Way Too Funny

The Dartmouth Provost Used AI To Write His Opinion Pieces. When The Student Newspaper Called Him Out, He Replied With An AI-Written Statement (A Throwback Post)

The topper of the amazing story done by The Dartmouth on the AI use of their provost.

 

THE LEAD: The next time your professor tells you, “If you just let AI do all your writing for you, you’ll never be able to get a job,” you can now respond with, “Well, I could be the provost of Dartmouth…”

An investigation by The Dartmouth of academic articles and opinion pieces published by Provost Santiago Schnell in 2026 found a median “AI-written” text percentage of 96% using artificial intelligence detector Pangram.

Pangram — which was found to have a “near-zero error rate” by an October 2025 University of Chicago audit — uses a large language model neural network which is trained to recognize differences between separate datasets of human-written documents and AI-generated content, according to the company’s website.

The student journalists at Dartmouth University did an amazingly strong deep dive into this topic, relying on both the most accurate AI-detection program available and some strong reporting beyond that. This wasn’t a quick-hit piece on one thing Schnell wrote, but rather a comprehensive look at his work before and after AI chatbots became widely available.

In addition, they sought and received a comment from Schnell about their findings, but didn’t just give him a pass. Instead, they took each of his claims (it was for grammar only… AI picks on people who have ESL concerns… etc.) and debunked each one of them.

And as if that weren’t enough to make the point, they also found this:

In an email statement to The Dartmouth on Sept. 18, Schnell wrote that he uses artificial intelligence for “language refinement, copyediting, improving clarity and organization and making writing processes more efficient,” but “review[s] the final text and take[s] responsibility for its content.”

“I develop ideas and arguments, conduct the research, evaluate the evidence and sources, determine the structure, prepare drafts and decide what appears in the final text,” Schnell wrote. “I regard these technologies as assistive tools. They do not identify the problem, design the research project, guarantee the validity of research results, interpretations, citations, conclusions or substitute for my research, intellectual judgment or authorship.”

Schnell’s Sept. 18 email statement to The Dartmouth was itself “100% AI-written,” according to a Pangram test.

I imagine next time, the Dartmouth students will want to do a sit down interview with this guy, just to see if he’s capable of doing so…

Given this kind of stuff is now everywhere, even places we generally would expect to be a little more honest, here’s a throwback post that talks about how best to avoid AI fake-outs and keep yourself out of trouble.

 

How AI “expert sources” have duped journalists and four tips on how to avoid being the next victim

 

Meet Elizabeth Hubbell, a 25-year-old skin-care expert who is willing to be a great source for your next story on anything makeup or skin-care related. She’s actually completely fabricated. Her picture came from an AI generation site and her name is a combination of my car (Betsy) and a baseball player whose card I had laying around (Carl Hubbell). Careful. It’s dangerous out there…

When it comes to doing interviews, I always tell students they need to do them in person.  In response, they often look at me like I’m asking them to use a teletype machine or some semaphore flags. It’s easier, faster and more convenient for both parties if they can do a text, a chat or an email interview, the students say.

I argue that the face-to-face interview allows for a deeper connection for profile and feature pieces. This approach also can prevent sources in news stories from weaseling out of answers they could otherwise work through via several drafts of an email. Plus, if I spend some time in the source’s environment, I can probably find a personal effect that could give us something to talk about, like a family photo, a kid’s drawing or a sports item. At the very least, it’ll help with scene setting.

Apparently, there’s another good reason for my approach these days: Your easy-to-access, extremely helpful, expert source might be AI:

Since the launch of ChatGPT in 2022, anyone can generate comment, on any subject, in an instant.

It is a technology that appears to have fuelled a rise in expert commentators who have appeared widely in national newspapers but who are either not real, not what they seem to be or at the very least have CVs which do not justify their wide exposure in major newsbrands.

The rise in dubious commentators has been fuelled by companies that charge the PR industry in order to share quotes via email with journalists who have submitted requests for comment.

Journalist Rob Waugh found that in a number of cases, digital outlets were mass-generating content from these supposed experts, giving everyone from news journalists to PR practitioners the exact the quote or information they needed on a wide array of topics. However, when challenged to engage more deeply regarding who they are or what they have done in life, the “sources” suddenly had difficulty:

She has been quoted in Fortune talking about “loud budgeting” and by Business.com talking about the best countries in which to obtain a business education (both sites are based in the US).

A profile on Academized describes her as a “biochemist and science educator”. The same byline picture also crops up on a publisher called Leaddev, for someone called Sara Sparrow. Rebecca Leigh has written for DrBicuspid.com about how to write a business plan for your dental practice where she is described as a writer for Management Essay and Lija Help (two online writing services).

When challenged via email to do something that would be difficult to do with AI image-generating software (send an image of herself with her hand in front of her face) or prove that she was an environment expert, Rebecca stopped communicating.

One AI source, “Barbara Santini,” was particularly prolific in the volume and array of topics she could cover for journalists. Waugh found this roster of publications that had included Santini quotes:

She has been quoted in The Guardian talking about the benefits of walking (paid content), in Newsweek talking about white lies, Marie Claire talking about the meaning of money, the Daily Mirror talking about the benefits of sleeping with your dog, in The Sun talking about sexual positions, Pop Sugar talking about astrology, and Mail Online talking about how often to change your pillow.

Santini was recently quoted in a BBC article examining the lifelike responses of AI to Rorschach tests used by some psychologists saying: “If an AI’s response resembles a human’s, it’s not because it sees the same thing but it’s because its training data mirrors our collective visual culture.”

Despite her ability to be all knowing and wise, Santini apparently couldn’t receive phone calls, a relatively easy giveaway that the “person” on the other end is AI. Waugh also found other examples of journalists who were getting taken for a ride by an AI source, including one case where the non-human pitched a sob story about breast cancer survival:

“Seeing my scarred chest in the mirror was a constant reminder of what I had lost,” Kimberly Shaw, 30, told me in an emotional email.

She had contacted me through Help a Reporter Out, a service used by journalists to find sources. I cover skincare and had been using the site to find people for a story about concealing acne scars with tattoos.

<SNIP>

Shaw’s experience may not have been relevant to my acne story, but it tapped into the same feelings of empowerment and control I wanted to explore. Thinking she could inspire a powerful new piece, I emailed her back.

But after days of back-and-forth conversations, something in Shaw’s emails began to feel a little off. After idly wondering to my boyfriend whether she could be a fake, he suggested that I run the emails through a text checker for artificial intelligence.

The result was unequivocal: Shaw’s emails had been machine-generated. I’d been interviewing an AI the entire time.

As a result of Waugh’s story, a number of these information clearinghouses have tried to cull their ranks of AI “experts” while the deceived publications have retooled or removed the stories with fake people in them. Although the founder of one of these “expert mills” blamed much of the situation on “lazy journalists,” he kind of gave up the game a bit when it came to explaining why these platforms don’t prevent the frauds from gaining access in the first place:

Darryl Willcox, who founded ResponseSource in 1997 and sold it in 2018, says that the simplicity and speed of platforms like ResponseSource is key to their appeal and that attempts to add authentication risk slowing down the system.

Willcox said: “The other factor which complicates things a little bit is that these platforms are quite an open system. Once a journalist makes a request they can be forwarded around organisations, and sometimes between them, and often PR agencies are acting for multiple parties, and they will be forwarded onto their many clients.”

In other words, “If we slowed down to make sure things were accurate, we wouldn’t be as appealing as we want to be.” Eeesh.

So what can you to to avoid quoting a fake person? The overarching theme is basically, “Don’t be a lazy journalist,” but here are a few more specific tips:

TRUST, BUT VERIFY: The old Russian proverb really comes into play here and for good reason. I often say that paranoia is my best friend and has kept me out of a ton of problems. To that larger point, not only did I click on every link I could find in Waugh’s story, I also Googled the hell out of Waugh himself. Why? I imagined that it would be the most epic “Punk’d” moment on Earth if the media world was flocking to this story about AI screwing with journalists, only to find out that Rob Waugh was also an AI fake. I found LinkedIn, X, Bluesky, media staff pages and at least a dozen photos. I wouldn’t bet the house on the fact he’s real, but I’d probably bet the lawn tractor.

This can be harder in situations like the one involving the cancer scammer, as regular people tend not to have as big of a social media presence or digital footprint. That said, even regular people under the age of retirement should have left a few breadcrumbs out there for you to find.

KICK THE TIRES: If you can’t find the person clearly through a digital search, feel free to play a little game of 20 Questions to see if you can get some things ironed out. Experts who have kicked the tires on a few bots can offer you specific ways to ask questions that will tend to ferret out fakers. The author in the cancer-scam story revealed that asking for specific photos based on prior conversations can be helpful as well.

I learned about this kind of thing in trying to defeat scams when it came to buying sports memorabilia. When unknown sellers offered either exactly what I wanted when I couldn’t find it anywhere else or provided me with a ridiculously low price for something I knew should cost more, the pros who had been around the block a few times suggested I ask the seller to “coin the image.”

What this meant was that I wanted the person to take a picture of the item with a coin (usually asking for either heads or tails, or maybe even a specific coin) so I could tell they had the item and weren’t messing with me. Turned out, that advice helped me dodge a bullet or two. As weird as it might seem, asking someone to take a picture with their left hand raised or holding a quarter with “heads” showing might help you avoid a problem.

MEET IN PERSON: Again, this is the most obvious one to suggest. If you meet a person, in person, it’s a pretty safe bet that you can consider them real. The rest of the stuff (Are they the expert they claim to be? Did they really do what they say they did? Do they actually have cancer?) remains a risk without substantial additional reporting, but at least you’ll know they exist.

If that can’t happen for legitimate reasons (the person lives too far away etc.), look for other ways to get some human connection with the source. That could be a Zoom/Teams/Whatever video chat or an actual phone call at an actual phone number. In the cases where the frauds proliferated, it was pretty clear that the only connection between the source and the journalist was through a keyboard. That’s especially dangerous when you don’t have a prior relationship with a source.

WHEN IN DOUBT, DO WITHOUT: At the end of the day, there is no journalistic rule that says you have to use a source, a quote or a “fact” just because you have it. If you don’t feel comfortable with how a source is providing you with information or you aren’t 100% sure this person is a person, it’s better to leave that source out of your story than it is to run the risk of getting bamboozled.

If you say, “Well, the whole story will fall apart without this one source and I can’t get anyone else to provide me with this information,” maybe that’s more revealing than anything else we’ve said here.

The objects people own can help us tell the best stories if we take the time to ask about them

About 15  years ago, I was riding in a  taxi at 4:30 in the morning with a driver who was yammering a million miles per minute in a dialect best described as “Swamp People on Uppers.”

He was telling me about the heat index and how I was lucky to be leaving Columbia, Missouri before sun up. He was telling me about his home somewhere in Louisiana, which he left because of some reason he couldn’t adequately explain in our short drive.

He was talking about a story he heard on the radio about a woman in Philadelphia being hit in the face by a five-pound fish, a situation he said likely occurred when an eagle dropped its lake-drawn quarry  into a nearby tree.

Suddenly he stopped, and in clear, crisp English said, “Hey, you wanna buy  a watch?”

Then, he was off to the races again, explaining that a drunk flagged him down around 3 a.m. and asked for a ride home and how he wasn’t going to give the guy a ride, but the guy promised him a big tip and then they got to his house and you know what? “That sumbitch didn’t have no money on him.”

So… The guy hands over a watch to hold until he could go into his house and get money, but then he disappeared into the house and wouldn’t answer the door no matter how loudly the driver knocked…

Each time the driver pitched me the watch, the value went up: It started as a $100, based on what the guy saw online. Then it was a, swear to God, $150 watch. By the time we got to our highway off ramp, it was a $250 timepiece, but the hell did he need a watch for? He didn’t ever wear a watch and besides, he had his wife to tell him how damned late he was… All he needed was to sell it so he could cover his fare and not get in trouble with the bosses…

And on and on and on it went.

When we got to the airport, I had stifled the laughter as long as I could, but I still had to ask,  “OK, so how much was the fare?”

“It was 25 goddaddanged dollars!” he told me. “And I mean this watch… You know how much this thing is worth?”

At that point, I forked over my fare, a tip and an additional $25 for the watch. It wasn’t so much that I was buying the watch, but instead, I bought the story. And the story attached to that object was worth so much more than the object itself.

When it comes to writing, you can find a lot of value in understanding stories and how objects can lead to those things. Objects themselves are pretty much static and plain, but the things they evoke in us can make for some fascinating stories. Good reporters can ask questions about those items to tap into something beneath the surface of a source. Good writers can then use those revelations to better paint word pictures for the audience.

For example, when I’m doing a profile, I look to see if there’s something very clearly important to a person in their office, their home, their car or more. Sometimes, it’s simple like hand-drawn crayon-colored pictures taped to a wall, showcasing that they’re a “mommy” or “daddy” first and a powerful CEO second.

(I once mentioned in a lecture that occasionally I’ll spot a piece of jewelry on someone that seems to feel particularly important. Almost instinctively, a young lady in the room reached up and touched a pendant hanging on her necklace. It turned out, that was the last gift her grandmother had given her, and it serves as a sentimental reminder of a relative.)

I have found that you can learn a lot about people based on certain objects and asking about those items. I figured this out when I first started doing furniture restoration and friends would put me in touch with people torn between selling and refinishing a piece.

I’d ask a simple question, “Tell me about your (chair/table/hutch/whatever).”

If they started to tell me that it was maple or walnut, or that it was such-and-such brand from such-and-such era, I’d likely offer to buy the piece. I’d then refinish it and either keep it or sell it.

If they started with, “Oh, this was my grandma’s chair,” or “This was mom and dad’s kitchen table, and we always had our holiday dinners on it,” I’d convince them to get it restored, do it for whatever they could afford and return it to them in the best shape possible.

In one case, I’d donated a “gift certificate” for refinishing to a fundraiser for a local boy who was experiencing some significant health challenges. I promised that the winner of the silent auction could have any piece done that they wanted (as long as it wasn’t a piano or something I couldn’t move).

The family that won it asked to have their oak kitchen table redone, and it had really seen better days. The finish was all worn off, it had glass rings permeating the wood and the thing had an ungodly wobble to it. As I was loading it into the car, the mom of the family said her daughter had a request. The daughter was in her early 20s and she seemed embarrassed that her mom was making a fuss, but I asked what she wanted.

“Do you see these cigarette burns?” she asked, pointing to several spots on the well-worn table top. “Can you save them? Her grandfather used to smoke at the table and she said she’d be sad if they were all gone.”

So, that’s exactly what I did, leaving those little “character” remarks behind because the sentimental reminder was worth more than perfection to these people.

As a reporter, look to the objects that are interesting or distinctive in some meaningful way and see what a source can tell you about it. In some cases, a vase is just a vase or a ring is just a ring, but it never hurts to ask. In many cases, you will open the door to something well beyond what you could have imagined.

ONE FINAL NOTE: Sometimes objects can help explain something about the subject of a piece or typify an aspect of a personality that otherwise would be inexplicable.

For me, the best example is this ashtray:

I picked this up at an estate sale a few years back, and it’s nothing special. I think I paid five bucks for it and it’s advertising a relatively obscure beer company overseas.

However, the process of getting it and keeping it reveals a lot about me. (At least that’s what Amy said, and she didn’t really say it in a good way…)

I was wandering around the sale when I spotted this on the ground and nobody else was near it or me. When I picked it up, a woman who runs an antique store and was hoarding things in a pile 30 feet away screams, “THAT’S MINE! I WAS GETTING THAT!”

I looked at the guy who was running the place and he kind of just shrugged, so as I went to buy it, she was making all sorts of passive aggressive comments about how I “stole” from her and how I should know how “unethical” I was being. As I was leaving, she asked the guy about furniture restoration and buying restored pieces, and he mentioned I had done some and was good, so she asked for my number.

Peace with honor, I thought, so when she texted me asking about furniture I’d done, I sent pictures and offered to sell her some things. To which she responded, “I might consider that if you give me back my ashtray.”

So, before I deleted her number and blocked her, I calmly texted back that if I were ever to be so broke that I starved to death and was forced to be buried in a debtor’s field, I would be buried with that frickin’ ashtray before I ever gave it to her for any reason.

Starting the school year with lessons from 5-year-olds

In starting another new year of teaching, I’m always on the lookout for things that will inspire me enough to inspire my students. This year, I found it by dealing with my 5-year-old nieces, Abby and Sophia. Spending time with the twins gave me some key insights as to how best to challenge my own students. Hope some of these things might help you along as well:

REMEMBER TO WONDER: The best part about being a little kid, at least in my book, is that everything seems new and amazing in some of the best ways possible. Little kids wonder about stuff all the time, whether it’s how the refrigerator keeps stuff cold, or why nature deals some of us a bad hand. Here’s a conversation between Abby and me regarding the latter issue:

Her: “Uncle Cake! Why you have no hair?”

Me: “Well, I’m older than you, sweetie…”

Her: “Uncle Cake, my daddy’s old and he has hair. What happened?”

I wasn’t about to explain hereditary cruelty to the kid, but it was one of many conversations that had me thinking and laughing all at the same time, simply because one of the twins wanted to know something that literally had never occurred to me to consider.

Most of us used to wonder about stuff like this and we had no compunction about sharing it with others. However, as we got older, we started keeping our questions to ourselves, for fear of how we’d look in front of our peers or because we just didn’t care anymore.

Reporting, in a lot of ways, is all about wonder. It could be a simple thing like, “Why is there only one type of ketchup, while there are dozens of mustard varieties?” to “Who is really keeping an eye on airplane usage?” Go back to that little 5-year-old in your brain and let the wonder take you places.

 

RULES MATTER: We were over at my brother-in-law’s place swimming one day this summer, when Abby decided to be the lifeguard of the pool. She used her pretend binoculars to watch all of us, which was kind of cute until I apparently violated the rule against using a squirt gun against the lifeguard:

Her: “UNCLE CAKE! NO! YOU GET A TIMEOUT!”

Me: “You didn’t say squirting people was bad. You were squirting people before you became a lifeguard!”

Her: “You should know better. You go to timeout.”

It dawned on me how much of what I was covering last year, ranging from an April Fools’ edition that really ticked people off to the whole Russini/Vrabel “inside with the insider” thing, came down people needing to follow rules and behave with common sense. The old line of “I’d rather beg for forgiveness than ask for permission,” sounds kind of cool, until you realize you probably aren’t getting forgiven and are more likely to be fired for whatever it is you did.

 

SIX – SEVEN: I learned a long time ago that students tend to remember what I tell them, even if they remember it ass-backwards or for the wrong reasons. I thought about this when Sophia was showing me how she could count to ten using fingers.

We started with the pinkie on one hand with one, moving all the way through the thumb. I then raised my index finger and said, “And six…”

She replied by patiently putting her hand on mine and correcting me:

“No, Uncle Cake,” she said. “That is seven.” She then wiggled my thumb, “THIS is six.”

And thus it shall always be, from here into eternity…

Rest assured, I do know how to count to six, but I also was not taught that each finger had a specific purpose. I suppose I could have corrected her, but I’d prefer that she gets her counting down and that eventually she learns that each finger can represent a counting digit from a more credible source.

Remember that whole thing about rules? Sometimes they learn the rule to the point of being problematic. I’m thinking more about explaining the WHY they have to follow the rules, what the purpose of those rules are and how to understand what matters about those rules.

 

BE PERSISTENT: Most of what we do as journalists is about getting people to do things that are for the betterment of all, even when those people don’t want to do them. It might be getting them to share open records, provide an interview on a difficult topic or ratting someone out for doing shady stuff.

I’ve noticed that a lot of my students tend to give up after one or two emails, instead of really going after something like a dog chasing a car. I have also noticed that the twins are more than up to a challenge when it comes to getting something they want.

Case in point, when Amy visits, they always want her to stay over for the night. No matter what she says as to why she can’t do it, they’ve got a rebuttal.

“I don’t have a bed here.”

“You can sleep with us!”

“I have to work tomorrow.”

“We can wake you up extra early so you can drive home!”

“Uncle Cake is waiting for me at home and he misses me.”

“We’ll miss you more!”

In a lot of cases, Amy has to leave, but on more than one occasion, they wore her down. (To be fair, there are two of them and they have the energy of the Energizer Bunny on meth.) They’re never rude and don’t resort to tantrums. They’re just persistent to the point of running you out of excuses.

I don’t know what it is that makes the rest of us run out of steam so much faster (other than the Energizer Bunny meth thing) but I do know we can push harder to get more when we really want to. I’m thinking that’s going to be the goal of my reporting kids this year: Be persistent.

What People Who Love Your Video Podcast Content Hate About Your Video Podcasts (Part II)

If you watch one or two episodes of this, you get the distinct feeling that literally everyone in the 1970s was on drugs… 

(ED NOTE: Last week, we took a look at the things that made fans of a podcast topic stop watching video podcasts. In that segment, we tended to look at content and approach, so in this segment we’ll be looking at the smaller details that can drive the viewers crazy. Hope these help.)

Just for a brief recap: as part of the annual The Mid Year Freakout Book Tag, a number of vloggers and book influencers took to YouTube to present their views on the books they’ve read, what they want to read and how close they are to their annual reading goal. As Amy watched these, I asked her to keep track of the things that made her stop watching any particular video and we would chat about it later. The idea was that she loved the content, but still wasn’t going to dedicate her time to something that didn’t pass muster for her.

Here are some of the more “detail oriented” elements she noted:

SENSORY OVERLOAD: Apparently, some of these content creators didn’t get the memo that “less is more” when it comes to stuff like this. Amy noted that the most annoying ones would be weaving in pointless visuals, using weird filters or doing edits that drew attention to the edits. While she was trying to learn about a book, she found herself fending off the feeling that she was going to have a seizure from all the blinking and cutting going on.

This is a relatively common phenomenon when people get ahold of some newer form of technology. When word-processing programs took over from standard typewriters, people were using all sorts of weird fonts for no real reason. When HTML coding became accessible to folks, I remember all sorts of colored fonts and even the dreaded “blink” tag, which made it almost impossible to read.

Editing programs give us more options than the simple “cut,” such as wipes, crumpled paper cuts and even the weird raindrop thing. People think they’re being edgy or innovative when they use them, but they never once think about how damned difficult they’re making it for the audience.

If the content is good and the presentation is strong, you don’t need to jack up the production with all sorts of weird stuff and visual stunts. It’s the reason why “Citizen Kane” doesn’t have any car chases or explosions, while every “Fast and Furious” movie has about a million.

 

PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE: Someone once told me that great acting is done in way where it doesn’t look like acting at all. That’s probably why I sucked at it, given I could memorize all the lines, but I delivered them like I was a scared kid at a spelling bee. Great actors practice over and over and over again until what they’re doing looks and sounds conversational, but is really a well-learned presentation.

Amy got peeved a few times when it was clear someone was trying to spitball their way through content without really having spent any time practicing what they were going to say or do. This included weird pauses in the content because they forgot what book would be discussed next, or stops in the middle of a sentence because they forgot what they were going to say. It also got weird when the podcaster wanted to show off a book, but couldn’t find the right book and we were all there just hanging out, waiting for the person to find it. (Editing doesn’t hurt here, either…)

Practicing will help eliminate some terrible verbal mannerisms. The “ums” and “likes” and “y’knows” will crop up less frequently, but you can also look for other things you do that might annoy the heck out of your audience. In one case, a video presenter kept saying “No one can believe it” about EVERYTHING to the point where Amy said, “I can’t believe I watched this for this long” and flipped away from it. I have no idea if the content was worth anything, but it wasn’t worth enough to hear “No one can believe it” one more time, apparently.

Spend the time working your way through the material before you put it on video. Practicing, like when you had to give a speech for class or do a presentation in front of important people, will limit the nerves, smooth out the rough spots and get you ready for a clear, coherent and confident chunk of content.

 

AVOID DISTRACTIONS: I’ve had conversations with people where I get distracted by something weird going on with them, and suddenly, I’m fixating on whatever that distraction. George Carlin once did a bit about someone laughing through their nose and blowing a snot on their shirt. That actually happened in a conversation I was having and all I kept thinking was, “There’s this giant snot on their shirt…” They could have been getting ready to stab me to death or tell me the cure for cancer, but all I’m thinking is, “That snot is going to dry there…”

Amy mentioned a number of weird distractions that bothered her. In one case it was some freakish piece of pottery on a shelf behind the person. In another case it was the lip gloss the person was wearing that was so shiny, it was almost creating star bursts on the video. Whatever it was, she suddenly got sucked into this moment of weird and eventually couldn’t hang in there for the content.

It’s hard to come up with exactly the right amount of background elements. Too much stuff and it’s “Squirrel Theater.” Not enough stuff and it looks like you’re filming a hostage video in a shipping container. This is where both practice and “beta testing” can go a long way. Put something together, have people you trust give it a look and see if there’s anything they would recommend you get rid of or add.

Hope these help. See you next week.

What People Who Love Your Video Podcast Content Hate About Your Video Podcasts (Part I)

(This act was like Masterpiece Theater compared to some of the stuff we were watching during Amy’s day of couch arrest…)

 

Book influencers, vloggers and other folks in the Booktube universe usually post videos this time of year for the annual The Mid Year Freakout Book Tag .

The trend began on social media in 2016, when two Booktube readers decided to look back at their New Year’s reading resolutions to see how far they’ve come and what they’ve read. The “freakout” level is based on the idea that the reader might have said, “I’m going to read 50 books this year” back in January, only to find that as of July 1, they’ve only read 12.

Beyond that, however, the tag includes a series of topics for video podcasters to discuss about what they’ve read to this point and how they feel about it:

Each year, Amy looks forward to this like I look forward to the end of the school year. This year, the weather and wildfire smoke exacerbated her asthma to the point she couldn’t leave the house for a couple days, so she spent a lot of it flipping through the various videos.

She watched every second of some videos while catching only a couple minutes of others before cutting the video short in favor of something else.

The journalism nerd in me, of course, asked her why some of these were non-starters, even as they discussed one of her favorite topics (books) and hit on some of her favorite reads of the summer. In some cases, she said, it was way the video came together, while in other cases it was the content. Still others involved some annoyances she couldn’t quite put her finger on, but she knew she had to stop watching before she had a brain aneurysm.

So, in hopes of finding some deeper truths (and keep her laminated to her chair to avoid massive wheezing), I asked if she’d take some notes on things that bothered her when she noticed them. In looking back at the answers, and discussing her broader thoughts on the topic, here are a few things that might help you in doing video (or audio) podcasts.

(ED NOTE: This started to get overly long, I decided to cut it into two parts, with the second portion coming next Thursday.)

GET TO THE POINT: This one came up repeatedly, and it says something about what audiences have come to expect.

“I came here to see your favorite books or your thoughts on (NAME OF BOOK I’VE SINCE FORGOTTEN),” she said. “It shouldn’t take 10 minutes to get me there.”

Keep in mind, my wife has an exceptional attention span, as she reads hardcover books for pleasure that are large enough to kill a small pony. She will watch a multi-season documentary and mull the content. She is the BEST CASE you can hope for from an audience member on any topic, so think about how long and drawn out something has to be to really tick her off.

Now, imagine your audience being the Short-Attention-Span Theater Generation, where watching a whole movie at one time is too mentally taxing for them. There’s no way they’re hanging in there for you to spend 19 minutes thanking your sponsors, your parents and your pets, before veering into a sidebar discussion of why all of your geckos have names that start with the letter Q.

If you have a point, get there and do it in a damned hurry before people leave.

 

WAY TOO PERSONAL:  In a number of cases where people weren’t getting to the point, it was because they decided to be the star of the show to the detriment of the content. I’ve often argued that when it comes to media content, the journalist is like the frame around the painting, not the painting itself. We’re there to help display the things people want to see.

In other words, nobody goes to see the Mona Lisa and says, “Weird looking chick in there, but MAN did you SEE that cool frame?”

A number of the podcasts that Amy cut short involved people telling the audience all about their lives from the moment of egg fertilization until that afternoon, outlining some weird personal drama or otherwise not getting into the content people went there to see.

I was watching one of these with Amy where a podcaster spent FIVE MINUTES outlining why she changed the name of her YouTube channel from one name that didn’t make sense to me to another name that didn’t make sense to me. She was telling the audience, that the first title felt too restrictive in terms of implied content, and that she’s so much more than just a reader… We never did find out what she read or what she liked, as Amy “gonged” that one quickly.

 

STAND OUT (FOR GOOD REASONS): Amy zapped a couple podcasts in mid-cast, even though they’d seemingly been abiding by her first two “rules.” After about the third one, she muttered, “I heard that already…” Although she didn’t mention this on her list, it became clear to me one of the things a challenge like this can create is repetition that leads to boredom.

When a hashtag challenge becomes a big deal and EVERYONE is doing it, the question becomes, “Why would I watch your video instead of a dozen other people’s videos?” Amy listed a few reasons why she will at least give someone a chance:

  1. They are a known commodity: She favored the people she’d been watching all along and liked, so she went to them first (or stuck with them the longest) when it came to this book challenge.
  2. They pitched something “her style:” She skipped a couple because of the titles and went to others for that same reason. The skips were things about romance novels or other things that would make the Hallmark channel roll its eyes. She went into the ones where headlines promised a look at things she likes (I’m not even going to list them here, as I’m sure I’ll screw this up and get into trouble…). A headline that tells the viewers what they’re getting works well to attract the right viewers and allow the others to make smarter choices.
  3. They seemed novel in some way: I call this the “two-headed chicken” rule. If you are driving down a country highway and see a sign that says, “Two-headed chicken petting zoo. Turn left in 1/2 mile,” it’s a pretty safe bet you’re turning left. When headlines, influencers or other elements of the cast promised something out of the ordinary, Amy gave the video a look.

To make the cut, obviously it’s great to be the big kahuna out there that everyone just watches because you are well known, but beyond that, you need to find a way to provide some sorts of distinctions if you want people to give you a look.

 

TIME LIMITS: The benefit of online content is that it can be as long or as short as you want it to be. Traditional broadcast was always hamstrung by time limits, so it meant only so many stories could make a newscast or stories had to be kept “tight” on time to allow for more content to make it to air.  In these video podcasts, the influencer can do a quick one minute or go on for hours on a topic.

That’s not always a good thing, as Amy pointed out. Several casts she looked at had her pausing after two minutes, checking the time bar across the bottom and then moving on. “There’s no way I’m watching 55 minutes of this,” she said after cutting one video short. In other cases, the videos left her wanting more: “I never found out WHY they liked the book, so how will I know if I should read it?” she said more than once.

In teaching design, I often talk about “size versus value” when it comes to displaying elements. A headshot of a profile subject that runs at a quarter page provides no more value than one that runs at two inches by two inches. Thus, the size is out of proportion to the value. The inverse can also be true, in that running a photo of a daring fire rescue scene at 2 x 2 undermines the value of the photo because people can’t see what’s going on in there. Thus the size undermines the value.

The same thing applies here: If the video is too long, people will likely avoid it or stop watching after a few minutes. (If you happen to be extremely amazingly gifted, maybe you get a pass. The problem is EVERYONE out there seemed to think they were the exception to the rule of “Keep it tight.”) If it’s short, you might get the person to watch one of your videos, but not subscribe or pick up on a couple others for a look.

There doesn’t seem to be a real rule here in terms of what is or isn’t too long. Amy tended to favor 12-15 minute casts on this topic and I’ve seen research that says up to 18 minutes can work. The key thing is that you want the size to reflect the value, so 10 minutes of you thanking your cat for staying out of the video, followed by five minutes of the real content isn’t going to cut it.

(NEXT TIME: OTHER THINGS (ASIDE FROM ME) THAT ANNOYED MY WIFE…) 

Writing Tips in Sarcastic-Poster Form

While reading through a collection of contest entries, I took to social media to complain about a common failure of the pieces that didn’t make the cut:

A friend chimed in with a great suggestion:

“I need a poster series, please.”

Although we couldn’t come up with a list of things that were definitely irritating, I did manage to cull a few ideas and, thanks to the miracle of AI image generators, we now provide you with the first series of what might become an ongoing feature here on the blog: Writing Tips In Sarcastic-Poster Form.

Feel free to download, reuse and share whatever you want from this. These are also suitable for framing:

The original…

Here’s one for your sports-writing friends…

And, of course, my own personal gripe…

Feel free to hit me with any of your personal pet peeves in the comment section below or hit me up via the contact page. 

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

Journalism-related concepts that played out as well in the medical world while I was getting gallbladder surgery

My boss was nice enough to let people know I’d be out for a bit, but this is a little vague… Not like THAT’S gonna lead to speculation…

At the start of every semester, I try to come back with a “X number of things I’ve learned” or a “X years of teaching have taught me” kind of post. It was ruminating (I swear) when my second gallbladder attack in four days hit me badly enough to head to the ER at midnight the day before school started.

Although everything went well, I found myself living out little moments that had me shifting into “analogy mode” as I saw parallels between where I was (the hospital) and where I wanted to be (a journalism classroom). So, as I continue to mend and catch up with the 82,324 things that have landed on my desk while I was gone, I thought a simple slow-walk post of advice would be a good start to what has already been a shaky semester.

(Also, to be fair, I’m still on meds, somewhat hazy and worried I’d somehow come in hot on a topic like Bad Bunny or something that would end up getting me fired without me entirely knowing why.)

So, here are a couple of the maxims that ring true in journalism that kind of came home to me throughout my hospital stay and recovery:

ACCURACY ABOVE ALL ELSE: We’ve been having a lot of conversations like this around the house:

Me: Who called?

Zoe: She didn’t leave her name on the voicemail.

Me: Can I listen to it?

Zoe: She was just like “Hi, this is mumble mumble and I’m with…

Me: So she did leave a name, but you just didn’t understand it? Is it possible that maybe if I listened to it, I could figure it out?

Zoe: Well, I guess…

As much as I expect that out of my kid, I didn’t think I should expect it from a healthcare provider.

Case in point: Upon leaving the hospital, the discharge nurse is going through all the stuff I should or should do, eat or drink. She tells me to avoid fried food and fatty food like bacon. Due to the lack of the gallbladder, these things are likely to create severe gastric distress in the early stages of my recovery.

OK, got it. Most of my diet goes on the shelf.

The other night, Amy made this amazing chicken and potato thing that was part of our “healthy eating” resolution for the year. About 20 minutes after I ate it, I’m in stomach-cramp hell for about two hours. Turns out, she used olive oil on the stuff, which has the same basic effect as those other two things, even though the nurse didn’t mention it and we all usually seem to think olive oil baking is good and deep-fried drumsticks are bad.

I often think about the way in which we ask questions of people in journalism and how we get “almost” answers, or how sources provide information that’s direct but not entirely accurate. From now on, I plan to start interrogating sources like the entirety of my GI tract depends on it.

 

VOCABULARY MATTERS: We always talk about picking the right word, the proper descriptor or the exact phrase to help the audience understand things accurately. In news stories, it’s relatively important. In the medical field, it means a hell of a lot more.

In trying to explain what he found when he dug into my gut, the surgeon referred to the gallbladder as “angry,” “wicked” and “gnarly.” Those descriptors sound more like the tappers at a South Boston pub than a description of a human organ.

In addition, he explained that something had happened causing my gallbladder to grow a “rind” over the top of it and encase it tightly against my liver. What created said rind and what the rind was composed of, he would not venture a guess. Apparently, I just have a brie-like defense mechanism against gallstones or something.

I didn’t need the whole medical textbook explanation, but it did dawn on me that I felt like I was interviewing Nuke LaLoosh in “Bull Durham” for a bit here:

When it comes to telling people things, keep your audience in mind and use strong, clear vocabulary that helps the folks out there understand exactly what is going on and why they should care.

 

CONNECTIONS CUT BOTH WAYS: We talk a lot in reporting about the importance of having strong connections with good sources. Those kinds of relationships can give you an edge when it comes to a big scoop, a key interview or a sense of confidence on a topic.

They can also be a problem if sources try to ask you for things you can’t provide or they assume you won’t write about things they don’t like. I always tell students, “It’s great having the mayor feeding you tips, right up until the point his kid gets busted for a DUI and he wants you to keep it out of the paper.”

In terms of connections at the hospital, I was not only being treated at the same hospital where Amy had worked for several years, but I was actually on her old unit. This led to some significant comfort for me in terms of knowing (relatively speaking) who some of these folks are. It was also great because they had nothing but praise for Amy and wanted to know how she was doing at her new job and so forth. I also knew I had a rock-star surgeon because Amy had worked with this guy’s post-op patients over the years, so she knew him and his work.

The “cuts both ways” part really was more of my own making, in that I was groggy and gimpy most of the time, with that “gown” barely doing much of anything. As a massive social hermit, I don’t even like to be in the house when Amy has friends over, so you can imagine how I’d feel about needing their help to wander semi-bare-assed to the bathroom several times a day.

(The closest parallel I can offer is this one time when my parents and I went to a restaurant during the summer and it turned out one of my mother’s teaching colleagues was there waiting tables. She ended up as our server, which felt awkward as hell when I needed to flag her down for another Diet Coke or ask about desert. And at least I was fully clothed there…)

The nurses and staffers were totally professional, even when I managed to set off the bed alarm that Amy used to tell me would tick off the staff to no end. They were also patient with me as my body seemed to be re-calibrating all functions at the same time for no real reason. And it wasn’t like I would be flailing naked down the halls if Amy DIDN’T know these people. Still, it was a combination of comfort and clumsy.

And finally…

TRANSPARENCY IS THE BEST VIRTUE: My buddy, Pritch, used to tell me that in PR transparency is everything, even if what is happening is something you’d rather hide. Abiding by that rule, the first chance I got, I told everyone in my classes what had happened, what the doctors were saying and when we might be able to get back together.

Some kids who knew me but weren’t in the classes I’m teaching got the message on the whiteboard outside my office and kind of freaked out. My boss explained he didn’t want to disclose my health issues without my permission, which is great. However, I know how the minds of journalists work and I could only imagine what it was these people thought had happened to me.

I’ve told Amy this many a’ time: When I die, put the cause of death in the obituary, no matter what. If I died when I broke my neck falling off the couch trying to complete the “bite your own toenails TikTok challenge,” tell people that. It may appear stupid and demeaning, but if I cared enough about it to die doing it, well… there you go. Besides, whatever I did, the speculation of what I might have done will be far worse, I guarantee.

I understand that some folks might be more demure or more guarded than that, which I get, but the less you tell people, the larger the space for the rumor mill to operate. It’s a good rule for PR folks putting out messages and it’s a good thing to remind sources of when they try to get weaselly.

 

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.

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…

Eight Years a Blogger: Come for the knowledge, stay for the snark

It’s hard to believe this thing is still going after eight years, kind of in the same way its hard to believe that the almond-colored refrigerator with the faux-leather texture and Bakelite handle that your parents bought in 1983 refuses to die. I always figured Sage would have decided I was more trouble than I was worth by this point, or I would have run out of bits of wisdom, weirdly effective exercises and opportunities to mock god-awful mistakes in the media.

Oddly enough, that’s hasn’t happened. And speaking of exercises, if you still want to get in on Dr. Vinnie’s Bin of Exercises and AI Joy, feel free to hit the link here.

This semester is guaranteed to be a little off as far as the blog is concerned, in that I found out last week I will need to teach a fifth class this term. It’s the second of the five that I’ve never taught before in my nearly 30 years of college teaching and the third of the five that’s not in my area of expertise.

Why, you might ask… Well..

 

The relative insanity that this blog provides me might be my only salvation, so let’s get started with a few thoughts to brighten your day (and allow me to blow off developing a giant roster of PowerPoints and podcasts I will likely use only once in my lifetime):

 

STUIPD IS AS STUIPD DOES, TOO: In digging through a ton of examples I wanted to use for the upcoming classes I am prepping, I was stunned at the level of general incompetence when it came to making sure things were edited before they went out. I’m not talking about internet memes or mom-and-pop operations posting on an AOL-Dial-Up-Friendly website. I’m talking about actual organizations with money and staff support.

The number of missing words, misspellings and generally bad writing made it tough to find quality examples for the kids. I mean, I can’t exactly say, “Here’s a great press release, if you ignore the three misspelled words in the lead and the sentence structure that makes Tarzan look like Shakespeare.” Of all the blunders out there, I had to highlight this one:

If you are in the state, promoting the state and having a fair for the state, the least you can do is spell the name of the state properly in the headline…

Also, for the sake of irony, I found this job posting for an entry-level PR position with these two key bullet-points back to back. And I SWEAR I didn’t PhotoShop this:

I looked at it three times and thought, “Is this like one of those tests where they try to trick you? Like that one speed test where you are supposed to read the whole set of directions first, so that you figure out you only need to do the first thing on the list?”

Or do they just really need proofreaders that badly?

Speaking of someone who needs a proofreader:

If you really need something that big to house that item, I feel sorry for your significant other…

 

DID THAT REALLY JUST HAPPEN? I’ve frequently noted that paranoia is my best friend, so much so, that I often find myself doing double-takes on things I swear I saw that turn out to not be as bad as I thought. It usually comes up when I see a sign for “angus” burgers or “first-hand jobs” or something where my mind drifts to the terrible error, even if there isn’t one.

That said, this Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel headline on my phone really should have freaked out a couple people somewhere at the newspaper:

For starters, that’s not Cavalier Johnson unless I have officially gone blind from computer monitor radiation. Here’s his official city photo:

I have no idea who the dude at the podium is, but Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito made a more convincing set of Twins than the two people in the photos above.

Second, and this is really what caught me, that has got to be the worst headline break any human or computer could have made with this story. When I saw that “Johnson speaks with black talk,” I think my brain broke, before remembering Robert Townsend’s spoof of how white people do stupid stuff in Hollywood.

I understand that everything can’t be perfect in every publication, but I also know there are certain topics that need a little more attention and care, due to their sensitivity and the long history of insensitivity associated with them. This is one of those where someone fell asleep at the wheel.

Conversely, sometimes we can really go a bit far in clarifying things for our readers:

Thanks for the clarification, CNN. Otherwise, I might have been confused…

And finally…

I, (FILL IN NAME HERE), AM HAPPY TO HELP (FILL IN NAME HERE): As is the case every semester, I got a series of “could you please squeeze me into your full Writing for the Media class?” emails over the past couple weeks. The excuses are usually the same (I missed my registration day, I accidentally dropped it, I died while donating my heart to my cousin, but thanks to revolutionary bionics, I’m back now…) as are the ramifications they use to nudge me in their favor (I need this to graduate, I can’t move on with out the class, I’m planning to join a biker gang but they won’t take me without a bachelor’s…)

This one came oh so close to moving me…

Look, AI can be helpful in some cases, but your really gotta meet it halfway…

And off we go on another semester-long adventure. Let’s stay safe out there…

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

The Art of the Deal: A few suggestions for end-of-term grade debates

More than a few friends are posting online over the past week or so about the end of the semester and the “great grade debates” students tend to engage in with professors. One of them noted that a student demanded a passing grade because, “I’m graduating in a week.”

Um… Doesn’t it usually work the OTHER way around?

As I’ve written on more than a few syllabi over the years, “Instead of telling me at the end of the semester, when you have no hope of passing, that ‘I need this class to (graduate/move on/continue my program/whatever), wake up every morning before class, look in the mirror and say it to the person you see there. Then, behave accordingly.”

Still, if the kid who couldn’t be bothered to prove they were sentient in your class has now become a mix of Clarence Darrow, Jack McCoy and Daniel Kaffee while arguing for a better grade, here is a throwback post that looks at a few options.

Potential solutions for grade debates between students and professors

As the end of the semester draws near, grades tend to become a topic of consternation among students and professors. Students tend to worry about the outcome of their course work as it relates to their ability to graduate, move on or keep that ever-important GPA on the up-slope.

Professors, on the other hand, find themselves buried in grading, often wondering why we didn’t just show movies and mark attendance for 15 weeks. As we slog through the work we brought upon ourselves, students are questioning, begging and cajoling, all in desperate hopes of nudging grades just a little (or in some cases, a lot) higher.

I can’t solve every problem (or most of them) on the blog , but here are a few random ideas I have for making life a bit easier on all of us in regard to the grade debate.

Take them as seriously as they seem…

The “Peace with Honor” grade: I’m sure most students have failed to put in an appropriate amount of time on an assignment at some point in time. I’ve noticed this usually happens on essays or longer-form writing pieces, where the student figures if they pour enough BS into a Word document, the professor will decide to give them at least a few points.

The problem is that professors are often stuck when it comes to grading these papers, even with a quality rubric. We don’t know if you were having difficulty with the assignment, so we need to point out the errors in detail to help you for the next one, or if you just didn’t give a crap, so we’re wasting time telling you things you knew, but just didn’t do.

Thus, I propose a “Peace with Honor” grade approach.

When a student knows they are behind the 8-ball on an assignment, instead of BSing us to high heaven and having us wade through your BS, a student can write something simple like, “I know I should have dealt with this assignment better, but I’m not wasting your time trying to fake it.”

The professor, in gratitude, will fail the student with a specific amount of points (I’m a fan of 40-50%), with the idea that not having to comment on every stupid thing the student could have written will save time and defer carpal tunnel surgery.

 

The “I’m Better Than This” cease fire: In journalism, we care what you can do, not what your grades are once you graduate. To that end, many professors will encourage students to participate in student media to sharpen their skills and gain experience.

In more than a few cases, this is like encouraging someone to “just try” some cocaine so they can get a bunch of stuff done quickly. The students quickly become addicted to the newsroom and their GPA heads downhill like a stock market graph of the Great Depression.

Professors often start getting weaker work from those students because they’re running the paper or the radio station or the TV station. Suddenly, classes have become something of an fifth or eighth priority in their lives.

For some professors, this can become irritating because we KNOW you can do better at this work. For some students, this can also become irritating because they KNOW they are better than what the grades they get keep reflecting.

A potential solution is this cease-fire approach: I’ve told more than a few students, “Look, I get it. I once skipped six weeks of classes because I was dedicated to the student newspaper. I know why you’re disappearing like a kid running after a red balloon in a Stephen King novel. I also understand I’m not a top priority, so let’s try to make peace with this.

“I will promise not to ride you mercilessly about how crappy your work is in here, if you promise not to piss and moan about your lousy grades. We’ll get you through this alive, and once you end up running a professional newsroom, just make sure you keep your alma mater in mind for potential internship candidates. And don’t make GPA a requirement for successful applications when you’re running the show.”

 

The “One-Point, Death-Grade, Elevator-Pitch Shimmy” Approach: At the end of a semester in which we grade hundreds of papers across multiple sections and various courses, the computer will eventually spit out a number that correlates to your grade. In more than a few cases, that number will be riding juuuuuuuusssst on the line of a potentially life-altering edge.

For example, if 75 is the demarcation line between a C and a C-, and you need a C or better to continue in your program, you might find yourself sitting at 74.89. The difference between having to start all over with a course or be able to take what you’ve likely scheduled for next semester hangs in the balance of a professor’s attitude regarding rounding, grade-grubbing and the degree to which they want to tolerate you again.

Here’s the best I got for what I would consider “death grades,” the line between pass/fail, advance/retake or B-/C+ (It’s hard to sleep at night knowing you were THAT close to a B of any kind and came up short.): If you’re within a point or two of that death grade, we professors promise to tell you before we file. You have 24 hours to make up a 30-second elevator pitch that would convince us to buy your argument for a better grade.

If you use the words “deserve,” “worked hard,” “need this to graduate,” or any other whiny bull-pucky, you’re done. Gimme at least one or two concrete reasons that I told you were relatively important to this class that you learned or did that make you worthy of me shimmying  up your grade a tad.

My discretion in the end, but I gave you a chance.

And finally…

 

The “But I Tried Really Hard In This Class” Resolution: When your grade is somewhere in the vicinity of the Mendoza Line and you missed so many classes that I almost called in an Amber Alert on you , it’s kind of ballsy to make the claim of effort.

That said, numerous students do this every year, so here’s the best solution:

Good luck with finals and we’ll see you next time!