a provost search when one of the three candidates pulled out. The remaining two candidates were relatively polarizing: The president clearly favored one and the faculty and staff favored the other.

Just to back up her notes, the reporter borrowed my recorder for the phone call with the president. She asked the obvious question if the president had planned to restart the search. I can still remember to this day hearing the reporter as, “Is that even an option in your mind?”

The answer was no. We have two qualified candidates and we’re moving forward.

That was the story we ran, and then all hell broke loose.

Faculty were outraged, figuring they were going to get screwed, so they started talking. The president, clearly not wanting this to be a mess, decided the best thing to do was throw the newspaper under the bus.

She issued a statement via email to faculty and staff that basically said, “Look, the kids at the newspaper try really hard, but they’re kids and they screw up stuff. I never said we wouldn’t restart this. In fact, that’s what I’m doing right now. So, relax and don’t worry about the mistakes of children.”

Her problem was, we had it recorded. She didn’t know.

To be fair, the student SHOULD have told her we were recording her, and that was a lesson we made clear in the post-game analysis with the reporter. Thus, we gave the president a chance to do the right thing. The editor-in-chief called her and told her that she made us look stupid and that we were asking for a retraction. We’d let it go if she fessed up. She immediately went back to her talking points about the reporter screwing up and how this happens with cub reporters and how she wasn’t mad, but she had to set the record straight.

At that point, he let the cat out of the bag. She paused, said some unprintable things and then asked, “Are you recording me now?”

I remember thinking, “No, but I wish we were…”

In the end, she held firm. We ran her email alongside a transcript of the phone call along with an editorial on the whole thing. She was displeased, but that was on her. If the primary complaint someone has about you recording them is that you’ll report exactly what they said and they don’t like what they said, I have very little sympathy for them.

This leads to the next point…

 

IT’S NOT OUR FAULT YOU’RE A DIPSTICK: The reason we know about this recording in the first place is because the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel put in an open records request for everything associated with a coronavirus meeting between the two sides. Once they asked for everything, including recordings of the meeting, the recording came to light.

(Good side note: In open-records requests, ask for stuff that MIGHT exist, even if you don’t think it does. You might get lucky. In this request, the reporter apparently asked for any recordings of the meeting when requesting documents from Vos as well and got nothing because he didn’t record anything. The request sent to Evers yielded the tape. Short version: It never hurts to ask for stuff.)

Evers did the right thing in turning over the file, even though I’m sure he really didn’t want to. It had to be like that scene in “Silence of the Lambs” when the moth flies out of the basement and basically the killer knew he was screwed. The game was over at that point, and he basically had to brace for impact.

The recording was what I would have expected of divorced parents who were forced into a dinner with their kid at graduation: A lot of people talking past one another, some pointed jabs and the essential “How much longer must we endure this fool?” vibe. One thing that did pop up as a story was Assembly Speaker Robin Vos blaming immigrants for the coronavirus:

MADISON – Assembly Speaker Robin Vos blamed the culture of immigrant populations for a coronavirus outbreak in Racine County, according to a secret recording of his meeting last month with Gov. Tony Evers.

“I know the reason at least in my region is because of a large immigrant population where it’s just a difference in culture where people are living much closer and working much closer,” the Rochester Republican said of an outbreak in Racine County.

Of course, Vos didn’t like the story that pointed this out and tried to move the discussion back to how shameful Evers was for recording the call. He also tried to spin this to make it about how he had a deep concern for people of color who were disproportionately suffering the effects of the virus.

(Hang on… I’m dealing with the vertigo caused by that spin… OK… Phew…)

At the end of the day, neither group looks good and Vos has to deal with what would appear to every Latino group the MJS contacted as a dog-whistle, anti-immigrant blame-fest.

What’s important to remember, however, if you record something as a journalist and someone says something stupid, it’s not your fault.

This is one of the few cases where people aren’t blaming journalists, because the journalist didn’t make the recording. Vos comes the closest, in accusing the paper of not keeping its eye on the ball with the whole “Nixon-esque” recording. However, usually, in a story in which someone records something (telling the source or not) and it turns out the source says something horrible, the outrage is more over the recording or the choice to run the story than it is the horrible thing the person said.

It shouldn’t be, and you shouldn’t feel bad about it.

Your job is to report the facts, getting as close as you can to the purity of truth, in an attempt to inform your readers of something important. Rarely are those revelations something pretty and happy, so someone will be upset.

If a state rep or a city council member or a school board president says something offensive about race, gender, sexual-orientation, socio-economic status or some dude named Chad’s little brother, and you think your readers need to know about it, that’s called editorial discretion. Use it to guide you in your choices.

ALWAYS ASK, “IS THE JUICE WORTH THE SQUEEZE?”: In looking at ethical behavior, I sometimes find myself being a pragmatist more than I would like. Still, that’s because I know I have to live in the real world and not in an ivory tower, subsisting on creeds and mottoes. What I “can” do versus what I “should” do often comes down to a weighing of my options and examination of the ramifications.

(This situation is weird, in that the journalists didn’t make recording, so whatever they picked out of the open record was less on them than it was on the person making the comments and the staffer who recorded it.)

If I record a source, and the source knows the information is on the record, and the source knows I’m recording it, I pretty much have carte blanche to do as I see fit. That’s where editorial discretion comes in. What am I trying to do here?

If I run a story based on one part of an hour-long interview that makes a long-time and trusted source look bad, will I be cutting off my nose to spite my face? Probably. Some folks would say that ethics demand the unveiling of any ill that could showcase the true nature of public figures. Others would say that, short of watching that source kill a guy, you’re not ratting him out because sources like that are hard to find.

This is where I spend more time bean-counting than I might otherwise like. Is one flashy story worth not getting another story again from this source? Is my ability to tell people important things, thanks largely to this source, going to be undermined by me taking a shot across the bow at this guy? Am I protecting a person I shouldn’t be protecting, primarily because he makes me job easier?

This is why journalists who have ethics tend to drink like fish and chew Xanax like Tic-Tacs.

As a journalist, what you do is up to you (and to that extent, your publication/boss/editor/whomever runs the show), so you need to decide for yourself if the juice is worth the squeeze.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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