Uncategorized

The Junk Drawer: The Big, Beautiful Edition

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

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

 

SCORE ONE FOR THE GOOD GUYS

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

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

Suits against the city and other individuals are ongoing.

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

 

STOP TRYING TO MAKE “FETCH” HAPPEN:

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

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

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

<SNIP>

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican

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

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

This clearly must stop.

PERHAPS THEY’LL RELOCATE TO NEW JERERSEY:

 

And finally… 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Breaking (or Broken) News: The pros and cons of keeping track of what’s going on in small towns via social media during the decline of legacy media

While driving home from Milwaukee this weekend, I could see a haze of smoke in the distance that just kept getting bigger the closer I got to the house. I first spotted it about 20 miles south of where I exit I-41 and about 30 miles to the east of the farm.

Smoke like this isn’t rare out by us, as farmers and land owners will often burn brush piles the size of a Winnebago, but this seemed like it might be something more than an average Sunday burn after the Packers game.

When I pulled up to the intersection about three-tenths of a mile from my house, the road was blocked with barricades and squad cars. I managed to weasel my way past the blockade and pull into my drive way, all along wondering, “What in the hell is going on out here?”

A quick check on social media filled me in a bit:

On Facebook and Instagram (at least), a number of people were posting bits of information about what they saw or what they heard:

To be fair to local media, there was some basic coverage, both from the ABC affiliate out of Green Bay, and the area newspaper, the Waushara Argus:

Even after reading all of the posts I could get my hands on and scouring the local media for more than what the local EMS folks put out, I found myself thinking about the pros and cons of how we get information these days. According to a 2025 study by the Reuters Institute, 54% of Americans get their news from social media today, pushing it past all forms of traditional legacy media. The discussion of partisanship, limited focus and the waning of traditional media power on the national or global level are assessed in this thing, which is great for the big picture.

That said, most of the time, we are likely more concerned with what’s going on around us, which falls to a lot of local media outlets or people around you with internet access. With that in mind, here are a few ways in which that can be a good thing or a bad thing on the local level like what I was dealing with Sunday:

THE PROS:

TONS OF INFORMATION: To be fair to the local social media folks, I got far more, volumewise, out of their work than I ever would have received from TV, radio or a newspaper. The videos, the photos and even the mapping gave me a lot to consume:

I also heard from people who were actively being evacuated from their homes in real time:

These are just a few screen shots of the hundreds of messages that were being shared at this time. Granted, a lot of stuff was repetitive, but I could pick up little nuggets here and there with a careful read of these forums.

 

CONTINUAL COVERAGE: The local media did the quick check in, put out some information and moved on. The local folks were a lot more interested in keeping an eye on things. At one point, a news outlet noted that everything was under control, but the social media folks (and my own eyeballs) pushed back on that. It seemed as though the wind (which we get a lot of out in our area) had stoked some of the fire in a part of the marsh that wasn’t fully extinguished, and things kicked up again.

By relying on the info from the fire folks, neighborly chatter and nosy folks like me who were willing to ask a cop at a cross street a thing or two, we all kept up to date on how risky things were and what was really going on. Those bits of info were continuing to be posted and shared on social media, as were some updates on when Highway 21 reopened, if the fire had moved any farther south and if additional fire folks were being called to the scene.

When I was a reporter, I found that I did a lot of “hit-and-run” journalism, in that I saw the disaster, wrote about the disaster and moved on from the disaster in a relatively short period of time. That’s kind of the nature of trying to cover everything in a large geographic area. These folks were more concerned about a specific disaster in a specific area and they could dedicate more resources to keeping people up to date.

 

MINOR NEWS FOR MOST, MAJOR CONCERNS FOR SOME: Social media has the ability to help niche audiences in the ways that traditional media never could. In the case of this fire, that came to the forefront in a few key ways.

For starters, as a lot of people were being driven from their homes and farms, some folks had concerns related to what to do with their pets. A local business up the road from us posted on this topic to help people who were in need:

Other folks felt it important to recognize the people doing the work to keep their homes safe:

These and a lot of other somewhat tangential issues were addressed on the social media platforms that were providing coverage on the fire. From a news-outlet perspective, a lot of these would be somewhat minor concerns, as they don’t impact the entirety of the circulation area or media market. However, to the people who were in the middle of all of this, keeping animals safe and finding ways to help each other in a time of crisis was the No. 1 priority.

This is really where social media, with its niche-level connections, really shines.

 

CONS:

SAYS WHO? One of the things I’ve found myself scrawling on news stories a lot these days is, “Says who?” My students know that this means they failed to attribute important content that is not a “water is wet” kind of fact to a particular source.

In this case, I found that some issues really didn’t matter to me in terms of who was posting. The videos and photos were relatively similar, so I was pretty sure that they all weren’t the work of AI trying to blame some political policy for a wildfire. In addition, I could triangulate some issues, using multiple platforms to get a handle on the situation.

For example, I knew where Highway 21 was closed by me, I had a couple maps from social media that represented where the fire had spread and I used my map app to look for specific areas where traffic was either light, heavy or prohibited.

However, when I saw this post, I found myself really wondering about source credibility:

My concerns on resharing this on social media (with the guy’s name attached) or believing what he had to say were as follows:

  • He’s essentially stating on social media that he started this fire. I don’t know if what he did was criminal, in that it sounds like an accidental ignition, but there might be rules about using ATVs in that area or during certain time periods. In making this public, he could not only open himself up to some legal issues, but also let some potentially irate folks know who he is, thus leading to some possible online harassment or worse.
  • I have no way of knowing if he is telling the truth. In journalism, we tell you that, “If your mother says she loves you, go check it out.” I did some minor sleuthing on this guy’s social media and didn’t find any terrible red flags that he was a bot or a troll, but that’s conjecture, not facts. Given my experiences with people who liked to insert themselves into dramatic police events, I’m erring on the side of caution. (One day, I’m going to write a post about “Whacko Wayne,” but until, then you can feel free to trust me as much as you normally do…)
  • I have no way of knowing if this guy is who he says he is. This might be someone using this guy’s account to make a statement or it might be some troll deciding it would be hilarious to mess with people. As we found out during the Las Vegas shooting, some people are completely fine using a tragedy for “the likes.”

There are a dozen other things I am paranoid about here, as I am someone who was held to account for what appeared under my byline. In the case of social media, this kind of paranoia is unlikely to exist.

Which brings us to another big concern…

 

UNTRAINED, UNREADY AND UNAFRAID: The concept of the Dunning-Krueger Effect has become exceptionally popular in the past decade or so. The broader theoretical and sociological aspects of it are often beyond what most of us consider discussion-worthy, but the long and short of it is that people who have a little experience in an issue are irrationally overconfident in what they are doing:

It took me a lot of time and a lot of disasters to become good at covering things like this fire, and even now, I’m not entirely sure I have it nailed down perfectly. That said, the people on social media have access to the same kinds of broad-based communication tools as I would have back in the day, and are completely untrained as to what kinds of things they can/can’t or should/shouldn’t say for legal, professional or ethical reasons.

They’re also completely fine in sharing information without thinking twice about those things, because they were never trained in the way we train media students, who then become media professionals. For example, I don’t know if the guy who said he started the fire actually did it, nor do I know how much consideration he gave to “outing” himself. However, a media professional with experience in this area would have considered those things and had discussions with other professionals before putting that information into the public sphere.

Beyond this issue, I find a lot of accusations on social media that have me breaking out into hives, not because of the accused’s alleged actions, but because of the legal hell-scape that can befall the accuser if things aren’t dead-on accurate. I keep hearing Cliff Behnke’s voice in my head as I see this stuff and imagine what he’d do to me if I just kind of spit-balled things like these people seem to be doing in some cases.

If you don’t know what the risks are when you do something, you tend to be unafraid of those risks. That doesn’t mean those risks aren’t real and can’t hurt you. That’s why we train students to be aware and prepared for these things.

In the end, I’m sure I missed a few more negatives and positives, but the bigger issue is that this kind of approach to locally newsworthy events is likely to continue to slide more toward the social media end and away from the legacy media. I’m not sure what can be done to prepare folks for this or to help them stay out of trouble, but I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

“The Tool Doesn’t Know It’s Hurting You:” Learning user responsibilities in working with Artificial Intelligence

(I’ve done a number of dumb things with tools. This one, thankfully, has never occurred to me.)

On a relatively frequent basis, I find myself with a new cut, ding, gash, burn or other similar wound as a result of my hobbies. I nearly clipped the top of my thumb off with a Dremel, put a nice slice through the back of my calf with a carpet cutter and slammed my hand onto a piece of sheet metal so hard, Amy could see the tendon that manipulates my thumb.

I’m not alone in my quest for inadvertent body modification, as two of my uncles managed to saw off their thumbs while reaching across table saws. One got his reattached, while the other ended up being only able to count to 9.5 for the rest of his life.

These and other similar moments remind me of something my father told me that his father told him about needing to respect the tools of our trades: The tool doesn’t know it’s hurting you.

In other words, a sander is going to sand when you power it up, regardless of if it’s sanding off a layer of wood or a layer of your fingers. The drill is going to drill a hole through something, whether it’s helping you remove a spot weld on a piece of sheet metal or giving your hand the look of stigmata. And saws are going to cut, and they won’t really know the difference between a tree limb or one of your limbs.

That’s why you always have to understand the purpose of the tool, treat the tool with respect and protect yourself from the harm that the tool can do to you, because it really doesn’t have any skin in the game, unless it’s cutting through yours.

In teaching media writing, I’ve often made the analogy that every skill we cover is another tool that the students get to put in their toolbox. The more tools they have and the better they practice with them, the stronger their work output will become. In covering AI this week, I reinforced that concept with the the analogy outlined above: AI is a tool, neither good nor bad, and you need to understand what it does or doesn’t do before you start playing around with it.

To that end, here are a few suggestions I gave to the students regarding the proper use of AI that I hope might help your folks as well:

USE THE TOOL AS INTENDED: I’ve had a number of bad breaks along the way when it came to trying to use a tool in a way other than it was intended. I’ve broken countless drill bits when I used them on material that was too strong for their composition or tried to widen a hole by rocking the drill around. Neither of these moves were very bright, as I knew better.

That said, I’ve also used tools without thinking twice about how they were actually supposed to be used. For example, it took me a while to figure out why the glass kept breaking in some cabinets I’d refinished before I understood the point of using push-points instead of epoxy.

When someone develops a tool, that tool usually has a specific intended use. When you try to outstrip that purpose or make the tool operate in a way it was never intended to operate, bad things can happen. This is why it’s important to understand what each AI tool is intended to do.

For example, models of OpenAI were criticized for short-term responses and an inherent need to please people. In responding to each question or statement without a larger understanding of context, along with a stated goal of providing encouragement (while obviously trying to extend user conversations), the models led to a number of problematic outcomes.

When you are building content for consumption as a media professional, AI tools can be great things, but you have to understand what each one does and doesn’t do, lest you find yourself doing more harm than good.

USE THE TOOL, DON’T RELY ON THE TOOL: My great-grandfather was a carpenter and he actually built the house he lived in for the majority of his life. The ability to do this boggles my mind, as I can’t cut on a straight line worth a damn.

The even more incredible thing is that he did it in the early 1920s without the benefit of power saws, battery-powered drills or air-driven nail guns.

If he had those items, I’m quite certain he could have done the job even faster, but he was still skilled without them, making his work less about reliance on a tool.

As with most technological advances, AI can make things easier on us when we want to get things done. People who have mastered tasks like writing, photography, graphic development and more can now do things faster and better thanks to AI, but that’s mainly due to applying their underlying skills to these new tools

The folks who have mastered these tasks without AI are concerned about what will happen to people who CAN’T function without the AI doing the work for them. These are reasonable concerns, in that it’s never a good thing to become completely dependent on a tool of any kind, lest that tool become unavailable or in some other way problematic.

The best thing you can do in learning media skills is to use AI as one of your many tools, but not let it do the work for you. You need to pair your human nature with those tools to create things that go beyond whatever AI can spit out.

Learn the way in which you can make the tool work for you, and then apply it appropriately.

DO DIFFERENT WORK, NOT LESS OF IT: One of the most tedious tasks for me as a reporter was transcribing recorded notes. It seemed to take forever to get through a small section of an interview and I found myself having to go back repeatedly to get the quotes exactly right. When I learned of true transcription AI, like Otter.ai and others, I found myself falling in love.

The technology was great, it did a reasonably decent job and it took away a task that wasn’t really at the core of what my job entailed. That didn’t mean, however, that I saved myself from doing any work related to this task.

On more than a few occasions, the translation wasn’t perfect. Fortunately, I was able to play the recording again as I watched the text, so I could make changes to the quotes. In other cases, the quotes didn’t pan out as well as I thought, because they weren’t as pure as they likely would have been if I’d have been scrawling text and guessing at a few words. Thus, I had to find better quotes to fit the bill, knowing as I did what was and wasn’t entirely accurate. Although the net benefit was heavily in my favor, it wasn’t a 100-0 sum game.

AI tools do some forms of work for you, which is great, but it doesn’t absolve you of all responsibility. In many cases, it just shifts the work you have to do to something else. Think about moving from being a reporter to an editor in a student newsroom: You are no longer out there gathering facts or bugging people for interviews. Instead, you are asking questions of the reporter, poking holes in the story and generally making sure the reporter is sure.

Take the same approach to AI when you are employing a tool: Check the transcript carefully to be sure it wrote what someone actually said. Check each fact the same way you would if Johnny or Janie Freshman wrote it in their first story for the paper. Scour the material for holes based on your own understanding of the concept, rather than accepting the AI version as gospel.

There are obviously more things you can do to keep yourself on the right side of AI, but like the application of most tools, practice will improve performance and care will limit unintended consequences.

And probably save your credibility from needing a bandage or two.

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.

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

Jim Rodenbush from the IU website

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“But I was wrong.”

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

 

NEXT: Part II

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

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

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

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

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

Either way, nobody is buying your bullshit anymore.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sincerely,

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

And the students know it too:

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let’s stand with and for Jim.

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

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

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

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

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

How to make things relevant for your readers when they no longer have shared, collective experiences

On this date in 1960, the Pittsburgh Pirates defeated the New York Yankees in Game 7 of the World Series on Bill Mazeroski’s ninth-inning walk-off home run.

To fully understand the gravity of the moment for many people living in that time, it’s instructive to listen to sports journalist Beano Cook’s assessment of the situation:

“If you grew up in Pittsburgh, the way I did, you remember where you were when heard F.D.R. died, when you heard about Pearl Harbor, when you heard the war ended and where you were when Mazeroski hit the homer.”

I’m sure not every human being on Earth had that kind of reaction to it, especially Yankees fans who considered World Series domination to be their birthright, but it does speak to the larger sense of how we once had a sense of shared moments in time.

During my life time, there have been a few of those “where were you” moments that stick in my head to this day. I remember being on the floor of my parents’ living room on that yellow shag carpeting in front of the old Admiral-brand TV we had when the Miracle on Ice occurred.

I remember being in the Doctoral Pit in Columbia, Missouri with several other former journos-turned-Ph.D.-students huddled around an old tube-style TV as we watched the towers collapse on Sept. 11, 2001. (I also remember having to go to a multi-variate statistics class, taught by an international grad student who had no idea what was going on. To this day, I still can’t figure out binomials.)

In today’s era of quick-hit social media, in which algorithms feed us more of what we want to see and isolate us from a wide array of viewpoints, I don’t know if shared cultural moments are possible for this generation, but the litmus test might be the shooting death of Charlie Kirk.

A recent analysis of what people thought about Kirk, his death and the person arrested on suspicion of shooting him found that social media created completely different worlds in which individuals learned about all of this. In addition, social media companies have removed a lot of the guardrails that were once considered crucial in eliminating factually incorrect content and tamping down rage.

As much as it seems like EVERYONE around me has an opinion on Kirk, his death and everything that’s wrong with the world today that led to it, I am still running into students who know nothing about any of this.

And I’m teaching in a media-based field where knowing what’s going on around you is kind of important.

Rather than going down the rabbit hole of whose values are better or what people don’t see thanks to self-feeding loops of social media destruction, I think it’s more important to realize that horse is out of the barn. What matters now is how we deal with it as journalists, give that most of our job is providing content to people in a way that’s relevant, useful and interesting to them.

Here are a few things to realize about the people out there consuming our content and how we need to serve it up differently for them:

NEVER ASSUME THEY KNOW ANYTHING: This seems a bit blunt and harsh, but we don’t all see the same news at 10 p.m. or read the same newspaper on the train ride into the city anymore. Just because people exist on X, Facebook, SnapChat, TikTok or Chorp, it doesn’t follow that they know anything we’re trying to talk about either.

Everything is individualized, so while my feed might be filled with calm, rational discussions about social policies in higher ed, the person right next to me might be learning that Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl appearance is part of a plot to explode the brains of ICE agents with a sound ray that will also turn undocumented migrants trans.

(We have the technology… You are just being kept in the dark about it. Read more about my inside information at the website http://www.areyoufrickinseriouslystupid.com)

What this essentially means is that we have to start from a position of less than zero to explain situations to our readers if we want them to get anything out of anything we are trying to tell them.

I used to tell students that 1-4 sentences of background was usually enough to catch people up on topics of interest. As much as that number might need to increase exponentially, it also needs to be counterbalanced against the minuscule attention span people have, so it’s going to be a fine line to walk.

This leads to the second point…

WRITE IT LIKE YOU’D WANT TO READ IT: The goal of most standard media writing is to get to the point immediately. The problem is that most people don’t write for others the way they want content sent to them in the realm of social media. That creates a massive disconnect we need to fix.

I did a study a few years back involving student journalists who were responsible for running social media for the media outlet. I asked them to rate a bunch of uses and gratifications they have for social media they received. In other words, what do you like that you get and how you get it from social media? I then asked them to outline the approach they took to sending social media to other people as a source from their media outlet.

The results? Almost zero overlap between what they considered “best practices” for social media they consume and the way they themselves provide it to other people. In most cases, they liked writing really long and involved stuff but they hated reading it. They also liked things to be quick and direct, but felt it necessary to avoid being that direct in their own work.

Studies of social media and its impact on the brain are mixed, but one discussion about the topic seemed to make the most sense to me. The writer basically said that social media exercises our brains in certain ways, so we not only get used to that, but the other aspects of our minds tend to atrophy a bit. The author compared it to “skipping leg day” at the gym but doubling up on core exercises: One part gets weaker while the others get stronger.

This kind of media consumption limits our ability to do the more strenuous mental work that non-social-media use requires. It also impacts our ability to create memories, so writing giant diatribes with six interweaving plot lines isn’t going to help the readers in any meaningful way. So, if we want to get across to the people, we need to build it in a way they’ll best understand it.

 

SELF-INTEREST IS OUR ONLY SALVATION:  If we have but one thing in common anymore, it is literally the interest we have in why something matters to us personally. If that’s all we have to go on, we’re going to need to saddle up that horse and ride it to death.

To be fair, some larger moments over the past 20 years only stick in my brain because I had a personal connection to them. The 2007 shooting at Virginia Tech mattered a great deal to me because I knew the media advisers at that papers and I had spoken to some student journalists from there at one point. I remember refreshing my email every 0.5 seconds, hoping for a response from a friend to tell me she was OK.

The Las Vegas shooting fell into a similar vein, in that my aunt and uncle were in Vegas at that point. I remember trying to teach a class and keeping an eye on text messages from my mom to tell me if my family members were safe.

And again, I’m PAID to be aware of larger issues that get a ton of media coverage, so if I’m falling down on this, I can’t imagine what it’s like to people who are learning nothing other than what TikTok feeds them.

At one place I worked, we used to require the students to finish the sentence “This matters because…” before they were allowed to start writing their stories. Bringing something like this back for all media writers, with a more direct version like “This matters to YOU, my reader, because…” might help us better focus our attention on the “how” and “why” elements of what we’re covering as we target the demographic, psychographic and geographic needs of our specific audience members.

We often have to remind students that they’re not writing for themselves, but rather the audience. Now, we might not only need to double down on that, but also make sure they have a full sense of who is out there and and a laser-like focus on making it relevant to them.

Consider the Source: Four Key Things to Keep In Mind When Deciding Whom to Interview

… but I’m gonna quote you anyway!

One of my favorite stories about source credibility came from Jim Bouton’s classic book, “Ball Four.”

Bouton is explaining a situation where a first baseman is coming in to catch a pop fly, yelling “I GOT IT!” repeatedly. Instead of getting out of the way, the pitcher comes flying in and runs the guy over, which lets the ball drop and the batter reach safely.

Bouton then yells to the irate first baseman from the dugout, “(The pitcher) had to consider the source!”

The point, obviously, is that the value of a message is almost directly in proportion to the quality of the source. This is something we need to keep in mind when picking out our subjects for interviews.

Here are four simple things to consider when deciding whom you should interview when you are picking sources for a story:

DOES THIS SOURCE ACTUALLY KNOW ANYTHING?: This might seem like the dumbest start to a post like this, but if the sources in “localization” and “reaction” stories are any indication, this bears consideration. These kinds of stories are among the least popular ones for reporters who absolutely hate having to interact with an increasingly ignorant general population.

It also doesn’t help that we tend to find ourselves asking these people to give us their innermost thoughts on everything from the deployment of U.S. troops on U.S. soil to the decreasing size and quality of funnel cakes at county fairs. The “just do this and get it over with” attitude can really take over.

This can get even worse as we get lazier and do the “Let’s see what the 14 loudest idiots on social media had to say about this topic” and just do screen shots of their Twitter posts before we call it a day.

That said, it’s important to push back on this instinct and really try to figure out if the source actually can add something to the sum of human knowledge. You don’t need to give them a 20-question exam to see if they have an expansive knowledge of presidential powers vis a vis the Posse Comitatus Act, but at the very least see if they ate a funnel cake before letting them complain about it.

KNOW WHY YOU ARE PICKING A SOURCE: Journalism is often learned by sharing among the collective knowledge within an organization. That can be good in some cases, as older reporters can help younger ones learn from the mistakes of yesteryear. In other cases, it’s bad because you find yourself with a narrowing perspective on how things should work.

This is often true when it comes to picking subjects to interview. When I didn’t know who would help me by providing important information and quotes, I’d often ask the folks around me, “Who’s a good source for this?” The names I got back became the sources and then they became part of my stories. The problem with this is that I never once thought about WHY this person was a good source.

Often the “best” sources were the ones most willing to talk, the easiest to reach or who generally “played ball” with the newspaper. These folks often liked seeing their names in the paper and they made it simple for us to get our job done. It was a symbiotic relationship, but maybe not a good one. In retrospect, I often wonder if I was just taking the path of least resistance and not helping my readers as much as I should have.

When picking a source, ask yourself why that source is a good pick. If someone suggests a source, ask that person why the source is good in that person’s mind. If the source meets your needs and avoids problematic concerns, you should be in good shape. If the answer is, “They always get back to us right away,” think a bit more about that choice.

AVOID “POTSHOT PAULIES” IN YOUR WORK:  You need to think about if the source is actually giving you anything other than a self-serving chunk of content that doesn’t really do much for you or your readers. Instead, they decide to take a potshot at a topic of their choosing and you let them get away with it.

I pulled this quote a long time ago during an election cycle and it seems to be emblematic of what I’ve seen in so many political stories:

So, in other words, the person didn’t really answer a question, didn’t give you any real information and you decided the best way to deal with that was to give them the opportunity to use you as a megaphone for their own point of view on a random topic of their choice?

I wish I could get away with that stuff in my job:

Filak refused to comment on the allegations he was selling grades for money, but instead leveled a criticism of his choosing.

“People are worried that the McRib won’t be available all year round,” he said. “This is disastrous for all people on planet Earth and this is where the focus of all humankind should be right now, dammit!” 

If the person isn’t giving you anything of value to your readers, don’t give them a chance to use you to do whatever they want.

ARE THEY ALL SIZZLE, NO STEAK?: We often talk about people who are “good quotes” with the idea that they’re verbose and they usually give us more than the boring cliches that seem to populate most content. We like the turns of phrases they made and the way in which they approach the content.

We had a chancellor one year who was just gifted at weaving prose together into a tapestry of verbiage that would make Aristotle and Shakespeare look like Beavis and Butthead in terms of communication. However, when we would actually look at what was said, we realized there was absolutely no information in the quotes themselves. They sounded great at the time and they had big, important-sounding words in them, but at the end of the day, it was just a whole lotta nothing.

Part of that is our fault for not actively listening and holding people to account for their words. Another part is that we keep going to the same people and expecting different results. If the quotes aren’t doing more than looking fancy and yet signifying nothing, consider another source.

Still Stuck on Flo: When profile writing focuses more on the writer than the subject (A Throwback Post)

When this post originally ran, the comments went one of two ways:

  1. Thank you for this, because every student I have thinks they should write like this and I’ve yet to be able to disabuse them of this notion.
  2. Your criticism lacks merit because your standards make it impossible to write a magazine-style feature. If you had your way, everything would just be paraphrase-quote, paraphrase-quote with a news lead on top.

The first view is fine, but I’d argue a great deal with the second one. There are plenty of amazing profiles, features and longer pieces that are fantastic reads without devolving into the self-important mess that is discussed below.

As an example, here’s one I frequently use in the feature-writing class that is lengthy, detailed and well sourced all without mentioning Tostito’s Hint of Lime Flavored Triangles, having a reporter beg for caviar or using a “That’s One To Grow On” conclusion.

(I’ve got others if you think I just like this one because of the sports angle, including one on a fallen city council member, a photo editor who makes ugly people stunning and beautiful people perfect and a reality TV star who is trapped in a tabloid spiral of her own making.)

Since it’s been a couple years, I wanted to bring this back to see if the mood in the field has changed about it, my critique or what profiles should be in the age of AI. Let me know what you think in the comments below:

 

A Lack of Flo: A look at what can go wrong with an over-the-top approach to profile writing

Read the following opening to a story and see if you can identify what it will be about without relying on an internet search:

One needn’t eat Tostitos Hint of Lime Flavored Triangles to survive; advertising’s object is to muddle this truth. Of course, Hint of Lime Flavored Triangles have the advantage of being food, which humans do need to survive. Many commodities necessitated by modern life lack this selling point. Insurance, for example, is not only inedible but intangible. It is a resource that customers hope never to need, a product that functions somewhat like a tax on fear. The average person cannot identify which qualities, if any, distinguish one company’s insurance from another’s. For these reasons and more, selling insurance is tricksy business.

Once you give up, or cheat, click this link and prepare to be amazed.

Aside from the headline that mentions the topic, it takes more than 270 words (or approximately double what you’ve read to this point) to get a mention of Flo, the insurance lady for Progressive, and her alter ego, Stephanie Courtney.

In chatting online with several journalists and journalism instructors, I found a variety of opinions on the piece and the style of the writer, Caity Weaver. Terms like “quirky” and “brilliant” came up, along with others such as  “obnoxious” and “painful.” To give the writer and the piece the benefit of the doubt, I waded through this 4,600-word tome twice. In the end, I ended up agreeing with the second set of descriptors, but also found myself considering terms others hadn’t, such as “well-reported” and “solidly sourced.”

I learned a lot about Courtney/Flo in the piece and it really did a lot of things that good profiles should do: Inform and engage; provide depth and context; rely on various sources. It also did some of the traditionally bad things we’ve discussed here before: rely on first person; get too into the weeds on certain things; write for yourself, not your audience.

However, here are a couple areas in which this profile reached new heights/depths of god-awfulness that had me reaffirming my general hatred in this “self-important-author” genre:

 

OBSERVATION GONE WEIRD: One of the crucial things we talk about in profile writing is the element of observation, with the goal of painting word pictures in minds of the readers. In this regard, details matter, although I wondered about this level of detailed analysis:

Since appearing in the first Flo spot in January 2008, Courtney has never been absent from American TV, rematerializing incessantly in the same sugar-white apron and hoar-frost-white polo shirt and cocaine-white trousers that constitute the character’s unvarying wardrobe.

I am the first to admit that I’m not a clothes horse and that I have trouble telling black from blue. That said, I’d love to know how the author manages to distinguish “sugar-white” from “hoar-frost-white” from “cocaine-white” when describing Flo’s outfit. (My best guesses include that she was paid by the compound modifier or had massively consumed one of those elements before writing this monstrosity.)

Then there was this exchange about a purse that wasn’t:

Her purse immediately caught my eye: It appeared to be an emerald green handbag version of the $388 “bubble clutch” made by Cult Gaia, the trendy label whose fanciful purses double as objets d’art. Courtney handed it to me while rattling off tips for extending the shelf life of fresh eggs. It was a plastic carrying case for eggs, it turned out — eggs she had brought me from her six backyard hens. “Did you think it was a purse?” she asked merrily.

I’m trying to figure out what this was trying to tell me. My best guesses are:

  1. The writer wanted to weave in a product placement of some kind, in hopes of getting influencer swag.
  2. The writer sucks at fashion spotting as much as I do, in that she mistook an egg container for a $400 handbag.

The author clearly has the ability to observe and describe, but tends to use it in some of the strangest circumstances and for some completely unhelpful reasons. Like every other tool in your toolbox, if you’re going to use it, do it for a good reason (read: in some way that helps your readers).

 

FORCING A THREAD: The use of a narrative thread is something that can be extremely effective when it’s done well and done with a purpose. If you are writing about a forest ranger, for example, spending a day with the forest ranger in the woods, doing whatever it is that forest rangers do, can create a vivid set of experiences that provide a great thread.

The problem with this piece is that it lacks that kind of opportunity and is still trying to force a thread into the story. In this case, as with many cases, it’s a meal (or a coffee, or a drink) that serves as a thread, even as there’s no real reason for it.

This is how we get a chunk of the story like this:

In the absent glow of the patio’s still-dormant fire pit, Courtney and I considered the dinner menu, which included a small quantity of caviar costing a sum of American dollars ominously, discreetly, vaguely, alarmingly, irresistibly and euphemistically specified as “market price.” Hours earlier, my supervisor had told me pre-emptively — and demonically — that I was not to order and expense the market-price caviar. Somehow, Courtney learned of this act of oppression, probably when I brought it up to her immediately upon being seated for dinner. To this, Courtney said, “I love caviar,” and added that my boss “can’t tell [her] what [she] can have,” because she doesn’t “answer to” him, “goddamn it.” She charged the caviar to her own personal credit card and encouraged me to eat it with her — even as I explained (weakly, for one second) that this is not allowed (lock me up!).

Short version: I nuance-begged for caviar from a source and got it.

For reasons past my understanding, she then feels the need to add another 150-word chunk to explain what she did and why she did it and why it’s not an ethical violation:

Subsequently pinning down the exact hows and whys of my consuming a profile subject’s forbidden caviar took either several lively discussions with my supervisor (my guess) or about “1.5 hours” of “company time” (his calculation). In his opinion, this act could be seen as at odds with my employer’s policy precluding reporters from accepting favors and gifts from their subjects — the worry being that I might feel obligated to repay Courtney for caviar by describing her favorably in this article. Let me be clear: If the kind of person who purchases caviar and offers to share it with a dining companion who has been tyrannically deprived of it sounds like someone you would not like, you would hate Stephanie Courtney. In any event, to bring this interaction into line with company policy, we later reimbursed her for the full price of the caviar ($85 plus tip), so now she is, technically, indebted to me.

The author returns to the meal and such at frequent intervals, rarely with insight or depth that would aid in telling the story about Courtney or what her life has been like. It’s not a strong narrative thread and, at best, reads like someone who is describing a meal in an effort to expense it.

 

MEGA-DEEP-THOUGHTS CONCLUSION: The goal of a good closing is to bring a sense of finality to a piece that offers people a chance to reflect on what they have learned. Most writers struggle with this at some point in  time, as it’s not easy to create a sense of closure without either forcing the issue or sounding trite.

A  lot of students I’ve had who don’t know what to do use the “essay” closure where they try to sum up  the entirety of the piece in. In other cases, they do a “One to Grow On” conclusion, where they try to create some sort of morality  play that gives people a learning experience like these PSAs from the 1980s.

As God as my witness, I have no idea what the hell this conclusion was trying to do:

What sane person would not make the most extreme version of this trade — tabling any and all creative aspirations, possibly forever, in exchange for free prosciutto; testing well with the general market, the Black and the Hispanic communities; delighted co-workers and employers; more than four million likes on Facebook; and, though tempered with the constant threat of being rendered obsolete by unseen corporate machinations, the peace of having “enough”? Do we deny ourselves the pleasure of happiness by conceiving of it as something necessarily total, connoting maximum satisfaction in every arena? For anyone with any agency over his or her life, existence takes the form of perpetual bartering. Perhaps we waive the freedom of endless, aimless travel for the safety of returning to a home. Perhaps willingly capping our creative potential secures access to a reliable paycheck. Forfeiting one thing for the promise of something else later is a sophisticated human idea. Our understanding of this concept enables us to sell one another insurance.

I’m not sure if our earlier “guessing game” would have been easier or harder if we used this chunk of info as a “Can you tell what the story was about?” prompt. Either way, I’m still baffled by it as a closing or even a chunk of content.

I could make about 823 random observations about the entirety of this story, but if I had to boil it down to a couple basic thoughts, I’d go with this:

  • I think Weaver did a hell of a lot of good reporting here, which speaks volumes about her as a journalist. The things I got to learn in here really did engage and inform me about the subject of the piece and I’m better for having found them.  I would have enjoyed them more if I didn’t have to play a game of “Where’s Waldo?” among all the rest of the stuff that was in here to find them.

 

  • This piece is basically Patient Zero for what happens when someone decides that their “voice” is a crucial element of a story and has somehow convinced themselves that readers are better served by their “unique flair.” A student once chastised me for editing out “the juice I’m bringing to this piece.” Save the juice for the grocery store and get the hell out of the story’s way.

 

  • I have often found that writers who go this direction of massively overwriting do so because they have convinced themselves of their own grandeur or because they lack confidence in their own abilities and thus bury the readers in verbiage as a dodge. Not sure which one is happening here, but the results are the same.

 

  • I’ve often equated this kind of writing to a “Big Mac vs. Filet Mignon” comparative. The steak is an amazing slab of meat, so all it needs is a little salt rub or something and it’s great. The meat on a Big Mac is grey disk of sadness times two, so that’s why McDonald’s slathers on pickles, lettuce, onions, special sauce and even an extra slice of bread to make it functionally decent. The more crap you have to pour onto something, the worse the underlying thing usually is.

 

  • A piece of this nature requires a lot of a reporter, but also a lot out of a reader. (This was tagged as a “21 minute read” and it took all of that and more.) When a  reader is asked to invest significant time into reading a story, the writer should do everything possible to maximize value and minimize waste. If you read the whole Flo story, ask yourself if you feel this was true of the piece.

 

  • And finally, if you think this blog post is long, realize it’s less than half the length of Weaver’s piece on Flo.