Social Media

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The University of Wisconsin Madison is right that the First Amendment protects the speech of racist idiots, but that’s not as bad as it seems

THE LEAD: My alma mater made the news this week for all the wrong reasons:

A video of a University of Wisconsin student using racist slurs and references began circulating on multiple social media platforms Monday.

The video showed a white UW student using racial slurs and expletives directed toward the Black community. Others could be heard laughing at the rant in the background of the video.

(EDITOR’S NOTE: Some media outlets have named this person and identified her as a UW-Madison sophomore. The U has only confirmed she is a student, and various other outlets have not verified her name. I couldn’t independently verify the person’s name, so I’m not using it. Restraint is the better part of valor in cases like this.)

SEE IT NOW: Here’s an “edited for TV” version of the video:

 

THE FALLOUT:

SIMPLE ANALYSIS:

  • Mnookin is right about the First Amendment and the way in which it protects even the most odious speech. Governmental agencies cannot be curtail or punish speech, with a few notable exceptions, such as if the speech contains a true threat or falls under the fighting words doctrine of inciting imminent lawless action.
  • The second scenario clearly doesn’t apply here, as she wasn’t inciting a group to do something violent. As for the first one, not to appear glib here, but unless people viewing the video could realistically believe this student could become a ghost and haunt them, while forcing them to “pick cotton” until they died, it doesn’t apply either.
  • The First Amendment provides both the disease and the cure in this case, in that the best way to deal with bad speech is through more speech.
    • The students who have written on various platforms, expressing their outrage and sadness, are availing themselves of their right to speech and press.
    • The students who gathered to let the school know they aren’t happy with this student or the school’s response are availing themselves of their right to peaceably assemble.
    • The students signing the petition that demands this kid get the boot from Badger Town are relying on the right to petition the “government” for redress of grievances.
    • This is how this kind of thing is supposed to work.

DYNAMICS OF WRITING FLASHBACK: Sadly, this isn’t the first time the blog has looked at a situation like this. In 2019, here at UWO, a student posted images on Instagram to “out” several other students who had a whiteboard filled with slurs and a swastika flag in their home. At the time, we touched base with legal eagle Frank LoMonte for a walkthrough on free expression and what was likely to happen to the students who “expressed” themselves in this fashion.

DOCTOR OF PAPER HOT TAKE: I’m not in favor of suppressing speech at any level, even when it comes to terrible speech like this. It’s not that I like the student’s speech (I clearly don’t) but I know that if we start suppressing speech based on content or viewpoint, it’s only a matter of time before someone comes after YOUR content and viewpoint or MY content and viewpoint.

Therefore, what happened is abhorrent, but the backlash that has ensued illustrates a point many people truly don’t understand when it comes to the First Amendment: Free speech does not mean consequence-free speech.

That said, here are some things to think about regarding this situation that aren’t being talked about right now:

  • The university is wrong when it says it can’t boot this kid out of school.
  • Whether the university decides to bounce this kid or not, the outcome will be the same.
    • If I had to guess here, I’m thinking the U is running clock on this situation, hoping to get to the end of the semester and then figure out its next move. I don’t like that kind of mealy mouthed approach to dealing with this, but I also understand that the U might consider it the safest way forward from a legal perspective.
    • At this point, this kid has to know there is NO WAY she’s coming back to this campus in the fall, given the fallout she’s already faced. As more places confirm her name, it’s going to be everywhere and she’s not going to be able to escape the consequences of her stupidity. Think about every time a TA calls roll in a class and all the heads turn knowingly in  her direction. Think about who the hell is going to want to be her roomie next year. She’s headed somewhere else.

KEY TAKEAWAY: As frustrating as it is for ANYONE who thinks, “How the hell can this university let this racist idiot stay here and let her racist stupidity slide?” (And, I count myself among those feeling frustrated), I think a key thing to remember is that the First Amendment works.

  • Nobody stopped her from posting her stupidity, thus, her free speech rights remained intact.
  • The free speech reaction from seemingly everyone on this side of the planet regarding her stupidity has brought the issue to the forefront in a way that is forcing people to deal with the situation.
  • The continued pressure brought to bear in reaction to this student’s stupid expression is likely to create the proper outcomes:
    • The kid is catching hell from every corner of the universe.
    • The kid is likely to be “gone” from school.
    • The school is likely to further solidify its position against people who behave like this.
    • The message of, “We’re not there yet,” when it comes to issues of race is once again highlighted.
    • In light of all of this, the university is going to have to pony up more time, resources and education to deal with this issue.

In the end, all of this is the result of speech and the protections afforded to it in this country.

I’m blogging about Florida officials. I will never register my blog with that state. Come get me, Sen. Jason Brodeur.

(Note to Florida Sen. Jason Brodeur: Nothing says, “Trust me on how to make the media work better” like being interviewed by a dude who looks like he’s about to engage in a rap battle with the protagonist from the Offspring’s “Pretty Fly for a White Guy” video. Unless, of course, it’s doing a video interview in your car outside of what looks like the most pathetic water park in Florida.)

I’m happy to report that all of the kids in my media law class this year passed their first exam. I am sad, however, to report that their knowledge of how the First Amendment works would likely disqualify them for a position in the Florida Senate, if Sen. Jason Brodeur is any indication of what passes for intellectual leadership out there:

A Republican state senator in Florida has introduced a bill that, if passed, would require bloggers who write about Gov. Ron DeSantis, his Cabinet or state legislators to register with the state.

Sen. Jason Brodeur’s bill, titled “Information Dissemination,” would also require bloggers to disclose who’s paying them for their posts about certain elected officials and how much.

This is part of a movement among numerous political figures, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who like the power that comes with political positions, but don’t like being held to any level of scrutiny by member of The Fourth Estate.

Among the 823,245,219 bad ideas in this bill, consider these key elements:

  • It argues that bloggers are essentially lobbyists, so if lobbyists need to register with the government, so should bloggers. (I spent 30 minutes trying to come up with an equally absurd comparative and basically rolled snake eyes on that one. Just imagine the dumbest comparison you can and then imagine it being made during a drunken screaming match on a “Housewives of Meth-topia” episode and you’re probably close to what I was trying to come up with.)

 

  • It would require the disclosure of payments for any posting the bloggers do, never mind for a moment that a) most bloggers aren’t paid for specific posts, (at best supported ad revenue or donations on the entirety of the blog) and b) this somehow overlooks the entire public relations industry, which would be essentially eviscerated by this kind of thing.

 

  • It seeks to fine people up to $2,500  a day for “late registration” of the blog, as outlined in the bill, which again makes no sense due to the point made above.

Brodeur and fellow backers of the bill couldn’t be more transparent in their self-interest if they were made of Saran Wrap: By creating a climate of fear among people who might be critical of these officials, these public figures can cut down on the amount of criticism they face.

That said, they face significant problems in making this thing stick for a few basic reasons:

  • It violates the essential rationale behind the First Amendment and other actions by the country’s founders. Before it declared its independence, the then-colonial state of this country operated under English laws pertaining to printing, including the rule that all presses were to be licensed by the government. The soon-to-be-a-country’s first newspaper, Publick Occurrences, was shut down in 1690 for printing without a license. Colonists realized the suppression of the press was a key way England kept its thumb on its critics,  and thus made sure the newly independent country DIDN’T license journalists for precisely this reason.
  • It violates common sense in regard to how anything works in a digital world. Let’s pretend for a minute that this thing gets passed in Florida and for some reason, we’re all sitting around for a year, waiting for the Supreme Court to do something about it. So… I have a few questions:
    • It only applies to PAID posting in regard to registration and disclosure. Does that mean I can spend as much of my time as I want calling Brodeur and DeSantis and the rest of the bill’s supporters peanut-brained, no-account, speech-suppressing ass-hats? I mean, if I’m just doing it without financial sponsorship, how am I violating the law here?
    • It’s a FLORIDA law. I read through Brodeur’s bio and was unable to figure out if this chucklehead actually understands that, unlike most physical things some politicians want to allow (carrying a gun) or prevent (ending a pregnancy), the internet doesn’t recognize state borders. Thus, I can write a blog in Wisconsin, criticizing stupidity in Florida, and people in all 50 states (and apparently Trinidad and Tobago, where I’ve apparently got exactly one really frequent reader), can enjoy the various ways I can poke holes in this bill.
    • Digital media covers more ground than this bill, so are you ready for some highly creative   fun people will have at Brodeur’s expense? I”m looking forward to some really long Twitter tirades, a “Violate a Fundamental Constitutional Liberty like Jason” TikTok challenge and something on YikYak that would make Bubba the Love Sponge blush…

So, in hopes of inspiring a generation of digital natives who love free speech and have a dark sense of humor, let’s have some fun:

This is a link to Sen. Jason Brodeur’s home page on the Florida State website. You can find a contact button there, which will allow you to tell  him EXACTLY what you think of this bill and his rather patronizing “Government Folk Know Best” approach to free speech. If you’re taking a law class, please feel free cite a particular precedent that would allow you to express yourself in a particular way. Speak the truth about a bad official, offer an opinion, participate in hyperbolic speech, present content that does not rise to the level of actual malice or anything else your free-speech-loving heart desires.

(Bonus points to the first person who redoes the Falwell Campari parody with Brodeur in it, or whoever arranges an amazing John Oliver singing extravaganza about Bob Murray that I’m not allowed to link here, but that you should definitely find on your own.)

To prove you understand the actual legal limits of the amendment, please do not engage in any fighting words, true threats or incitement to imminent lawless actions, to name a few.

To those of you who might think this approach is petty and childish, I would argue that the defense of the First Amendment in all of its forms is vital to the preservation of our democracy. Any dissent provided to rebuke those who would undercut our most basic freedoms should be embraced by all those who cherish the values that created the foundation of our country.

I guess I could also argue, “Well, he started it…”

Either way, take your shot and make your voice heard.

If Brodeur has his way, it might be the last chance you get to do any of this.

 

New Year’s Resolutions for the blog: Responding to audience requests and looking for more

help me help you | HELP ME, HELP YOU! | image tagged in help me help you | made w/ Imgflip meme maker

With the start of the new semester (for us, anyway), I am kicking the blog back into gear this week. As is usually the case, I have no idea if I’m doing the right thing or the wrong thing without getting feedback from you all. Over the past year, I gathered a bunch of “asks” and “mentions” for the blog, the book and me in general that I figured I’d post here for the sake of the group. Hope they help.

If you want more of something that I’m doing here, let me know. If I’m doing something you want less of, tell me that, too. Also, if I’m missing anything, that’ll really help me fill the blog this year.

Hit me up via the Contact Us link and I’ll do it.

In any case, here we go:

BASIC PLEAS FROM READERS

WRITE SHORTER: A friend who publishes a newspaper said this to me as we passed on the way to a meeting. “I love the blog, but I never get to read it all because you write so long…”

Damn. That hurt, but she was probably right.

It comes from two places: a) the Polish/Catholic environment in which I was raised, where we feed people as much as possible and then apologize for not having enough food and b) the idea that I’m writing for students who might need an extra example, a few more lines of text to enforce a point or a random meme that could make them laugh. Truth be told, I need to shorten up, so I’ll be trying a few tweaks here and there (including an adaptation of the Axios model) to shrink the posts while delivering value.

 

HELP ME APPLY THIS: A teacher or two noted that the content helped them keep current on a topic or give students some insight on a topic, but they could use some exercises here and there. I’m going to build more posts that have a “Try This” element at the end for those folks. I’ll also look for more assignments that can get posted on the blog as well.

 

BROADEN THE BASE: The Media Writing teachers noted they would love more examples from Ad and PR to fill this in. Broadcast also, unfortunately, gets a bit of a short shrift here. I hear you. I’m definitely looking for options, examples and lessons for these areas and I’ll post them here first.

RANDOM QUESTIONS

“Do you take requests/guest posts?” A couple people, not counting the spambots that keep telling me how they can increase my traffic through their posting content, have asked to guest on the blog. Hey, I’d love to have you. Just tell me what you want to do, when you can do it and let’s go.

I feel guilty just asking folks for guest appearances. To me, it feels like that moment at a concert when the lead singer just thrusts the mic out toward the audience and and screams, “SING IT!”

Dude, I paid like $300 for this ticket. YOU sing.

In any case, I love requests for things to post and anyone who would like to write for this site, hey, let’s talk.

 

“We need an intro to mass com book. Any suggestions?” Ask me again in January 2024…

 

“Do you ever talk to classes/newsrooms/student groups?” I’ve been asked to do Zoom or in-person gigs for everything from high schools to college media outlets and I’m thrilled to do them. If you want me to show up in your class, just tell me when, where and how (Zoom/Teams/in-person/hologram) and I’ll make it work. If you want me there in person, also tell me if they have Diet Coke on your campus so I know if I need to bring my own.

 

On to a new semester!

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

 

The Junk Drawer: The “What were you THINKING?” edition

Compared to the rest of my life, this is actually pretty well organized…

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.

We start this week, as most Catholics do, with a confession…

For the first time in the history of the blog, I killed a post after I published it when a reader wrote in to complain. Tuesday, I was a bit out of my lane when I wrote a post titled “Vote or Whatever,” that tried to do something for Election Day. The post wasn’t coming together the way I wanted, but I figured I’d force things a bit and see what happened.

The point I was trying to make was that people have rights in this country, regardless of if they vote or not. For example, the line about “If you don’t vote, you don’t have the right to complain,” is completely untrue. The First Amendment gives you the right to grouse up a storm if you want, regardless of if you cast a ballot and pick up an “I Voted” sticker. However, if people don’t vote, the folks that do might elect people who decide to take back a few of the rights you like.

The reader made the point that it sounded like I was telling people not to vote and that voting didn’t matter. After a few exchanges, I went back and reread the post, which I already knew I was forcing to begin with, and realized the reader was right. I tried fixing it a couple times before I remembered “Filak’s First Rule of Holes,” so I killed it.

Just like I tell myself when I’m working on a car, a pinball machine, a piece of furniture or an appliance around the house: Don’t force it or you’ll turn a bad situation into a worse one. This was one of those cases, so I apologize to whoever read that thing before it mercifully was relegated to the dustbin of history.

Speaking of bad ideas that were poorly executed…

WTF, KFC?

Not every promotional effort on social media is perfect, but when you’re trying to get people to enjoy a sandwich by commemorating a Nazi atrocity, you’re definitely going to catch some blow back:

KFC’s German branch has apologized for seeming to encourage its customers to mark the anniversary of Kristallnacht — the notorious Nazi pogrom against Jews — by eating chicken, saying that a promotional message was sent in error as a result of an automated push notification.

The pogrom that began on Nov. 9, 1938, is known as the night of broken glass, and is widely commemorated as the start of the Holocaust. It was a coordinated assault on German Jews and their homes, businesses and synagogues.

On Wednesday, KFC Germany sent a message to users of its app with the title “Anniversary of the Reich’s pogrom night,” according to reports in the German news media and screen shots of the promotion that circulated widely on Twitter. The message invited customers to enjoy “tender cheese with crispy chicken.”

KFC Germany “quickly followed up with an apology” and then noted it was the work of an automated program that paired promotional tweets with historical events commemorated on a calendar. If true, they might want to look ahead to April 30 to prevent a “stock the bunker in case of guests” 2-for-1 bucket promotion.

Let’s move on…

From the “Does that period key work?” department:

The general vibe in most media writing is that short and tight sentences are better than the alternative.  Leads are generally about 25-35 words, particularly if they’re straight news pieces. Then there’s this one:

WASHINGTON – A West Bend man who police say entered a city polling place last Tuesday with a knife and demanded staff “stop the voting” had been arrested just days prior and was free on a signature bond for reportedly posting hand-written racist and threatening political messages downtown and sending photos of those notes to Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson and Democratic Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes.

At 65 words, you’re almost more than double what you would normally expect for something that basically says, “Dude making threats made threats before.”

It could have been worse, as this writer demonstrated with another monstrosity of writing. The only person whose getting away with a sentence this long is Bret Easton Ellis if he’s writing from the perspective of a coked up hedge-fund manager:

Johnson, coming off a victory that secured him his third term in the Senate, joined a chorus of Senate GOP colleagues last week in pushing to delay the chamber’s Republican leadership elections set for Wednesday until the conference can have “serious discussions” about what the party can do to improve its chances of winning the presidency and both chambers of Congress in 2024, according to a letter the senators sent to colleagues.

As is the case with all writers, the Journal-Sentinel invites us to follow this guy on Twitter. I might actually do that, just to see what happens when he’s hemmed in at 280 character, or roughly 60% of that sentence.

Speaking of Twitter….

Is it midnight or is that just the NYT throwing shade?

I always loved sentences in news stories that basically wrote themselves. If I didn’t have to try to hype a story because the facts alone  made people say, “Damn….,” I was a happy camper.

I would have basically given anything to have written this sentence in a story about Elon Musk booking Twitter for a one-way ticket on the Titanic:

That was such a sick burn there isn’t enough water in the world to put it out.

Speaking of dry spells…

From the “homophonic bias” department:

I found this one back when Aaron Judge was chasing Roger Maris’ home run record in the American League. Apparently Judge had a bit of a dry spell when it came to dingers, or he stopped for a frosty beer along the way to the park…

In case you are unclear, a drought is a lack of rain, or whatever else is supposed to be showing up (in this case, home runs). A draught is an English spelling of anything drawn from a keg. To be fair, Babe Ruth and Mickey Mantle tended to tip a few before launching balls into the stratosphere, so maybe Judge was trying to stick with tradition…

Speaking of baseball…

I got this promotion for some reason in my social media feed and even after reading it three times, I still found myself laughing like a 12-year-old boy.

For the Fanatics promotional staff, I’d like to offer this post that covers about a dozen or more terms you probably want to avoid…

Have a good rest of the week.

Vince

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

3 Basic Rules for Building a Successful Blog

The Public Relations Student Society of America chapter out here requested a guest lecture on blogging, as they know blogs will be part of what they need to do to be successful in their fields. Students have often told me that when they show up for an internship or a job, the first thing they are told is, “We need a blog. Go do it.”

What should be on that blog? “We need a blog!”

What’s our audience for the blog? “We NEED a BLOG!”

Do you have any advice on how to go about blogging for this organization? “Look, kid. You know the interwebs and stuff. Just go build the damned blog…”

Unless you want to be roadkill on the information superhighway (or worse), it pays to understand the concept of blogging and why it is certain blogs work and certain ones don’t. As a sneak preview of tonight’s talk, here are a few basic things to keep in mind when you want to build an effective blog:

RULE 1: It’s not about you.

Starting a blog because you want to write about something is like becoming a restaurant chef because you like to eat. The point of the job isn’t to give you a cheaper version of group therapy or to help you share your feelings with people. The point of a blog is to find an audience that has an interest in something you know about and a need for information that you possess.

What you know about your audience will largely determine how successful you are at drawing traffic to your blog. You need to know who is out there, what interests they have and how you can engage them, either digitally or interpersonally. This is particularly important if you are working for an organization that requires you to blog for it. Your personal stories won’t go far and the readers won’t give a damn about you.

To make this work, you need to learn who is out there that is reading the blog, what they need and how you can get it to them.

There are three things you need to examine to understand your audience: Demographics, Psychographics and Geographics. The type of blog you have will determine to what degree each of these elements is more or less crucial to your success. However, unless you have a sense of who is out there, you’ll never know if you can be of help to them. In marketing, we talk about the idea of a “buyer persona” while in news we talk about a “typical reader.” All we’re really trying to get across is that a certain type of person is going to be using your stuff, so you have to know who they are, what they want and how best to reach them.

For example, if you are doing a blog on fashion, you need to know who will be reading it. Are they younger people who wear a lot of leggings and ripped jeans or are they senior citizens who want to get out of the 1970s and its polyester phase? Are they New York jet setters or small-town kids who don’t want to wear  overalls every day? Do they have gobs of money or are they shopping on a budget? Even more, things like how label-conscious they are, the degree to which they have a solid self-image and how often they like to shop will all play into this.

Regardless of what you choose to do, you need to make it about them. Not you.

Rule #2: Get narrow and get focused

Blogs can’t be about everything. They have to be about something. If you decide that you’re going to “blog about things that I notice,” you have managed to violate both rule 1 and rule 2 in one fell swoop. Writing a “personality” blog would only work if you are someone like Kendall Jenner, and even then it wouldn’t work because if you were Kendall Jenner, you’d need to learn how to write first.

We don’t live in a “mass media” world any more, so you have to find something specific that will draw readers and give them something they can’t get elsewhere. (Or, at the very least, they can only get a few other places, but you give it to them in a better way) That means you need to locate a niche that badly needs something you have to offer and then fill it.

Let’s look at how best to narrow this down:

  • Stage 1: I want to write a sports blog. (WAAAY TOO BROAD)
  • Stage 2: I want to write a blog that looks at college athletes. (STILL TOO BROAD)
  • Stage 3: I want to write a blog that looks at college athletes and issues of mental health. (Probably workable)

Each cut, you see us getting closer to a niche. In this case, you have something that not a lot of people are talking about (mental health and athletics) so you have a lot of potential blogging options. You could look at star athletes and the mental pressures of success. You could look at athletes who graduate  but won’t go on to a pro game and how they deal with that. You could look at athletes coming back from injuries and their fears and concerns about this. Sources can include sports psychologists, former athletes, coaches, mental health experts and more. No matter what’s going on, you have the ability to sharpen the focus by going more narrow.

Rule #3: Before you blog, answer the question, “Why you?”

The greatest line ever delivered in the history of professional sports came from Indianapolis Colts GM Bill Tobin after the first round of the 1994 NFL Draft. A draft analyst had criticized his picks on ESPN, which was covering the event. After hearing this over and over, Tobin went on live TV and asked,

“Who in the hell is Mel Kiper anyway? Here’s a guy that criticizes everybody, whoever they take. He’s got the answers to who you should take and who you shouldn’t take. And my knowledge of him: he’s never ever put on a jock strap, he’s never been a coach, he’s never been a scout, he’s been an administrator and all of a sudden he’s an expert.”

His point is one you need to consider when you decide on your blogging topic: Who the hell are you and why should anyone listen to you about this topic?

If you are going to be successful at blogging, whether it’s as a news blog, a promotional blog, an opinion blog or anything else, you have to be able to explain to your readers (or better yet just show them) what it is that makes you a credible and valuable resource on the topic at hand. This is where research REALLY comes in, especially if you are working for an organization or corporation.

For example, let’s say you are blogging for a travel agency that specializes in European travel. There might be a big gap in the area of food blogging for people with gluten allergies who travel in Europe. The questions of “Where is the best quality of gluten-free pasta?” or “Which restaurants use separate prep stations for gluten-free meals?” and others need to be answered. You have an audience that really wants to know this stuff, as for some folks, it’s a matter of life and death. You can draw traffic from other similar gluten-free blogs that exist like Chronically Gluten Free and Gluten-Free Fun, as people often post a need for these answers on those sites.

However, if you don’t travel through Europe, or you have no background in celiac allergies or if you never eat, who the hell are you to talk about this stuff? If you can’t be an expert based on your experiences, you better be an expert based on research, interviewing experts and doing more than just spitballing about the topic based on what you once heard at a PF Chang’s.

You have to be able to demonstrate to the readers that you have an expertise in this topic and showcase that expertise in pretty much everything you do. Imagine your doctor starting off your surgery by saying, “I’ve never done this before, but let’s give it a shot…” Not exactly awe inspiring.

If you can’t demonstrate good solid reasons why you should do the blog, don’t do the blog. If you don’t have a choice, you need to gear up and game up through research and checking in with experts. You need to make yourself into the expert.

Once you nail those things down, you can start figuring out where a blog should go or what you should include, but that should get you a running start at a successful blog.

Action Snark: The $43 billion cost of a “platform for free speech around the globe”

Billionaire Elon Musk will spend $43 billion to acquire Twitter, the first step in taking the company private, according to multiple media reports released Monday morning.

What this means is in the eye of the beholder.

Business Today’s take, in part:

Musk wants to maintain this “free speech” status for Twitter so that he can, for all practical purposes, continue s%$t posting on the platform without consequences. If he owns the platform, he also does not need to listen to governments’ grievances. For example, what would Musk do if the Indian government demanded (again) that certain tweets be deleted and accounts blocked?

The New Yorker looked at this in a similar way, but with more of an “old boys’ club” vibe:

His acquisition quest appears to be less about increasing the company’s profits—“This is not a way to sort of make money,” he has said—than preserving Twitter’s capacity for chaos as a tool for himself and others to continue influencing their vast audiences without interference. “I think it’s very important for there to be an inclusive arena for free speech,” Musk said, during a TED-conference interview in Vancouver, on April 14th. “Having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilization.”

The once-and-future-king question for Donald Trump’s return to Twitter was the focal point of this Bloomberg look:

Musk has said he prefers to stay out of politics, but there are good reasons to suspect a Musk-owned Twitter would reactivate President Trump’s account. Beyond saying at TED that he wants to be “very cautious with permanent bans,” Musk applauded the former president two years ago when Trump supported Tesla’s plans to reopen a California car factory during the Covid-19 lockdown. And in a few recent tweets, Musk appears to embrace the right-wing, Fox News-bingeing perspective on various cultural flashpoints. (“The woke mind virus is making Netflix unwatchable,” Musk tweeted last week.)

Time magazine might be rethinking the 2021 Person of the Year award they tossed at the tech billionaire, if this is their take on the problems with this supposed “free speech” move:

But many on the frontlines of the fight for democratic spaces online have questioned whether Musk’s move – if it is indeed serious, and if he can raise the required cash, and if the offer is accepted by the Twitter board – would undermine, rather than bolster, democracy. Employees of the platform and other experts have also spoken publicly about their fears that Musk may try to erode Twitter’s recent moves to protect marginalized users and tackle harassment and misinformation.

Since the explosion of social media usage more than a decade ago, researchers and technologists have forged an understanding of the ways that the design of social media sites has an impact on civic discourse and, ultimately, democratic processes. One of their key findings: sites that privilege free speech above all else tend to result in spaces where civic discourse is drowned out by harassment, restricting participation to a privileged few.

What is lost in all of this, at least for the moment, is the full understanding of what free speech is, how it works and why our traditional checks against some of the worst abuses will be lost in this move.

First, and we’ve only said this 10,242 times on this site, free speech is not the ability to say whatever you want, however you want and without consequence. From at least the U.S. perspective, it’s the ability to express yourself without fear of government interference. Private definitions of “free speech” vary widely based on who is making the definition and how speech is policed, censored or punished. I’m sure if you asked a citizen living under a dictatorial regime right now about free speech, that person would say, “Oh we totally have free speech here. We just have to watch what we say about XYZ.” Thus, the problem with this blanket term.

Second, people feeling like they’re given unfettered speech freedom are unlikely to think before they use it. This reminds me of the documentary I saw on the old “Action Park,” where the owners basically built a bunch of insanely dangerous rides and activities and told people, “You’re in control. Go for it.”

Thus, all sorts of things that Twitter’s guardrails used to prevent will now be unleashed in the name of free speech, leading to a ridiculous number of harmful things that none of us can stop, but most of us can foresee. When someone disagrees with someone else about anything from the political prowess of Joe Biden to the length of the foul lines at Milwaukee’s old County Stadium, we’re going to see the rage machine start to redline the engine. Suddenly, we’re all wondering how six people got stabbed to death in real life because nobody wanted to say, “Look, it was 315 down the line and stop calling that guy a lib-tard.”

Third, and perhaps most importantly, we have Musk in a position where his wealth overrides the free-speech system as it was intended to operate. In most cases, free speech carries with it responsibilities and consequences: We need to act responsibly in what we say about people, for fear of suffering legal consequences.

Thus, if some kid writes on Twitter that I’m taking money for grades, and this really gains traction and I get in trouble, I can sue that kid. If I prove the kid was negligent in his speech (or in some cases he knowingly lied), I can recoup financial losses and a court can assign punitive financial penalties to that kid. In short, free speech, when done poorly, can cost you.

Now, look at Musk. First, he’s probably got a function argument that he’s protected under Section 230 of the Communication Decency Act, which tends to hold platforms blameless for user content.

Second, let’s say he screws that up and encourages bad action on the platform, what’s the penalty? If you sue him, he’s got enough money to legally bury in motions and documents you before you get anywhere near a courtroom.

If you manage to survive all that and win, a ridiculously high bar to clear, then what? He buries you in appeals until you go broke. IF you manage to get through all of that and still win an financial award from him, it’s not really a consequence for him.

This guy has what people who report on rich folks call “F— You Money.” It’s the level of wealth that essentially allows you to tell everyone around you “F— you” and not care. He literally had enough money to send himself to space because Earth is so last century… You think he’s going to worry what you’ll do to him if Twitter lead to the end of modern civilization? Gimme a break.

It’ll be interesting to see what all this leads to, much in the same way it’s interesting when you find that you left a Tupperware container full of noodle salad in your backpack in the back of your closet since freshman year. God alone knows what we’re dealing with, but it’s probably not something we’re all going to be thrilled with.

 

Why almost everyone in today’s social media era should be happy Sarah Palin lost her libel case

Former Alaska Governor and former Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin lost her libel lawsuit against the New York Times last week, as she failed to prove the news outlet was purposefully inaccurate and/or out to get her:

… after two weeks of testimony and nearly three days of deliberation, a jury decided Tuesday that the Times did not libel her in a faulty 2017 editorial — echoing a decision by the judge, who a day earlier said that he would dismiss her case regardless of its decision.

The jury’s decision conformed with that of U.S. District Court Judge Jed S. Rakoff, who said on Monday — while the jury was still deliberating and unaware of his comments — that the former Alaska governor had not demonstrated that the Times acted with “actual malice,” the high legal standard that public figures must demonstrate to claim libel.

The editorial in question inaccurately tied Palin’s political action committee to a mass shooting in 2011, an error the Times corrected within eight hours of publication. Palin brought suit against the paper anyway, even though she would have to prove the paper acted with reckless disregard for the truth, a barrier neither the judge nor the jury believed the paper breached.

In picking through the coverage of the outcome, what struck me was the voluminous nature of comments and posts from readers who were outraged that the Times “got away with” an attack on Palin. Consider a few comments from just one article that I could repost without violating the “unnecessary cursing” edict I operate under:

“What is the purpose of a Free Press if they can abuse their libel and slander protections to the benefit of their preferred politicians?”

“She will take to the SCOTUS if she loses here. We know Roberts will vote with the wrong side again, but Palin should win 5-4 – and hopefully start the flow of lawsuits against the legacy MSM.”

“I’m amazed that there hasn’t been more outrage that Clinton-appointed judge, who already had one of his Stalinist rulings against Palin thrown out last year by the appeals court, was allowed to pull another Stalin last night. This is not the US anymore.”

“So they can print totally false information that smears the name of a politician who is running for public office, admit they lied and still get off scot-free. Just saying “Oops” the next day seems to be the magic word. Never mind that it has already planted the seed. Never mind that this gives them free rein to smear anyone they want with impunity as long as they say “Oops” the next day. How comforting.”

In these and other responses across the digital universe, a common theme of “hang ’em high” seems to have emerged among a particularly angry sect of folks. The argument is that the best answer to published mistakes is to smack the media publishers as hard as possible so they get the message.

Well, keyboard warriors, here’s the problem with that: You are publishers. You are the media.

And if this case, or any of its progeny, gets any closer to opening up those libel laws, as one politician famously requested, it isn’t the New York Times that will be in the most trouble.

It’ll be you.

In teaching students the basics of writing, I’m a beast about accuracy, punishing fact errors with the stiffest of penalties all throughout the semester. I’m a pain in the rear end about making sure opinions are properly attributed and that the students are sure to be sure about any information they include in a piece. They grumble and grump about my overreactions to these seemingly minor concerns, wondering why being a journalism professor seemingly equates to being a reactionary jerk.

When we get to the end of the term, I outline the concepts of libel, defamation, slander and so forth. They see how these things have led to lawsuits, the loss of careers and other painful things, and they admit, this is all terrible. Still, they seem to be oddly detached from these stories, especially since they’re not working for a major newspaper or TV station.

I then ask, “How many of you are on social media?”

Everyone of them raises a hand.

“Great,” I explain. “You are all publishers. Anything you have written that meets the standards we outlined here could get you sued for defamation.”

It hits them kind of like this:

 

The responses I have heard over the years are priceless:

“But I wrote that just for my friends. It was supposed to be just a private thing…”

You put it on the WORLD WIDE WEB. What part of “world wide” don’t you get?

“I’m not a professional journalist, so that shouldn’t count!”

We don’t license journalists in this country. Everyone enjoys the same rights and everyone gets the same kick in the pants when they libel somebody.

“It was just on Twitter!”

You can libel someone on a gum wrapper if you put your mind to it, so your digital dissemination that has the potential to go viral isn’t immune to libel laws.

“I didn’t really think about it before I posted it.”

That’s a great answer. “Your Honor, I’m just a sloppy dimwit. Sorry about that.”

When the excuses are exhausted and the reality sets in, the students start to get why I am the way I am about facts and accuracy and keeping stupid stuff out of the public eye. They also start taking those apps on their phones a little more seriously.

Which brings us back to why basically everyone is so much better off that Palin lost this case.

The Times, the Washington Post, CNN, ABC and every other major media outlet out there have operated in a world for quite some time in which libel was a real threat. These outlets have trained professionals who know what can and can’t get them in trouble. The publications also have lawyers and experts who can vet content prior to publication, just in case someone is a little too close to producing defamatory content. In short, these folks know the game and they play it carefully.

In comparison, here are just a handful of cases that have made it to court involving “regular citizens” who published content online:

Now let’s imagine a world in which Palin won, in which the bar to prove libel was much lower. Who is likely going to end up in deeper trouble? The major media outlets with trained reporters and experienced legal teams or randomly enraged citizens with no legal training, no verbal filter and who are the reason silica packets have to bear the phrase “DO NOT EAT” on them?

So, as great as it would seem to some folks if the Times “got what was coming to them,” I’d argue we all probably better off that it remains just a little bit harder to libel someone.

Student media outlets provide great coverage of Hurricane Ida for their readers

Hurricane Ida bulled its way onto the shores of Louisiana on Sunday night, causing massive flooding and storm damage throughout the area. New Orleans in particular saw devastation, as the entire city lost power amid what forecasters are calling one of the most powerful storms ever to strike the U.S.

Amid the chaos, student media outlets are pumping out content to their audiences, touching on the “big story” scope of the issue, but also drilling down into things that matter directly to students on their campuses.

These publications understand the importance of knowing what’s going on at the college level, because while CNN and The Weather Channel are focused on mega graphics and drone coverage of devastation, students on those campuses want to know what’s open, what’s broken and where they should go to stay safe.

The students here are operating in less-than-ideal circumstances and are working to remain safe while still informing the people they serve. This is incredibly selfless and it’s also why it always infuriated me when “professional” media operatives or professors would note that campus media staffers were “just playing journalist.”

I don’t think the hurricane is taking it easier on these folks just because they’re college kids.

Take a look at some of the great stuff they’ve done in the past 24-48 hours:

Here’s a piece from the Tulane Hullabaloo that explains not only what the storm is doing to the campus area and what most concerns administrators:

A major concern of the Tulane community is the large tower crane overlooking several student residences on campus. In the Aug. 28 update, Tulane administrators provided insight into the status of the crane and its ability to withstand hurricane-force winds.

It also gives students information on how the school is handling the situation for students living on campus:

In an additional update posted to the Tulane University instagram page, off-campus students who feel unsafe were urged to come to the Lavin-Bernick Center prior to 8:30 AM.

This is the first time the LBC-Commons complex is serving as an impromptu housing arrangement for many students. 

The Maroon at Loyola University in New Orleans took a look at what students, faculty and staff were doing in advance of the hurricane, finding more than a few who opted to make a run for it:

Those who have experienced hurricanes in the past are especially sensitive to the shift in plans. Visual communications freshman Virginia Armstrong is from Puerto Rico and said she was without power on the island for three months after Hurricane Maria.

Seeing people gather water bottles and other essential storm supplies struck a nerve in her before she drove off Friday night with her roommate and suitemate to stay at a relative’s home in Jackson, Mississippi.

“The pain never really goes away,” Armstrong said. “It’s there. You live with it.”

At Louisiana State University, multiple student media outlets were covering the storm and it’s impact on the student body on multiple levels. Tiger TV, the broadcast outlet at LSU, has posted updates about class cancellation and statements from university officials.

It has also nudged students toward its Twitter account, where it continues frequent updates as to what is happening around the students:

 

The Reveille, which has served as the campus newspaper since 1887, constructed a “tick tock” style  set up on the front page of its website. This updates with key information as it becomes available, such as cases of storm damage, power outages and official announcements.

In addition, the staff continues to post breaking news stories on the site right underneath the website’s banner head, like this one on the cancellation of classes.

Aside from the breaking news and damage estimates, the publication managed to find some space to let people know about the status of the school mascot, a 4-year-old tiger named Mike. I would be willing to wager that this story tops all the others in terms of site hits today:

Mike the Tiger isn’t spending Hurricane Ida swimming in his pool or hiding under trees: he’ll be staying snug indoors and eating goat-milk popsicles until the high-speed hurricane passes through LSU’s campus.

I’m sure I”m missing some other good stuff out there, so feel free to add it in the comments.

 

Yik Yak is back: Love it or hate it, this anonymous social media tool has value for journalists

Yik Yak, an anonymous social media app that drew heavy criticism for the horrifying crap its users posted, has returned after a four-year hiatus, promising new rules and better behavior:

Before shutting down, Yik Yak was the subject of hate speech and cyberbullying across high school and college campuses.

But with the newly launched app, the owners say they’re committed to taking a strong stance against threats and other abuse.

“On the new Yik Yak, it’s against the Community Guardrails to post bullying messages or use hate speech, make threats, or share anyone’s private information,” the company says on its website.

The app had a four-year run, starting in 2013 and closing in 2017, amid diminished use and criticism that it protected awful people and the awful things they said. The new owners have pledged to keep the anonymity the users loved while weeding out the bad actors:

We’re committed to combating bullying and hate speech on the Yik Yak platform by any means necessary.

On the new Yik Yak, it’s against the Community Guardrails to post bullying messages or use hate speech, make threats, or share anyone’s private information.

If someone bullies another person, uses hate speech, makes a threat, or in any way seriously violates the Community Guardrails or Terms of Service, they can be immediately banned from Yik Yak. One strike and you’re out.

I’m not sure how a model that says “Nobody knows who you are, but we can ban you if you misbehave” works, but I’m not a tech dude, so I’ll let that slide and believe it when I see it. Also, if we’ve seen anything over the past eight years, it’s a massive spike in misinformation, cyber-rage and online harassment, so I imagine the folks at Yik Yak will find themselves working like this when it comes to trying to stop the bad actors from getting through:

 

Prior to this reboot, I asked one of my media writing classes if they ever heard of Yik Yak or used it and I probably would have been better off asking them if they ever rode a penny farthing bicycle, given the blank stares I received. Apparently, four years is enough time to completely obliterate market awareness among the 18-24-year-old market.

However, when Yik Yak was at its peak, the staff members at the paper I advise followed it with an almost religious furvor. The paper ran the “Top Five Yaks” of the week on the entertainment page. I wasn’t a fan of the app or its approach to media, and I knew that for every “good” thing we got out of Yik Yak, there were at least a dozen awful things that I couldn’t believe people had the audacity to write. Still, there were moments that gave me hope this thing could work.

With all that said, here are some potential benefits Yik Yak can provide to campus journalists and journalism students with its return:

GEOGRAPHY IS FRONT AND CENTER: When I wrote the first edition of the reporting book, I featured Yik Yak because it touched on the audience element of geography, something few other social media platforms did at that time. While the other apps were trying to expand people’s reach to the farthest reaches of the globe, Yik Yak was keeping its users close to home.

The platform used a 5-mile radius to establish a local community, which was usually enough to capture a college campus and maybe even a few off-campus venues. Whenever someone in that range tossed out a “yak,” everyone in that zone could see it. Those people didn’t have to “follow” someone to see what they were saying or sort the posts into certain streams. This kept people abreast of what was going on all around them.

The benefit of this approach is that your geographic location follows you (or at least it did… We’ll see how this new version shakes out) while still allowing you to have a home base. Thus, you can see what’s going on around you when you visit a friend at another campus, while staying on top of what’s happening back home. It is the digital equivalent of reading a good local newspapers while you’re on vacation.

Geography is often the overlooked audience element, as demographic and psychographic information tend to be both easier to define and more relevant in a digital world. However, this app shows that world nearest to the user can matter a great deal.

 

BREAKING NEWS TIPS AT THE READY: When I groused about the return of Yik Yak on Facebook, one of my former editors reminded me, “That’s how I found out about the ricin kid.” UWO student Kyle Smith was arrested on suspicion of possessing the deadly substance in 2014, a story the Advance-Titan broke at the time. Follow ups that remain online show he eventually pleaded guilty to the crime and received a 40-month prison sentence.

Another said, “That’s how we found out about the dorm fires.” At the time, someone had set fire to multiple pieces of furniture in the laundry room of one of the residence halls. (That Advance-Titan story has somehow managed to disappear into the internet ether as well, but it was a big deal.)

I remembered both of those pieces and they were amazingly good ones, but I had forgotten we got the tips through “yaks.”

In flipping back through a few issues of the paper I kept from those days in the mid 2010s, I realized that Yik Yak alerted us to accidents on campus, police calls to certain buildings, those fires and, of course, the FBI swooping in on “the ricin kid.” Obviously, we did a lot more digging into each of those stories before publishing them, but they each had their genesis in Yik Yak.

To that end, it basically became a digital police scanner (and then some) of sorts for us. When someone “yakked” about something like, “WTF R all the cops doing @ South Scott?” we could run over to that residence hall and figure it out. We also knew that whatever people were yammering about on the app was happening within a bike ride of our office, so we could figure out what was going on and quickly decide if it merited coverage.

 

ANONYMITY DOES PROVIDE OPPORTUNITIES: I am fully aware of the dark side of the anonymity of Yik Yak. Professors have been threatened and sexually harassed in their own classrooms DURING CLASS. People have used the app to make racist statements and threats, with one even saying they would “shoot every black person I see. Users have threatened rape on too many occasions to count.

In short, I’m still not thrilled that this thing is back, despite general reassurances from the app’s new owners that this will be a kinder, gentler Yik Yak. However, now that the die has been cast, it’s probably worth trying to make chicken salad out of this chicken crap. And that starts with understanding the value of anonymity when paired with an easy-to-use platform.

Back in the pre-digital days, newsrooms often had a tip line, where people could call in about things that concerned them or that they thought people had the right to know. It could be a complaint about their landlord or it could be an allegation against a city official or it could be some truly whacked-out weird story that only made sense in the demented mind of the caller. Journalists were able to separate wheat from chaff and dig through these tips, many of which yielded important stories.

The distinction here is that the tip-line tips that failed to pass muster never saw the light of day back then, while Yik Yak is basically a full public display of EVERYTHING, including whatever racist, sexist, homophobic, terrifying crap some imbeciles decided to type up with their thumbs. That doesn’t mean there aren’t diamonds in the cesspool, so it’s worth digging around.

When granted anonymity and easy access to something that gives them a voice, people are more likely to be honest in exposing things that are problematic. Journalists often talk about how things like Larry Nassar’s behavior and Harvey Weinstein’s behavior were “open secrets” among people in their areas of employment, but nobody would put that information out for public display. The #metoo movement has its roots in the idea that sexual violence affected more people than anyone knew, but the survivors remained silent for fear of public identification among other reasons. The ease of use associated with social media allowed the hashtag to spread and more people to come forth without having to fill out a 23-page document.

Yik Yak has the potential to take those key elements and provide you with information about things happening around you that people otherwise wouldn’t say publicly. It could be that the track coach is skimming money or that a professor in the art department is “handsy” with certain students. It could be that a CA or RA is selling weed to people on their floor or that the security cameras at a residence hall have been broken for six months.

With most “hush hush” stories, once there is a crack in the foundation, other people begin to chip in their experiences and help bring the whole house down. A single “yak” could start that process or at the very least get you the thread you need to start digging into that story more deeply. Like all stories rooted in anonymous tips, you should make absolutely certain that you have fully reported the piece before it sees the light of day.

However, every story has to start somewhere. Maybe it’ll be on Yik Yak this time.