Uncategorized

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

6 Key Practices for PR Students Who Want to do Crisis Communication

(Crisis communication takes deft skills and clear messaging that require you to do a bit more than this… )

In teaching a course on public relations case studies this semester, I’ve learned that there seems to be a constant stream of situations that need strong crisis communication. The assassination of Charlie Kirk, the censorship of Jimmy Kimmel, the “don’t take Tylenol” proclamation and the LDS church shooting/arson are just a few of the situations where people were essentially going about their daily lives and are suddenly thrust into crisis communication mode.

In some cases, people do exceptionally well handling a moment that needs a deft touch and clear explanations. Other times, we see what can happen when the person at the podium doesn’t exude those traits.

As I’ve explained to students over the years in terms of covering crises from a news perspective, I can give you a lot of examples and advice, but there isn’t a step-by-step set of instructions that will cover every situation. Furthermore, you don’t know how you’re going to feel as you’re getting ready to share this information, whether its about a corporate scandal or a major loss of life. However, here are some guiding principles as you try to do the best you can with what you have:

Be quick: One of the most critical factors in crisis communication is timing. The widely accepted rule of thumb is the “15-20-60-90” timeline: within 15 minutes, an organization must acknowledge the crisis. It should share preliminary facts by 20 minutes. By 60 minutes, more detailed information should be shared, and within 90 minutes, the organization should be ready for a press conference or further media engagement. Everything after that is variable based on the situation.

Be accurate: You are the head of the river and the source of everything that flows down stream in terms of information. This means you need to be cleaner than a cat’s mouth when it comes to the information you put into the media ecosphere. Check every fact like you’re disarming a bomb. Verify anything you aren’t sure of. If you don’t know, tell the people that you don’t know and that you will go get that information for them as soon as you can. “No Comment” isn’t the answer, but “I don’t know” will work once or twice during a breaking situation.

Be consistent: In most cases, people will say to have one spokesperson and speak with one voice. That can work in some cases, particularly in the case of things like simple press conferences after disasters. However, in a lot of cases you are trying to put information into the field in a variety of ways, including social media, standard press releases, press conferences and more.

To that end, the goal is consistency across all platforms. If you are running everything, that can be easier than if you have 12 people involved in keeping 12 platforms up and rolling. The best way to keep a message consistent is to minimize the number of messengers and make sure they all are working from the same page each time they release information. Otherwise, the media outlets will go forum shopping.

Be clear: During a crisis, messages must be simple and direct. Avoid jargon and ensure everyone quickly understands all communication, regardless of familiarity with the situation. This is especially important when dealing with diverse audiences.

When doing internal crisis management, focus on how the crisis will impact the various aspects of the enterprise and use the language that best explains the “what” “so what” and “now what” to these people. This is where using shared vocabulary that isn’t common to the public is fine, as it will be more helpful to them than trying to “dumb it down.”

For external crisis management, think about how you would say it to your mom, your best friend or someone else who would want to know what you have to say. Don’t bury them in jargon that would only make sense to people in your field or organization.

Be human: The best public relations acknowledges the human side of the situation, particularly if there is some sort of significant loss for people. That could be the loss of jobs, the loss of property or even the loss of life.

Expressions of concern and sympathy need to happen and they need to be GENUINE. The generic “thoughts and prayers” line is almost as bad as “no comment” in the PR toolbox, so think about what you can say (check with the lawyers if need be) and then say it in a way that makes people think you actually care.

Be current: The 15-20-60-90 rule is a great starter, but it only gets you ahead of the game for a little while. Whether things work out well for you or not depends on if you STAY ahead of the game. That means being current with what is happening and getting it out to the people who need to know before anyone else does.

The reason why leaks happen is because a) people who know stuff think they’re more important than the organization and b) reporters get antsy and look for ways to get stuff faster. (Think about the people who pass you on a two-lane road.) If you are constantly updating people with the best and most current info, you become the main source of information and you control the narrative.

Be aware: As much as you need to be putting information out into the media ecosphere, you need to be on top of what everyone out there is saying about you and the situation. This means keeping an eye on mainstream media reports, social media posts and even idle chatter around an ongoing event.

Rumors gain traction when they are allowed to fester unchecked. So do conspiracy theories and the “I heard from a crucial source that…” people. You need to quash that stuff and the best way to do it is to make sure you know it is going on.

A Sarcastic List of Serious Writing Rules We Need as Media Writers

(It’s important that you get key information in a timely fashion, for obvious reasons, so enjoy the list.)

 

One of the best things I get to do as a former media adviser and college professor is judge media contests. Between the pros, the college ranks and the high school pubs, I find myself deluged in content on a regular basis. It’s a ton of fun to see what’s going on all over the place, what makes for news in various corners of the country and how certain things are relatively universal across all levels of media writing.

I have to say, and I really believe this, the hardest part of the job is picking and then ranking the winners. It doesn’t matter if it’s just one winner or a top ten, it always seems like there just aren’t enough awards to go around. A lot of good folks are doing some good work all the time.

That said, I also run into a relatively large swath of copy that has me shaking my head a bit. Regardless of experience level, the size of the publication or the purpose of the piece, writers can be uncannily consistent in some really godawful ways.

With that in mind, I’ve built a running list of rules based on the bad, the awkward and the generally problematic writing I’ve been seeing lately. My hope is that it helps break a few bad habits, so folks can make next year’s judging even harder:

If you only have one source, it’s not a story. It’s a soliloquy.

Adding a dozen adverbs to an event story doesn’t transform it into a feature piece.

If you have to tell me, “When asked about XYZ…” in a story, you need to have another place in the story where you tell me, “In a spontaneous outburst of information somehow relevant to this story…”

The key to making a story better isn’t just making it longer.

If a kid from the 1980s could follow your concluding line with, “And that’s one to grow on!” pick a new closing.

Apparently, nobody is a typical professor, a typical administrator, a typical minister, a typical politician or a typical sophomore, so skip telling the reader that in your profiles and just explain who this person is.

Instead of thinking about what you want to write, think about what you would want to know if someone else were writing the story. Then, structure your story accordingly.

Unless you can prove you checked in with every human being on Earth, avoid generalizations like “nobody,” “no one,” “everybody” and “everyone.”

Put extra effort into your opening, whether it is a news lead or a feature opening. If you don’t grab the readers in the first 10 seconds, it won’t matter how awesome the rest of your story is, because they won’t see it.

An expansive vocabulary isn’t meant for you to show off. It’s meant for you to use the exact right words to better inform your readers in a way they can understand.

What you write won’t be perfect on the first pass. If you think so, save a copy for later and try to disprove your assumption with subsequent efforts.

Don’t try to tell me and sell me in your writing. Show me through facts, sources and descriptions and let me come to my own conclusions. You’re a journalist, not a MLM owner.

If you have to explain four things to me before I can understand a fifth thing, that fifth thing better be able to cure cancer.

If you wouldn’t read it, don’t write it.

Texas A&M engages in performative bloodletting after a professor says something a student doesn’t like

(For some reason, this came to mind as I was reading the way in which this whole situation at Texas A&M was resolved…)

THE LEAD: If the goal is to scare the bejeezus out of people like me, you win.

A viral video of a student accusing an instructor of illegally teaching “gender ideology” at Texas A&M University has led to the firing of an instructor and the removal of a dean and department head, as well as calls for investigations — including by the U.S. Justice Department.

The video, posted on X by state Rep. Brian Harrison (R) on Monday, appears to have been filmed with a hidden camera by a student during a class focused on children’s literature.

FIRST, THEY CAME FOR THE PROFESSORS: As is usually the case, when a situation goes viral, somebody’s head has got to roll. The question is how many heads have to roll until the bloodlust is slaked:

Late Tuesday, Texas A&M University President Mark A. Welsh III posted a letter he shared on X saying that, “following full consideration of the facts related to this situation,” he had directed the university’s provost to fire the instructor involved, “effective immediately.”

Welsh wrote that, after a children’s literature course this summer “contained content that did not align with any reasonable expectation of standard curriculum,” he “made it clear to our academic leadership that course content must match catalog descriptions.”

But, on Monday, Welsh learned that “the college continued to teach content that was inconsistent with the published course description for another course.” So he removed the dean and department head from their administrative positions and ultimately fired the instructor, he wrote.

<SNIP>

The letter didn’t satisfy Harrison.

“President Welsh must be fired!” Harrison posted on X in response to the letter.

Well, the big head just rolled on Thursday, as Welsh stepped down amid pressure regarding this situation. Not sure who else could be on the block, as I think the A&M’s paid workforce might be down to three custodians and a squirrel wrangler at this point.

BACKGROUND:  According to multiple sources, Melissa McCoul is the instructor in question who was using the “Gender Unicorn” as a teaching tool in the course on children’s literature.

According to the Washington Post, the story under discussion involved a non-binary child and their daily difficulties with multiple issues:

In a statement emailed to The Washington Post by her attorney this week, McCoul said the class was on the second of three days reading a middle-grade contemporary fiction novel called “Jude Saves the World” that she had taught in “several previous iterations” of the class.

“The main character, Jude, is nonbinary. The plot largely deals with Jude’s difficulties with ADHD in school, their relationship with their friends, mother, and grandparents, and their friend group’s attempt to build an LGBTQ-accepting social club in their town,” she said.

McCoul’s A&M faculty page was gone as of Wednesday afternoon and what I could find on the Wayback Machine wasn’t much more insightful. Her “Rate My Professors” page was the perfect mix of glowing praise and angry condemnation, with a few of her detractors noting that was “pushing her liberal agenda” or bringing “transgender ideology” into the classroom.

According to Welsh’s public statement, this wasn’t a one-shot deal. The summer version of the course, which the student recorded, led to discussions with the department and college about how to restructure the class. The argument, Welsh noted, was that the curriculum as it was taught wasn’t lining up with what was expected in the class. Once this situation was dealt with at that level, everyone was cool until it turned out the class hadn’t changed at all for the fall.

Thus the firing began.

The problem is that the student is anonymous, which I get in some ways, but it also leads to more questions about motive and outcome.

Students deserve to get what they paid for, so I know that, in some cases, McCoul’s approach to this kind of topic might be on point, while in others, it’s like me deciding to turn an entire reporting class into a discussion of the Miracle on Ice. In some cases, students take courses that they need and find they’ve been led down a primrose path toward a problematic situation, while in others it’s basically a “gotcha” thing where they know what they’re getting and want to go viral for it.

We don’t know what it is that led to this video or the reasons it suddenly became the hill upon so many folks had to die. A fantastic deep dive into this by the Texas Tribune adds a ton of detail, but not much clarity neither side agrees with the statements the other made.

DOCTOR OF PAPER HOT TAKE: I’ve spent my entire adult life dealing with academics, and I have to say that there are plenty of times where some of these folks really should be run out of town on a rail.

The ego, the myopic sense of the world, the complete detachment from reality and more have occasionally had me hoping that my neighbors thought I was a custodian instead of a professor at the U. It’s not clear where McCoul fits, but I want to make it clear I’m not just “Team Professor,” regardless of circumstance.

That said, the impact this kind of thing has on anyone else involved in education is massive. I almost took a job in Texas when I finished my doctorate and several others have tempted me along the way. Even recently, a friend asked if I’d be interested in applying at Texas A&M, as a position seemed to be like a briar rabbit in the briar patch situation. It was always a “thanks, but no thanks” kind of situation. Now, it would be much more of a firm “Oh HELL NO.”

If you think the phrase “a chilling effect” is a lot of BS, well, then you’ve never been left out in the cold before.

I’m always worried about my friends who have taken on the yoke of scholarship and education in areas involving race, class, gender, religion, LGBTQ issues and more. There are significant and valuable reasons to have discussions in a wide array of classes about any and all of these issues. When people get in power want to whip up a frenzy, these professors are almost always in the crosshairs, regardless of who is in charge.

What the folks demanding McCoul’s head on a spike call “indoctrination” usually consists of merely putting forth a topic that upsets them. Their “hang ’em high” approach to faculty who breathe near anything that isn’t sanctioned in their preferred reality of “Leave it to Beaver” makes a lot of us nervous, not just people teaching in those areas I previously mentioned.

For example, we just had a media-writing class in which I had to explain that the AP style guide has loosened up some rules on pronouns because the English language, in its infinite set of rules and exceptions to those rules, never managed to invent a singular gender-neutral pronoun.

In features, we use a series called “Legacy of a Lynching” to demonstrate an incredible job of reporting a long-dormant topic nearly 100 years later through documents.

In reporting, we go over issues of bias and how it comes out in what we say or don’t say about people and I think the students really value those discussions.

(A few examples: Why is it that standard profiles note that woman is a “mother of three” but less often note that a man is a “father of three?” Why were we, up until fairly recently, referring to the “black quarterback” on a team when no one would ever say, “Bill Smith, the white quarterback of the Cougars, said he wants to win this week?” When I asked which person had the most Wimbledon singles championships in the open era, the answer almost university came back as “Roger Federer with eight” when it’s actually Martina Navratilova with nine, but nobody thinks to look on the women’s side of the list.)

A lot of folks reading this might say, “Geez, Vince, those are totally reasonable things to do and you shouldn’t get in trouble for that.” OK, but what about the people who DON’T feel that way and now feel emboldened to make any or all of those things a big deal? Also, when it feels a lot less safe to talk about something, a lot fewer people will talk about anything relatively close to it. That leads to silence, which is mistaken for agreement.

It also leads to the unfortunate and misguided view that being the loudest idiot on Twitter should be rewarded. I’d never heard of State Rep Brian Harrison, the legislator who posted the video and demanded that people get fired for it before this moment. The board of regents chair said the board wouldn’t fire anybody over this, making it pretty clear what he thought of the situation:

“We have one individual who, who I would call a moron, who is an absolute classified megalomaniac, who is insatiable with his desire to feed his ego,” Albritton told reporters Thursday. “And do people like that solve problems? They don’t give you solutions other than: fire this, do this, do that…And I will say one wonderful thing about the Board is that we don’t listen to that.”

However, Harrison’s yammering helped lead to Welsh resigning and he seems pretty happy about it:

“As the first elected official to call for him to be fired, this news is welcome, although overdue,” Harrison wrote. “Now… END ALL DEI AND LGBTQ INDOCTRINATION IN TEXAS!!”

We have essentially given the screaming child in the grocery store all the candy he wants instead of realizing there might be a better way to deal with the situation. 

Not everyone agrees with Harrison and I’m sure a lot of folks don’t agree with me, which is fine in a country that purports to have free speech that facilitates fair and open dialogue on important issues. However, when certain people get their way through all caps tweets and threats, all it does is present the view that being loud, threatening and angry is the trump card against any other play.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just because a source uses a term, it doesn’t mean you should

(I wonder how many transponsters were excessed in this latest round of rightsizing…)

The job of reporters is to take information from sources, distill it into something that makes sense to an audience and convey it effectively. The opening to this story went 1-for-3 with two strikeouts:

I’m going to skip past the empty lead, the two-sentences-that-should-be-one structure and the lack of anything resembling news (if everyone is doing it and it’s not a secret, rarely is it news). I’m wondering what it means to be “excessed.” (A word so stupid, every time I type it, I get the squiggly red line under it.)

Using a partial quote, particularly to showcase an odd turn of phrase, can be valuable. (The mayor calls his opponent a “rump-runt” or a coach calls a compound fracture of a fibula a “teeny tiny break.”) It can also be valuable in calling out the use of a stupid term (“excessed” would likely fit), so the reporter can shed more light on the term in a clear and complete way later.

That didn’t happen here, despite continued use of “excessed,” in quotes and paraphrase. (If I took “excessed” in the “Read this Article Drinking Game,” I’d be hammered after about six paragraphs.

This term is like a number of euphemisms that do nothing to inform readers but instead try to soften the blow of something really bad. A few years back, corporate-speak had journalists using the term “rightsize” or “rightsizing” as a way to explain how a company was cutting jobs and laying off employees. The shift away from “downsize” (which sounds sad because it includes the word “down” in there) was meant to make the actions seem more reasonable.

When faced with something like this, here are a few helpful tips:

AVOID IF POSSIBLE: Just because someone uses a term in their world, it doesn’t follow the rest of us should in ours. It’s the same reason we shouldn’t say someone was “transported to a nearby medical facility” when they are taken to a hospital or say an officer “performed a de-escalation through kinetic application” when a cop smacks someone to get them to stop doing something. Parroting a source because we are a) lazy or b) uninformed is not doing the job. Telling people what happened is.

USE ONCE, DEFINE QUICKLY, MOVE ON: If you have to use a term that is likely unfamiliar to your readers, don’t rely on it constantly. Say it once early in the piece and make sure you define it then and there in a way your readers will understand. Then, use a more common term that relates to the concept throughout the piece, like “the bill” or “the group” or “the process.” That will explain what’s going on without numbing your readers through the repetitive use of something like “excessed.”

ASK THE SOURCE TO TRANSLATE: Sources will likely want to use their preferred terms because a) they are comfortable with those terms and b) those terms are likely advantageous to their position on an issue. “We rightsized the operation to improve productivity” sounds a lot better than “We fired a bunch of people to improve our profits.” Same deal when a law-enforcement agency “neutralized a threat” or “depopulated an area.” Those phrases sound a lot better than, “We shot a guy to death” or “We killed everyone in a two-block radius.”

Have the source put that into English for you and don’t let them use euphemisms to define other euphemisms. If reporters are going to be held to a “what happened?” standard of clarity and simplicity, we need to hold the sources to that standard as well. If they can’t define it for you in a relatively meaningful way, ask them to go through the process associated with that term and clarify it for you. (“So, these people were excessed… What’s the first step in that process? … Do people who get “excessed” lose their right to the job they had? … Can you show me in a contract the explanation and application of this term? …)

Don’t let the sources Jedi mind trick you into thinking that something is normal simply because they use a made-up term repeatedly. If necessary, ask them to explain it to you like you are a child. When they can’t or won’t, that says volumes more than what the term itself is trying to convey.

(And for the love of God, don’t write a lead like this one, no matter what else is going on. The first two or three sentences really should have been “excessed.”)

Verified by ExactMetrics