Student Media

Writing digital headlines without abandoning old-school journalism values

 

A friend and journalism professor put this challenge to the hivemind recently:

“I have been teaching headline writing the same way for decades and I think headlines have changed drastically in the last 10 years and no longer are we writing headlines the same way as sentences with a noun and a verb, but we are writing things that are more like teasers, invitations and clickable phrases. Does anyone have any material on how to write headlines for digital media (not print)? I need to update what I am teaching my practicum and journalism students.”

 

As I’ve always said, the blog is about what you need, when you need it, so here goes our look into the world of headlines for digital media:

THINGS THAT ARE THE SAME:

A number of things that we tend to think of when we look at traditional headlines remain valuable in writing digital media headlines. In looking into a number of media outlets and organizations that are working on headlines or studying them, here are some things that they are pitching for today’s writers that should look familiar to those of us old enough to remember the 1980s well:

  • Short and Simple/Clear and Concise: Depending on which way you want to play this, the authors of these suggestions are trying to get at the same basic thing: Make sense for your readers and don’t screw around while doing it. I’m more of a fan of “clear and concise,” in that clarity and simplicity aren’t always the same thing and in most cases it’s better to be clear than simple. Still, the idea is all about not wasting your reader’s time or space on their screens.
  • Accuracy above all else: If it’s not right, it doesn’t matter. That means it’s important to do your research on the topic, read the story fully, understand what the words you are using mean and double/triple/quadruple check your head for any mistakes before you push the big red button.
  • Concrete nouns and vigorous verbs: As much as passive voice has a space in headlines in print (Kennedy killed; Trump elected president), you get a little more room in digital heads to work in noun-verb-object format and really nail down those first two items.
  • Answer “Why do I care?” above all else: If people don’t know why they should care about something, they’re not going to pay attention to it. In some cases, it’s an easy sell, while in other cases, you have to rub their nose into it like you’re training a dog that keeps pooping in the house, but it needs to be there in a meaningful way.

Consider the headline that just showed up in my feed while writing this:

US House passes funding bill to avert government shutdown

It hits most of the marks pretty simply: Short/simple, (9 words, 57 spaces including blanks) accurate, (House passed the bill, it was a funding bill, without it we would likely shut down the government) concrete noun/vigorous verb, why you care (no government shut down)

Now consider these other ones:

House passes short-term funding bill to prevent a shutdown before the election

House sends government funding bill to Trump to avert shutdown ahead of Midterms

Congress passes funding bill to avoid October shutdown, pushing fight past midterms

U.S. House Passes Homeland Security Funding Bill Ending Shutdown For All Department Of Homeland Security Agencies Except ICE and CBP

The verb in three of the four alternatives is the same (passes), with three of the four focusing on the House (vs. Congress). The alternatives tend to focus on the election while the original didn’t. All are longer than the original, but each has something more than the original included in there (in the case of that last one, way, way, way too much…)

THINGS THAT ARE DIFFERENT: 

The digital world gives us several challenges that are crucial to be aware of when we’re moving away from print heads.

SIZE, IN A DIFFERENT WAY, DOESN’T MATTER: We talked about the importance of keeping things short in both digital and traditional headlines. However, there’s another size issue we need to consider. In newspapers, we refer to headline copy as “the big type,” as it was traditionally larger than body copy and the idea was that the bigger the story, the bigger the headline size. Look at some of the headlines written when World War II ended and you get the idea.

The end of World War II was a big enough deal to cover everything above the fold (and at least an inch or two below it) with two letters and a hyphen.

In the digital realm, size doesn’t matter in terms of the font, because search engines and news aggregators treat all words exactly the same. They don’t stop and say, “Oh, wow! This headline is huge! I better move it up in my results list.”

 

PEOPLE ARE ATTUNED TO HYPE SO AVOID IT: Like most things we are inundated with, people have gotten over being enticed or impressed with “EST” claims. THE BEST BRAND! THE FASTEST WAY TO MEET WOMEN! THE CHEAPEST AIRFARE IN THE WORLD!

In fact, using this approach will actually activate defenses of readers who will now be less likely to trust you and will be more likely to push back against you. It’s like when your lazy stoner roommate comes to you and says, “Hey, I want you to know I just did everyone’s dishes, cleaned the bathroom and put in a little extra for rent this month.” If your Spidey Sense isn’t going off at that point, something is wrong with you.

FOCUS ON “U” ELEMENTS:  To generally write effective headlines, experts at American Writers and Artists offer the “4 U” approach:

  1. Be USEFUL to the reader,
  2. Provide him with a sense of URGENCY,
  3. Convey the idea that the main benefit is somehow UNIQUE; and
  4. Do all of the above in an ULTRA-SPECIFIC way.

Beyond the maxims and cute little clusters of advice, however, headline writing comes down to applying the basic skills you’ve learned within your writing classes to this point. Let’s get into the nitty-gritty stuff and look at some key ways to do this:

 

Identify your point in six words or less: One of the best bits of advice I have been given about writing is to boil everything you are doing down into one simple, declarative statement before you begin. If you can’t do that, you don’t know what you’re doing yet, and you need to go back to the drawing board. The more sure you are of the point you want to make, the easier this is and the more clearly you can do this. When you are kind of all over the place, you don’t know what you’re trying to say in the headline. When that happens, it’s probably safe to assume you’re going to be all over the place when it comes to everything else as well.

Start with a few words that define what you’re trying to accomplish. Don’t worry if they don’t form a perfect noun-verb-object structure. Also don’t worry if you’re not using declarative statements at this point. As you will learn later, these variables take on different values in your writing here than they have in everything else you’ve written to this point.

  • Custard is superior to ice cream
  • Write a better blog post
  • Study more effectively for finals
  • Avoid 8 a.m. classes
  • Is 4-wheel-drive worth it?
  • Selena Gomez or Taylor Swift?

In each case, we’ve identified a lane we intend to drive in and we did it in less than six words. This means we focused. Some focus could be better. “What does “worth it” mean?” or how are we comparing these singers? It’s all not perfect, but it gets us off the tee and into the middle of the fairway.

Usability experts talk about the 3 and 3 rule, which states that people scan headlines in the same way they scan text: They basically catch on to the first three words you write and the last three words you write. In the middle is kind of a mess of letters that they’ll go back to if the first three and last three words grab them.

With that in mind, you want to start strong and end strong on your headlines for the digital media world. If you’re lucky and keeping things tight, the middle is tiny compared to the first three and last three words. If you go back to the example head, you’ll see a good example of how this works:

  • Front 3: US House passes
  • Back 3: Avert government shutdown

If we dodged “US” it might be a bit stronger with “House passes funding” so, that’s something else to think about.

Focus on benefits: When you are doing feature pieces, particularly those in the “how to” range, you want people to see your story as the solution to all their problems.

People will smartly employ aggressive attention filters while scanning headlines and you’ll get through that filter much more easily if you spell out your benefits rather than imply them slyly in a nuanced fashion. The big type is supposed to hit you in the head with a hammer, so make sure it does.

Ask yourself, “What possible good will come to my reader from spending time with this thing that I’m writing?” Then focus on that:

  • Dinner for a king on a peasant’s paycheck
  • Save time studying for finals
  • Build your savings account without depriving yourself
  • Avoid stupid Facebook arguments with redneck friends
  • Learn why Putin is your friend

In many cases, the idea of “how to” is implied in there while in other cases, it’s just about learning something you need to know. However, the goal is to really tell people, “This has value. Read me.”

 

Pick words other people would pick: The easiest way to be found is to put yourself out there in a way that people would look for you. Let’s say your roommate had a really rough night and threw up in the kitchen sink before going to bed. You wake up the next morning and find this disaster of Jagermeister and Taco Bell has coagulated in your sink and has somehow after about 30 seconds of trying to run the garbage disposal, it stops and you’ve got no idea what went wrong, but you still have a mess on your hands.

You can’t call the landlord and you don’t have money for a plumber, what are some words you would choose to google to get you out of this jam? (garbage disposal, sink, plug, stuck, broken, fix MORE).

The point is, you wouldn’t Google “Lousy roommate” and “food death spiral in the sink” even though those would likely be the first words out of your mouth in describing this disaster to anyone who would listen to you. Those other words are what you need to get out of this jam.

In many cases, we would call the words you would pick out keywords or SEO-driven search terms.  What you need to do is figure out what words go with your topics as part of the headline. In marketing, people often refer to these kinds of terms as part of a word bank or a brand dictionary, but either way, you want to find them and use them. Basically, pick words other people are going to pick.

 

Follow the formula: Certain headlines match up with certain types of digital pieces, much in the same way that certain topics lend themselves to certain types of stories and blog posts. Here are some examples of what I mean:

  • Instructional post: “How to avoid talking politics with racist relatives at the holidays.”
  • Listicle post: “10 things only children of the 1980s will understand about watching movies.”
  • Profile post: “The Finnish Farm Boy who held the Russian Army at bay for six months.”
  • Analysis post: “A deeper look at why US/Iran nuclear deal will lead to Armageddon” or “Five things the Iranians didn’t ask for in the nuclear deal but should have.”
  • Cheat Sheet: “A helpful series of MS Word quick-keys that will speed up your typing.”

 

Certain words match up with certain topics: Numbers with lists, “how to” with instructions, “helpful” or “easy” or “simple” with cheat-sheets. Analyses rely on “deeper” or “smarter” or what have you. When you think of the types of posts you read, you can now see how the words match up with the types of posts.

Lenka Istvanova analyzed blogs that got the most clicks based on headlines and found a simple formula that tends to relate to most of the things we want to see in a headline:

Numbers + Adjective + Target Keyword + Rationale + Promise

Here are a few general applications of those items:

Ten Simple Dating Tips for People Who Want to Avoid Gold Diggers

Five Strong Resume Words Job Seekers should Use to Rise to the top of the Pile

One Difficult Thing Overweight People Should Do Every Day to Avoid Giving up Pizza

Seems ridiculous, but it really does work. Keep in mind, the formula can shift based on what you plan to do or what topic you plan to cover.

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

An Open Challenge for Writers of “Graduating Staffer Says Goodbye” Columns in Student Newspapers

(Depending on your view, the senior goodbye columns that tend to populate student newspapers this time of year are fine or an abomination against the basic tenets of journalism. Or, in some cases, both.)

 

One of the best resources online for student media stuff, student journalism and generally keeping up with anything related to journalism at the college level is Barbara Allen’s College Journalism Newsletter.

(Thanks to some recent sponsorship, she’s taken down the paywall, but as a continuing paying customer, I have to say, I get far more out of her wisdom than I pay for.)

Allen’s look at student media this week included her thoughts on the traditional “senior columns” that graduating student media staffers write in the final issue of the paper:

I always have a complicated reaction when I read them, but this semester, something finally became clear.

The curmudgeon in me: “What value do these columns have to the community or audiences?” The momma bear: “What’s the harm in these hardworking students finally just having a few column inches of fun?”

What finally struck me this year has been hiding in plain sight all along: These columns provide incredible insights into precisely why students value student media.

<SNIP>

My call to action for you this week, whether you’re running a student newsroom or lecturing to classrooms or running an entire journalism department: What about your student media program is revealed when you read between the lines of these student farewell columns? And how can you synthesize that information for future recruitment, talking points, mentoring and classroom lessons?

I’ll get to that last paragraph in a subsequent post, but today I wanted to commiserate a bit with Allen over her “maybe yes/maybe no” vibe when it comes to these kinds of things.

I also want to offer your students a chance to kick my ass all over the place.

Personally, I have no problem with these “goodbye” columns. The students who write them work for little to no money, work way too many hours not to be in violation of some sort of forced servitude law, get constantly beaten up in the world of public opinion for minor errors and generally have a decent portion of the soul eroded through this “extra-curricular activity.” If they want a chunk of newspaper space or a spot on the website to say their peace, I’m a big fan.

However, I’ll challenge the group of students building theirs right now to do them better than the seniors have in the past. If they do, I’ll feature their pieces on the blog. I’ll also gladly submit to any reasonable request they have of me (public decency and libel laws still apply. Oh, and I’m not writing your senior thesis for you…)

Here are the three points of this challenge:

STOP BEING SO PREDICTABLE: If there’s one thing that drives me nuts about these things is that they are so generic, I could write them in my sleep. It took all of about 20 minutes to create this “Madlibs” version of the typical senior goodbye column:

If you really learned so much at the paper over the course of your college career, consider demonstrating it by doing something engaging and special. At the very least, make your piece somehow different from the other six “goodbye” pieces that are running right next to yours in the paper.

Prove you’re better than the script of a B-movie horror flick and do something that doesn’t have the words “generic” and “cliche” written all over it.

 

ESCAPE FROM PERSONAL PRONOUN HELL: It isn’t easy to write a piece about yourself without being self-referential. That said, as much as this piece is for you, it’s also for other people, so try to find a way to cut back on the uses of “I” and “me” and “my” in here.

On a lark, I pulled the first three paragraphs of the last three of these “send off” pieces available on various student media outlets. Self-referential pronouns (I, me, my etc.) accounted for about 12-14% of all words used there.

It’s not always easy to cut back on these, and there’s no shame in being personally reflective in a piece like this. However, when you sound like Donald Trump writing his autobiography while on a meth bender, you really need to reconsider your approach to all this.

 

MAKE YOUR MEMORIES MEMORABLE (IN A GOOD WAY): As we mentioned in a previous post, a set of “goodbye columns” can be memorable for all the wrong reasons. What we’re talking about here is leaving behind something wonderfully memorable.

As someone who writes a ton of copy for various platforms, I’ll be the first to admit that not every day is filled with brilliance and not every missive should win a Pulitzer. Some pieces are good, others are like the “get me over fastball” that just has to be in the strike zone somewhere and at least a few are wince-worthy duds. It’s the normal curve of writing a lot.

However, you only get one shot at this. It’s your staff goodbye, your senior “bon voyage,” your one golden moment in the sun. Make it something epic and special in a way that the rest of us can feel it, too.

One of the best things that can be said of a well-reported and deftly written obituary is that people who read it learn about someone in whose death they wished they’d gotten to know in life. That is the thing the piece you are writing right now should provide for your readers.

Sure, the people who know you best will get a lot out of the stories you tell and the memories you share, but people who DON’T know you should find themselves enamored with your tales and desperate to connect with this newsroom you describe.

Give this thing one good swing and make it count. I can’t wait to see it.

 

 

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

How to cope with stress and burnout as student journalists and journalism students (A Throwback Post)

Today’s throwback post is kind of a four-parter, in that I’m bringing back the series I did five years ago on stress and burnout. The reason is pretty simple: I’m seeing it all around me at school.

I’ve got kids with mono trying to make it to “draft day” for their papers, while also staying committed to their school sports. I’ve got students who found out that the university didn’t quite count their credits they way they did, thus forcing them to jam an extra 7-week class into their schedule to graduate on time. I’ve got kids lining up for fewer and fewer seats in classes that more and more of them need.

To paraphrase Ethan Hawke from “Reality Bites,” if I could bottle the tension around here, I could solve the energy crisis.

I’m guessing I’m not alone in seeing this, unless, of course, your spring break happens earlier than mine. Either way, neither stress nor burnout is going away any time soon, so I hope this helps.

 

 

Stress and Burnout, Part IV: Hints and tips for slowing the burn

Editor’s Note: This week, we’re doing a deep dive into the topic of stress and burnout among student journalists and journalism students. The issues addressed here are part of a larger set of research articles I’ve done with colleagues, outside work done by those colleagues (as well as other researchers) and presentations I’ve done over the years at student media conventions. If you are interested in learning more, please hit me up on the contact page.

In case you missed the earlier posts:

First and foremost, I want to be clear that if you are experiencing severe burnout, either based on the scores you tallied from the Maslach Burnout Inventory or based on intuition after reading the previous posts, you should seek help. Most campuses I know of have mental health professionals who can assist you in whatever concerns you while many others have programs that seek to take care of students who feel like they’re breaking down.

I am not “that kind of doctor,” so please find someone who is.

That said, if you’re feeling a bit crispy around the edges or you want to knock your MBI scores down a few pegs, here are some lower-end suggestions that can assist you in mellowing out a bit, consider these options:

TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF: If there’s one good thing the pandemic has provided people, it’s the realization that illness can’t be overcome with gumption. I can’t count the number of times I’ve pushed myself past my limits while sick because, “I don’t have time to be sick.” That phrase is so ingrained in the mentality of journalism folks that we should have it translated into Latin and carved above the door of every student newsroom.

We often had students in the newsroom or the classroom looking like something out of “Dawn of the Dead,” pumping orange juice, cold meds and throat lozenges into themselves like they were stuffing a turkey. They wanted to write “just one more” story or edit “just one more” page, as they sounded like they were hacking up a lung. The idea is that being there at 50% (OK, maybe more like 25%) is better than not being there at all.

The truth of the matter is, if we just took care of ourselves a bit better, we wouldn’t get sick as often (usually). If we did get sick, we would recover to full strength better if we took the break when we needed it.

You can’t do anything when you’re sick or dead, as both tend to diminish productivity.

Early and regular coping techniques are good to keep yourself from dropping off: daily exercise, regular meals that include several parts of the food pyramid and quality sleep.

Now, let’s make something clear here. Walking briskly to the vending machine three times a day does not count for exercise and a regular meal schedule. Sleep isn’t well had passing out on the floor of the newsroom with a coat over your head. You need real versions of each of these elements.

(If you can’t sleep because you’re too worried, that’s another warning sign. You’ll want to see the student health folks for some recommendations.)

 

FIND YOUR HAPPY PLACE (OUTSIDE OF YOUR JOURNALISM LIFE): I was always amused when I worked in the newsroom and students decided they had finally had ENOUGH of whatever was bothering them that week.

“I need to get out of here,” they’d mutter. “I gotta leave the newsroom and get away from these people.”

Then, they’d get together with all of the same people they were grousing about and go to a bar or a party where they’d continue to discuss whatever was bothering them in the newsroom. It had the same internal logic of celebrating your first day of sobriety with a bottle of tequila.

There is nothing wrong with loving your job, your newsroom, your classes, your clubs or anything else. However, you eventually need a break from all of those “joyful” activities to just relax and actually enjoy something. You need to find something that brings you to your “happy place.”

Happiness can come from a variety of areas. One adviser I heard from told me she brought her dog into the newsroom on occasion. “You can’t be stressed out when you’re petting a dog,” she said. That’s pretty true. Little kids can also be amazing in this regard. Many years ago, I would bring my 2-year-old daughter into the newsroom. She’d dress up in princess clothes or build block towers with the editors. She’d draw with them and in the end they’d feel better.

The simple and small pleasures have been known to stave off stressful situations. After a particularly stressful day, several of us in a newsroom used to agree to meet online to play a game in which we were in “arena combat” and the goal was to blow each other up until the timer ran out. These days, I force myself to play a game of pinball or two to wind down and get away from the stress of the day.

 

PRIORITIZE AND SET LIMITS: This sounds easier said than done, but it’s like going on a diet or committing to an exercise regiment: Once you get into the groove, it becomes part of what you do.

Prioritizing can help you figure out which things you should focus on and in what order, thus eliminating the feeling of being overwhelmed. For some people, it’s about writing out things that HAVE TO happen in a given day on a list and taking pleasure in crossing them off. For others, it’s about learning how to determine which things need their attention and what things can be ignored, refused or delegated.

An approach I saw once used a color coding system to list off a bunch of things: Red meant it needed to be done before the end of business that day/week/hour/whatever. Yellow meant once the reds were done, a couple of these things could really use some attention. Green meant it got done when it got done and could be ignored for the foreseeable future.

Eventually when the list got pretty much crossed off, the person would make another list and re-evaluate the pieces that were left. Some of those greens needed to become yellows. A couple yellows might be red at this point. In addition, new stuff would fill in here and there in varying colors as well. It worked for that person, which was all it had to do.

Setting limits can be numerical, like, “Once the first five things on this list get done, I’m getting lunch,” or “I owe six emails today and that’s all I’m doing unless there’s a hostage situation that requires me to respond via email.” The limits could also be time-based, like deciding you’re going to turn off the computer by X time at night or you won’t work from A to B times during the day. One particularly clever way of doing this is to charge your laptop to full capacity and then leave your power cord at home. Once you run out of battery juice, you’re done for the day. Everyone else will just have to cope.

If you’re like me, (read: having grown up Catholic or in some other guilt-based system of existence) this can be really tough because you don’t want to feel like you’re letting people down or that you disappointed someone by not doing what they needed. This is how I end up writing letters of recommendation in 12 minutes after some kid I knew three semesters ago emails me with a desperate need and I don’t want them thinking I’m an uppity jerknugget.

However, I try to explain to people that for me to be the thing they want me to be (read: functional, helpful, valuable, intellectually on the ball etc.), I need to avoid burning out. In other words, “Do you want the thing done or do you want it done well?”

 

LEARN WHAT TO CARE ABOUT: If you write every headline in 100 point bold, screaming, you’ll never know what you should care about and your audience will tune you out. Same can be said about dealing with people.

When some professor in the history department makes some snide comment in front of a class about the newspaper or your major or a club you run, let it go. People who think they know what you do while actually having no clue about what you actually do in any of these areas are plentiful. No sense getting bent out of shape over an academic twerp. When the head of the journalism department says, “Your (club/paper/group) sucks. We’re cutting your funding and kicking you out.” That’s something to care a bit more about.

I often go back to the line about “Is this the hill you’re willing to die on?” when considering how stressed a situation should make me. I also find that people who can’t make this kind of distinction tend to think every hill is the one that EVERYONE around them MUST die on EVERY TIME. Learn to avoid these people and learn to avoid becoming one of these people.

 

HAVE A GOOD CREW IN YOUR CORNER: I remember watching a documentary about the “Thrilla in Manila,” the third and final fight between Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali. By the time the 14th round ended, the fighters were completely spent and both of their respective teams knew it.

Ali looked like he was going to have to quit in the corner, something his crew refused to allow him to consider. Frazier, who later revealed that he had been fighting for most of his career only able to see out of one eye, had his good eye swollen shut by repeated poundings to the head. The legendary trainer Eddie Futch told Frazier that he know the fighter couldn’t see and it was time to throw in the towel. Frazier responded, “Don’t worry. I can visualize him.” Futch refused to listen and ended the fight.

Futch lived to the age of 90 and until his dying day, he said he never once regretting stopping the fight, despite what it meant to Frazier’s legacy and Frazier’s own bitterness toward his former trainer. All that mattered was he wanted to keep his fighter safe.

I guess this is my way of rolling this series all the way back to the boxing analogy from the first piece. One of the most important things to have around you at all times is a good “corner-person” who knows what you need at any given point in time.

(A quality “cut-person” and a good  “hype-person” are nice additions as well.)

In student media, this should be the newsroom adviser: The wizened one who has seen it all and knows when you need a motivating kick in the keester and when to throw in the towel for you. They have to see the bigger picture as you simply plow ahead, round by round. In college, a variety of other advisers can serve this role, such as an academic one or the one overseeing your group, organization or club. It could be anyone out there you know who knows how you tick.

(Side note: In my life, it’s Amy. She’s like a human divining rod when it comes to what I need, when, where and why. If you find someone like that in your life, hang on to that person with all you’ve got.)

The idea here is that sometimes we don’t know ourselves as well as we need to in order to keep ourselves out of trouble. Surrounding ourselves with people who understand us and are able to get through to us can be a saving grace when we are too stubborn or stupid for our own good.

“He put himself in that situation:” The reason why people can justify the shooting death of Alex Pretti

In reading through the articles and posts related to Saturday’s shooting death of Alex Pretti in Minnesota, I forgot the most basic rule associated with the internet:

“Don’t read the comments.”

However, in digging into the comments and hopping amongst media bubbles, I found a few trends in terms of people who usually support the Second Amendment and the right to carry and how they squared the circle involving Pretti’s death:

  • Pretti was threatening the officers with a gun, and the officers had the right to defend themselves.
  • Pretti put himself in harm’s way as a purposeful instigator, thus leading to his untimely death.
  • Pretti had the right to carry and the right to record their actions, BUT when he chose to interfere with law enforcement, he forced the officers’ hand in terms of use of force.

(There are tons of other claims, including one weird-as-hell, AI-photo with Pretti wearing a female body suit made of tattoos and a set of curled horns, but this trio is among the most common.)

If you are asking the question right now of, “How in the hell can people believe this stuff, when we can all see the DAMNED VIDEO?” I have an answer that starts with some research I did about 20 years ago that reflected this dichotomy perfectly.

A few of the front pages that I still have from these two shooting deaths. I was the adviser for the Ball State Daily News in the early 2000s.

THE HISTORY: During my first year at Ball State University as the student media adviser for the Daily News, the campus had a number of students who died in some shocking ways. The two at the heart of this discussion are Michael McKinney and Karl Harford.

In November 2003, McKinney was  21-year-old student at BSU. He spent a Saturday night drinking with friends at some near-campus bars and had planned to stay at one of those friends’ homes, rather than driving home that night.

In his inebriated state, he went to the wrong home and banged on the back door to get let in. The home owner called 9-1-1 to report this person trying to force their way into her home and Ball State police officer Robert Duplain responded. Duplain was 24 years old and had been on the force for 7 months. He had not yet attended the Indiana Law Enforcement Academy when this incident occurred.

Duplain entered the fenced backyard of the home through the only access point and confronted McKinney, who attempted to flee. Duplain shot several times, hitting McKinney with four rounds and killing him.

Subsequent investigations found no wrong-doing on the part of Duplain, who returned to the force briefly before resigning.

Less than six months after that shooting, on March 6, 2004, 20-year-old Ball State student Karl Harford was found shot to death in his car, which was abandoned on the city’s east side.

Police investigations determined that Harford was at a campus party when he offered three individuals a ride home. Experts later stated that Harford had a blood alcohol content of 0.16, which would be twice the legal limit for driving and would have likely impaired his judgment. One of the men had a gun, which he used to force Harford to drive to an abandoned building. The three men forced Harford to his knees, robbed him of $2 and shot him to death. The trio then stuffed his body into the backseat of the car and fled.

Police eventually arrested Brandon Patterson, 18, Damien Blaine Sanders, 21, and a 14-year-old juvenile in connection with the killings. Patterson and Sanders had previous interactions with law enforcement that involved incidents of car theft and gun possession. Patterson pleaded guilty to a “robbery resulting in severe bodily injury” charge and was sentenced to 45 years in prison. Sanders pleaded guilty to robbery and murder and received 85 years. The 14-year-old was held for 15 months in a juvenile facility and subsequently released.

THE RESPONSES: The Daily News covered both shootings extensively and the online coverage drew readership that was disproportionately large in comparison to all other stories the paper had posted at that time. In addition, the comment sections under the stories for these pieces were extremely active.

Many of the responses to the McKinney story had people offering sympathy to Duplain as well as McKinney. People were saying things like, “Rest in Peace, Mikey,” but also things like, “I feel bad for that officer who has to live with this for the rest of his life.” Others noted how this was a “senseless tragedy.”

What I remember most, however, was the way in which a good number of posters were trying to hang some, if not all, of the blame on McKinney. People had commented that he was “way too drunk” and that “he put himself in that situation.” Some people speculated that he had something in his hand that could have been mistaken as a gun. Others noted that he “rushed” at Duplain, leaving the officer no choice but to fire his weapon.

Things kept getting uglier as time went on, with people saying negative things about McKinney and even how he was raised. I still remember one post that McKinney’s sister, Rosie, put on one of the stories, begging people to just stop this, as her parents were seeing all of these negative statements. The posters then turned on her.

In the case of Harford, the commenting was much more cut and dried. Harford was the victim and “those cold-blooded murderers should pay.” Rarely did any of the comments deviate from this pattern and the few that did were quickly shouted down by other posters.

THE STUDY: In all honesty, these shootings devastated the Ball State community, and I know my heart just bled for these families who lost these children. As is the case with most things, when I am in a state of difficulty, I tend to dig into the topic and do some writing (thanatology researchers call this “instrumental grieving), so I looked into doing a study. My buddy Pritch and I decided to look at why it was people reacted so differently to these killings via their online media posts.

I won’t bore you with the details of the study, but if you want to download it and read it, you can grab it here.

Sufficient to say, the statistical data bore out the general vibe we sensed: People in the Harford postings were much more dichotomous in where they placed sympathy (Harford, his family, his friends) and where they placed blame (Patterson, Sanders and the 14-year-old). Meanwhile, the sympathy and blame were much more spread in the case of the the McKinney posters who were much more willing to blame McKinney for his own demise while also feeling sympathy for Duplain.

The “why” came to us from two areas of research: Human cognitive processing and the way in which news stories (especially crime stories) tend to follow “scripts.”

The Harford situation fit a stereotypical news-as-script pattern to a T: White kid, trying to do a good thing, meets with criminal black element that is his undoing. Police find the evil-doers who are subsequently punished.

The McKinney situation doesn’t do that. McKinney was a white kid who got shot by a white cop. Nobody was arrested and nobody eventually was punished for it.

For the people reading this story, there was suddenly a cognitive disconnect: Good white people don’t get killed by white cops for no reason. Also, deaths like this need some form of resolution, in which blame and punishment are effectively assigned. This situation didn’t fit into the expected patterns of action, so people desperately sought SOMETHING the rationalize why this happened.

(NOTE: We couldn’t code for race, but a number of people did mention their own race in posts and it was almost entirely a white audience. We did see that amplification of  both the racial element between the situations as well as finding it easier to sympathize with Duplain as as well. We had a whole section on that, but any academic will tell you, a lot gets cut on the way to publication, thanks to anonymous reviewers.)

When something terrible happens and it doesn’t fit the patterns pre-established in people’s minds, they need to make sense of it and that usually means they bend reality to fit their assumptions:

O’Sullivan and Durso (1984) found that when information being processed ran counter to the established understanding of how a situation was supposed to unfold, individuals did not alter their perception of what should be happening. Instead, they attempted to cognitively reposition the new information to make it congruent with the prior script.

Goleman’s (1985) work also shows that when individuals are faced with an anxiety-provoking alteration to their standard scripts, they actively seek ways to block information or rationalize it in a manner that allows them to return to their comfort zone.

In short, people aren’t going to change their minds when something like this happens. They’re going to change reality to fit what they believe.

BACK TO PRETTI: In bringing this around full circle, a lot more of what people who want to rationalize Pretti’s death are saying starts to make sense. In this world view at least a few of these things are held as fact:

  • Law enforcement officers are the “good guys.”
  • People have a legal right to safely carry guns, as per the Second Amendment.
  • White people and U.S. citizens = good, Non-white and non-citizens = bad

So, when you have a white, citizen who is legally carrying a fire arm that gets killed by law enforcement officials, now what? The thinking has to start shifting the reality.

Just like McKinney, Pretti must have done something wrong to provoke the shooting.

Just like McKinney, Pretti shouldn’t have been there in the first place, so it’s really on him.

Just like Duplain, these officers clearly had to act defensively because they had a reasonable fear of what this individual might do.

The more I read the Pretti coverage, the more I found myself finding parallels to what happened with McKinney.

  • In both cases, stories trying to find “more dirt” on the victim hit the press: A recent story on Pretti said he had previously scuffled with the feds, leading to a broken rib. (DHS says it has no record of this.) A story after McKinney’s death said he had previous encounters with police, including one leading to a charge being filed against him. (That turned out to be a ticket he received for trying to steal a STOP sign for his room.)
  • In both cases, the families were pleading with people to stop smearing their kids. The NY Times presented this piece quoting those who knew Pretti, while I remember what Rosie McKinney went through in regard to the postings about her brother.
  • In both cases, the official narrative painted the shooters as having absolutely no choice but to respond in the way they did.

Even more, as evidence continues/continued to come out in cases like these, people continue to find ways to bend the reality to fit their narrative. For example, a preliminary DHS investigation did not state that Pretti “brandished” his weapon, directly conflicting with DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s original statements. However, that hasn’t stopped people from pressing the point in comment sections that Pretti put himself in harm’s way or that the officers had no choice but to shoot.

Then, there are people like this guy at NewsMax who are stretching reality a little more.

This is why no matter which side of the issue continues to gain ground, there will still be people with a strong attachment to seeing things the way that best fits their prior beliefs. Expecting something different is to expect human nature to change.

Random Journalistic Thoughts After The Shooting Death of Alex Pretti

(The front page of the AP online story about the memorial to Alex Pretti, who was shot and killed in Minnesota on Saturday morning.)

One of the first things I tell student media practitioners whenever a major event hits is not to just be part of the noise. If you have something unique to say in a way that matters to your specific audience, do so. If not, you are just as likely to be subtracting from the sum of human knowledge as you are in adding to it.

The death of Alex Pretti on the frozen streets of Minnesota brings out in me so many more thoughts and emotions than I can honestly and fairly express right now, so I’m doing my best to follow the credo I outlined above. Please know it doesn’t mean I am not feeling what so many others have already said, written, shown or expressed.

What comes below are the bits and bites of my thoughts as a journalism professor, former media adviser and citizen of these United States that might be helpful to you in your classrooms and student newsrooms today as you discuss the killing and the coverage:

 

JOURNALISTS (OF ALL KIND) ARE MY HEROES: They say that journalism is the first draft of history, and the work these folks in Minnesota are doing is absolutely incredible, given the great personal risk people are apparently faced with at this point and time.

The television coverage has been both deep and restrained in terms of saying only what is known, but also not sugarcoating things. That this is so well done is doubly impressive given that it’s happening on a weekend.

When most media outlets hit the “weekend shift,” you end up with a lineup of a recent grad anchoring the desk, providing whatever the regular staff canned up on Friday along with a lite-brite on some Saturday Festival. Add that to an intern holding down the wire desk, some rando doing the weather and an overly excited 14-year-old doing sports, and it’s a recipe for disaster if something really big happens. The networks out there managed to “scramble the bombers” and get everyone doing big work in difficult circumstances and trying times.

In particular, KARE 11 has always been a top-flight news organization that demonstrated the ability to cover all of the things involving the Twin Cities and beyond, and this situation is no exception. Here’s the lineup of stories that KARE has covered since the shooting.

On the front lines has been Jana Shortal, an accomplished broadcast journalist with several decades on the job. She not only covered the scene, but then returned to the studio having been pepper-sprayed (or whatever the hell they’re using) while trying to comply with officers’ commands:

(SIDE NOTE: The woman in the middle is Lauren Leamanczyk, who is featured as one of the media pros in the “Dynamics of News Reporting and Writing” textbook. She’s also one of my former students, which is another mind-boggling part of this whole thing for me.)

I’m always a fan of student media and the folks at the Minnesota Daily also made sure these moments of history were captured to inform the present and remind the future of what has happened here. The photography, the stories, the videos and the relentless pursuit of information has been exceptionally impressive.

Above all else, the citizen journalists, who would likely count Pretti as one of their own, put their lives on the line to gather the videos that have showcased exactly what happened during this situations and others like it.

High-end media outlets like the Wall Street Journal have the capability to stitch together frames from a dozen or more videos to showcase exactly what happened here or in the shooting of Renee Good. However, they wouldn’t have those videos without the brave souls who availed themselves of their First Amendment rights at a time in which individual rights seem to be less and less inalienable.

 

DON’T BE AFRAID TO POKE A SOURCE: Just because a source is saying something, it doesn’t follow that they are making sense or answering a question. Far too often, we fall into the “get a quote” mode when it comes to doing our work, like we’re checking off a chore or picking up a dozen eggs at the grocery store. This is where the concept of active listening comes into play. If you are merely focused on getting the information from the source, and not really listening to that information in real time, you aren’t going to get what your audience needs.

Here is a perfect example of a journalist poking back at a source. Dana Bash had Border Patrol Commander-at-Large Gregory Bovino on air for a 20-minute interview, in which she was trying to get answers to a few basic questions regarding the shooting. Far too often, situations like this escalate like one of those stupid sports talking head shows, with two people screaming at each other. 

In this case, Bash was respectful and focused. She admitted missteps in her own language while still pushing Bovino to actually answer a question. Literally, any question:

She did make points that a) what Bovino was saying was not what she was seeing, b) she might not have been privy to the same type/volume of evidence Bovino had as a law-enforcement officer and c) she would be willing to accept Bovino’s statements if he could provide proof they were accurate.

This is the essence of journalism: Report, question, verify, disseminate.

 

CHECK YOUR SOURCES: In listening to the press conferences and press appearances of Bovino and U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, it is clear they have a common approach and shared vision of what happened in this shooting. That doesn’t mean they should be quoted with impunity. 

In the case of Bovino, his version of ICE and DHS situations has repeatedly been called into question by those who were present at certain events. In one case, a federal judge in a civil suit found that Bovino’s statements related to ICE actions in Chicago were “evasive” and “not credible,” adding Bovino was “outright lying” about his actions. In regard his comments regarding the Pretti situation, Bovino stated the presence of federal officers was related to a “violent, illegal alien” in the area, something that Minnesota’s Department of Corrections has strongly disputed.

Noem has frequently been accused of misrepresenting reality in terms of deportations and crime. The numbers related to how many people have been captured during her tenure, what crimes the have committed and how successful and welcomed ICE agents have been strongly contradicted through even some cursory reporting. Also, a civil court filing in this case includes testimony from two witnesses who dispute Bovino and Noem’s statements, including one deposition by the “woman in pink” who was literally feet away from Pretti during the shooting.

Saying a politician has lied is kind of a “Dog Bites Man” story, but in the case of both of these situations, it’s a bit more. If it’s any indication, Minnesota’s Department of Corrections felt these folks were so wrong so often, the DOC launched a website for the “combating of DHS misinformation.”

This is also a perfect point to remind everyone why “said” is my best friend. I don’t know what these two people think, believe or know about this situation, nor would I feel comfortable stating the things they have said as unattributed facts. However, putting out there that Noem or Bovino “said” certain things and letting my audience compare that to their own reality is exactly why I cherish attributions with “said” on them.

 

DEALING WITH LANGUAGE CHOICES: The way in which people are trying to frame this situation comes down a lot to the language choices we’re seeing out there. This is also why parroting a source (in non-quote format) is a bad idea.

Bovino referred to Pretti as the “suspect” in the situation, a term that implies someone sought for a crime and isn’t usually used to refer to someone shot multiple times on the ground by law enforcement officials. When Bash referred to Pretti as a “victim,” Bovino attempted to invert that term to apply to the border patrol officers, who he deemed “victims” of whatever he thought Pretti was doing.

Language coming out of the administration has included the term “illegal” and “alien” to refer to the individual the officers sought that day, which, again, paints a picture different from terms like “migrants” or “immigrants.”

Whatever terms you choose to use in situations like this, you’re going to be shaping how people look at a situation, so you want to both follow AP style when applicable and also make sure you are remaining neutral

Beyond that, you want to make sure your terms are correct. For example, I’ve read stories that refer to the federal law enforcement officers as “ICE” and “Border Patrol.” Officers in these groups are both housed under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, but the terms that describe them are not interchangeable. A good primer on who does what and how they differ can be found here.

A number of opinion pieces, social media posts and so forth have referred to the shooting death of Pretti with a variety of terms, including “assassination,” “execution” and “murder.” Each of these terms is defined specifically, both in law and in journalistic style, so no matter how you feel about what happened, you need to take care in using these terms.

Here’s AP’s version of what’s what:

If we consider AP style our rule book, we need to follow the rules, even when we don’t like them.

Finally with language, there is something to be said about how people say things so that something can be factually accurate while also being deliberately misleading. Here’s an example of a statement from Noem’s press conference:

“An individual approached U.S. Border Patrol officers with a 9mm semi-automatic handgun.”

There are two facts in that sentence that are accurate, at least to a reasonable degree:

  • Pretti, the “individual,” approached a scene with U.S. Border Patrol officers at it.
  • Pretti was armed with a 9mm semi-automatic handgun.

However, putting them together in this way could lead a reasonable person to think that Pretti approached a group of officers with his gun present in a way that threatened the officers. Noem later used the term “brandished” the gun, although every attempt to get Bovino to provide proof of such a thing led to a dead end.

The point here is why we don’t a) take things people say at face value without proving them for ourselves and b) don’t extrapolate beyond what people tell us. I often tell students that if a police officer says something like “alcohol was believed to be a factor in the crash” or “the driver was operating while under the influence,” you don’t want to say the person was a “drunk driver” as those are two different things. The driver might not have been legally drunk or the driver might have been baked out of their mind on weed.

 

NOBODY KNOWS NOTHING: I keep going back to that saying because I remember how reporting on crimes and disasters was always a random lottery of “will I have to write a correction tomorrow?” moments. As much effort as journalists put into getting things right, nobody really has any idea of what we will find out as this continues to unfold. It also doesn’t help now that anyone with a phone and an internet connection can say anything they want with absolute certainty, regardless of its veracity, and we all get to hear it.

“Nobody knows nothing” has always been true, as new witnesses could emerge, more video could show up, interviews with the agents have yet to be completed and more. Hell, we’re still trying to figure out if Babe Ruth really called his shot in the World Series almost 100 years later, so I have no doubt that things are going to evolve here.

I also have no doubt that various groups involved in any situation have their own motives for releasing or withholding information from the public. To that end, a lot of what we learn will be based less on the totality of information, but rather the totality of AVAILABLE information.

This is why we need reporters, not stenographers, in the media today. Good journalists will always find a way to pry loose a fact, debunk a statement filled with “bovine excrement” or get a source to finally explain what’s what. When they do, we all tend to be better for it.

UPDATE TIME: Another AP style poster, big bin of exercises and information about the second edition of “Exploring Mass Communication”

With a bunch of folk already heading back to school, it seemed like a good time to boot up the blog and get back to the weekly schedule. Then, my body said, “Hey, what would it be like if you coughed so hard, you blew a blood vessel in one of your eyes?” To that end, the blog might be spotty until further notice, but I’m working on it…

Let’s kick it off with some free goodies that might be useful this year:

EXERCISES ABOUND: A few months back, I put together a bin of random exercises that I thought might be helpful to folks. They included everything from in-class writing pieces to some AI-oriented activities.

As a lot of folks might not have been teaching a class that needed them last term, or this might be the first time you found the blog, here’s a link to the previous post on that topic and the directions on how to get the bin of goodies.

Speaking of helpful…

A NEW VERSION OF THE AP STYLE POSTER: One of the other asks from previous semesters was a giant “cheat-sheet poster” of AP style stuff that most people tended to look up quite often. Sage did a fantastic job of building something out, but it got a great improvement over the break.

Jean Norman, professor of emerging media and journalism at Weber State University, hit me up with a new version that she had tinkered with to make it more helpful for more people:

I’ve been working on my spring classes and am incorporating your AP Style poster into them. I am grateful for all the work that went into it. You may be aware that the federal government is requiring all online work to be accessible starting in April. So I ran this through the accessibility checks and fixed the issues on that front.

I am attaching the accessible version. You will notice that some of the subheads are now black instead of white. That is for contrast and readability. I thought you might want this version to share for those with online classes.

Jean’s reboot can be found here for download. Thanks again, Jean, for improving on this situation and helping me help other folks.

Speaking of improvements…

HELP ME HELP YOU IN “EXPLORING MASS COMMUNICATION” EDITION #2: I got an email over the break from my main man, Charles, over at Sage, who let me know that “Exploring Mass Communication” is a go for a second edition. I honestly can’t thank you all enough for putting faith in me and my stuff, let alone taking the time to revamp your classes to fit my odd whimsical approach to content provision.

With that in mind, I’ve got the giant post-it note set up for the second edition, which will definitely include a stand-alone chapter on artificial intelligence.

The wall was looking naked for a while there…

HOWEVER, there is still plenty of room to add, subtract, multiply and divide, so I’m looking to anyone out there who is using the book, considering the book, thinking about the concepts of books in general or who just wants to add their two cents to the mix:

  • What do you like that we should keep in the book?
  • What is missing that needs to be added to the book?
  • What did you think was a colossal waste of time in the book?
  • How can we improve the book? (Caveat: I have no say over the cost of this thing, but I have actively pushed for it to be cheaper than whatever else is out there.)

In short, help me help you so this book can be exactly what you would want it to be.

And finally, if you or someone you know is a Wisconsin high school journalist, here’s a cool thing for them:

An intern from the  Wisconsin Chapter of JEA hit me up with an ask to share this with anyone I knew who might be a good candidate. I figured you all knew more people than I did, so let’s start with the blog and move on from there.

In looking at the WisJEA board, I realized at least two of the people on it are former students, as is the intern who asked me for help promoting this. They are all amazing people, in spite of somehow being connected to me.

For more information on this great opportunity, you can click here.

 

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)

Money Talks: IU alumni express their displeasure over the censoring of the IDS by cutting off donations

It’s important to track these things… 

THE LEAD: If money talks, IU alumni are screaming their disapproval of what the Media School has done to the Indiana Daily Student. After news broke regarding the firing of adviser Jim Rodenbush and the killing of the print edition, all in an effort to censor the students, donors have retracted pledged funds or vowed to cease future donations:

Patricia Esgate, who graduated from IU with a journalism degree in 1973, told IndyStar that the university angered her enough to cancel $1.5 million in bequests she was planning to leave in honor of one of her former classmates, Mary Whitaker. Whitaker was murdered in her home in 2014.

<SNIP>

Toby Cole, a fourth-generation graduate and third-generation IU football player, told IndyStar over email that his family was ceasing their monthly contributions and working to cancel a $300,000 planned gift to support scholarships.

“If IU can pay our FB coach almost $100mm we can fund our IDS,” he said in an email. “Problem is ‘they’ don’t want an independent free speaking print newspaper because students actually wield power with it.”

Other folks mentioned in the story also either cancelled their ongoing donations or have stated intentions to do so.

HAMSTRUNG BY THE PURSE STRINGS: One of the complaints noted earlier by the Media School folks was that the paper kept losing money, so the school needed to step in and enforce some financial responsibility. However, the paper had managed to fundraise a six-figure pile of cash that was meant for IDS use:

Many alumni of IU’s prominent journalism program have contributed to the IDS Legacy Fund, which “ensures the financial viability of our editorial operations.” The fund has been used for costs like student pay, conference fees and other operation costs, according to the donation page.

However, reports about how the university has controlled the use of that money has worried some alumni.

The fund has north of $400,000, according to Rodenbush, but he said he was hamstrung from using those funds for operations. An administrator told him to think more strategically and of “better uses,” he said.

In short, the Media School had to greenlight the ways that money was used, even though it was meant to be used by the IDS.

(SIDE NOTE: I would give basically anything to have a really good investigative journalist just FOIA the heck out of the money trails that run through the IDS and the Media School in relation to this kind of stuff. I have heard that other institutions have “gotten creative” in how they took large donations that were earmarked for student media and somehow funneled it into department, school or college pockets. I’m obviously not accusing anyone of anything in this situation, but I’d be reeeeeeeaaaallly interested in seeing the books at IU.)

DOCTOR OF PAPER HOT TAKE: If alumni continue to put up a stink and the foundation can see its coffers get a little sparser, this situation is going to go one of two ways moving forward.

WAY ONE: The university continues to back Tolchinsky and everything else the Media School is doing, with the goal of running clock on the kids, normalizing the “no-print IDS” and generally remaining stubborn. This is the way in which academics work once they convince themselves they are right about something, much to the dismay of those of us who have a normal sense of reality.

WAY TWO: The university goes all “Casino” on the Media School, cleaning house and doing so in a way as to leave no doubt that this kind of thing WILL NOT be tolerated. They’ll ship Tolchinsky off to a nice farm upstate where he can work on his films and keep getting paid whatever you pay someone not to put up a fuss. They’ll put Galen Clavio in some podcasting class in a place where he can’t really do any damage. Then, they’ll make a big show of hiring someone with a great First Amendment background and use it as a way to jump start some fundraising.

Under normal circumstances, I don’t see this happening and I don’t know IU well enough to know if the people in charge are really this level of mercenary. That said, we aren’t talking about a few journalists pulling their $25 a month donation to a beer fund. If the money keeps falling off the table, the university might decide that the juice isn’t worth the squeeze when it comes to the leadership of the school.