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!

The stuff you wished someone had told you about looking for life after college (A Throwback Post)

YARN | Christ, 7 years of college down the drain | Animal House (1978) | Video clips by quotes | 8468e662 | 紗

And this guy didn’t even have student loan debt…

Students have been stopping by the office lately with one of two declarations:

“I got a job! The world is full of rainbows and kittens and sunshine!”
“I can’t find a job. Is there any chance you could back your truck over me a few times in the faculty parking lot so I don’t have to go live in my mom’s basement for the rest of my life?”

The highest of the highs and the lowest of the lows are both likely to find things are significantly different than they expect them to be after the cap and gown goes to Goodwill and they begin the next stage of their lives.

Today’s throwback post is a look at something I deemed “Life 101” a few years back. A group of really smart folks I’ve had the honor of knowing (and in some cases teaching) were willing to chip in words of advice for the soon-to-be graduates. Seemed like a good time to bring this back.

As the post notes, this was part one of two, so I’ve linked the original part two at the bottom if you are so inclined.

Enjoy!

Life 101 (Part I): Everything you wished you’d known before you graduated but nobody told you

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(It’s not really that bad. You just need a few hacks here and there to soften the situation.)

A student showed up in my office a few weeks back with a big smile on her face and the peptic energy that only comes from wanting to tell someone else the best news in the world.

“Dr. Filak! I got a job!” she said, a mix of glee, elation and relief pouring out of her as she explained what she did and how this worked and where she was going to be employed.

I listened and congratulated her multiple times before I asked the inevitable question: “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, but what was the offer?”

She proudly told me how much she was making, which was a decent amount. She wouldn’t have to steal Splenda packets from local diners or live on Ramen for every meal, that’s for sure.

When I asked how the negotiation for that amount went, she said, “Oh. They just gave me the salary they were going to pay me. I asked my parents if that was good money and they said it was, so I took it.”

She noticed the look on my face. “Oh no!” she said. “Did I do bad?”

“No,” I said. “But you could have done better…”

I then explained the whole process of salary negotiations to her and she realized something nobody at this institution had ever taught her: Salaries ARE negotiable. So are so many other things.

If universities are good at training students to develop skills that will help them get their first career jobs and put them on the path to a fully adult life, they absolutely suck at helping students make the transition from college to that life. I know this from my own experience, as well as that of colleagues and former students, so I thought a good wrap up for the semester would be one final lesson for the group: Life 101.

I asked the hivemind of folks I trust through various social media outlets and connections to tell me one thing they wished they’d known before they left school that they found out the hard way once they got into the “real world.”

Today’s post is the first of two that look at issues beyond graduation, focusing mainly on getting a job and the reality of that first job.

Tomorrow’s post will look at the life issues you face once you get out and become “a grown up” that you probably won’t see coming.

I hope this helps:

THE JOB SEARCH

There are few things more anxiety-provoking and terrifying than looking for a first career job out of college. You have put in the time and energy to pass the classes. You got the grades they said were going to propel you forward. You got involved in every activity someone said would “look great on a resume” and you worked at student media, internships and part-time gigs to fatten up your experience.

You put yourself out there and… crickets…

As a college student, I feared my parents’ basement. I constantly heard of students who did “all the right things” but ended up living back with their parents in a basement because they couldn’t get a job. I mentioned that to several students and several currently employed former students and the vibe was the same:

“I was scared to death that I’d done all this work and I’d be living back home in the basement. I never had a problem with my family, but I damned sure didn’t want to be back there as ‘that kid.’”

“I knew I could go home. I just didn’t want to. I wanted to be a grownup.”

I have said this before and the people who have experienced it have told me I am dead on with this analogy. Those who haven’t tell me I’m crazy. Then, they experience this and they convert to my way of thinking:

Your first job search is a lot like a bad dating experience: You are ready to go, so you put yourself out there. People are ignoring you and it feels awkward. You don’t know what’s wrong with you, so you get really worried.

Then, someone shows an interest and you have that kind of, “Cool. We should hang out. Let’s exchange info” moment and you get really excited. You start imagining how nice it’ll be and your mind takes you on flights of fancy regarding this relationship.

Then, you don’t hear from them for a while and you start wondering what you did wrong and why they aren’t calling. You start questioning everything you’ve done to this point. You wonder if you should reach out, but you don’t want to look needy.

Eventually, you’ll start to get angry with the, “OK, screw you. I don’t need you thing.” You give up, only to hear from that person shortly after that, with the person giving you a true and great reason why it took so long to reach out and that they really want to see you in a day or two, so let’s set this up…

And then you’re like, “OHMERGERD! I LOVE YOU SO MUCH RIGHT NOW!” but you play it cool and the cycle begins again…

As I’ve told more than a few sobbing students over the years, “It’s not you. You are good. The right people just haven’t figured that out yet. It’ll happen. Trust me.”

(In completing the analogy, that’s what my mother used to try to tell me each time I got dumped in high school… She wasn’t wrong, but the situation still sucked.)

THE JOB OFFER:

The first career job offer is something most people never forget, and I certainly remember getting my job offer from Mizzou.

Well, I remember most of it.

At one point when I was being offered the job and told about what this involved, I think I passed out on the phone. Blood was pounding in my ears, my chest felt like it was going to explode with joy like a frickin’ Care Bear and I couldn’t believe how lucky I was.

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When the first offer came, I took it. No questions asked. I was so happy to be getting that job.

About two years later, my boss called me into his office and told me, “I need to let you know something. I totally screwed you.”

He explained that when he hired me, he gave me the lowest lowball offer he could, figuring I’d negotiate my way up to something more reasonable. When I didn’t, he was over a barrel. He couldn’t just give me more money, but he also knew I didn’t know any better.

(To be fair, he then told me he was getting me connected with the grad program so I could go after a Ph.D. It was a fair trade in the long run.)

He was a good guy and it never occurred to me that he had lowballed me. He then gave me the best advice I share on a regular basis, “Never take the first offer. Always negotiate for your worth.”

Of all the things people mentioned in their responses to me, salary negotiations were the most important:

“Journalism is not a ‘calling.’ It’s a business. Negotiate your pay. Don’t work for less than you’re worth. Think 5-10 years down the road.”

“Don’t count on the editor who hires you to have your economic interests at heart. You should be prepared to negotiate for the pay you need to live, and expect them to expect you to negotiate because it may be a LONG TIME before you have as much leverage to get yourself more money than when you have the initial job offer.”

“Know your worth and don’t settle just to get hired and have a job. A LOT of companies are hiring, so test the waters and see where you feel valued.”

“Agreed with everybody who said negotiate your starting salary. Do some research of similar roles in the area and don’t just take the first offer that comes because you’re scared/excited just to get one, which is what I did.”

In addition to negotiating salaries, people noted that they wished they’d negotiated for extra vacation time, an earlier start for health insurance, improved hours/requirements and other bennies that they thought were just written in stone.

Another person noted this “look forward” in life as crucial:

Take whatever 401k match is offered, even if you can’t contribute anything else right away.

WELCOME TO THE FIRST DAY OF THE REST OF YOUR LIFE (OR NOT)

When I went to my college orientation session about 30 years ago, the people there told us that we would likely change jobs about six or seven times in our lifetime. At that point, they meant that we would likely climb the corporate ladder, maybe switching companies within our field, but essentially staying put.

According to recent data, Millennials will change CAREERS almost six times in their lives. People now tend to stay with an employer for an average of three or four years, even with opportunities for advancement. This shifts the entire paradigm of how to look at your first job. Here are some thoughts from the hivemind:

“Paying your dues” is an outdated concept. Don’t let your parents, employers or friends convince you otherwise.

The quality of the job and the people you work with are far more important than the location.

Having a different approach to teaching and research is a GOOD thing!… Students need to know there’s many paths towards your goals in life. Do what works for you.

You don’t have to stay in the first job you get after college forever. It’s okay to change your mind or realize it’s not something you enjoy.

(I wish someone taught me how to deal with) not starting exactly in the position you want and how to be content with the growth process. Your degree does not always land you your dream job immediately.

This last point leads us to the unfortunate truth associated with taking that first job…

YOUR JOB MIGHT SUCK

As much as the dream job might be just a dream, it doesn’t mean suffering and pain should be your daily life at work. Everything from toxic workplace environments and weird bosses to feeling lost and becoming undervalued can make that first job you were so excited about feel like an abusive relationship.

I’ve worked for bosses that I would step in front of a bus for, because they were so helpful, supportive and just entirely amazing. I have also worked for bosses I wouldn’t feel bad about nudging into path of oncoming freeway traffic.

The folks who chimed in on this had similar experiences:

Your boss makes all the difference for how well you do in your first few jobs. Take your first job based on how well you vibe with the boss.

I once told my son that if he ever has a job where the manager/supervisor/head honcho etc, comes over and parks his butt on your desk, smiles and says, “we’re all like family here”…….Leave.

Also that just because things aren’t perfect, it isn’t necessarily your fault:

Your first job isn’t your only job. Sometimes it legitimately sucks and that’s OK. It’s not an indictment on you or your work.

Always work toward aligning what you want to do with what your job/career actually is, while still getting your current job’s work done of course. But always keep working toward doing what you want to do, even if your first job out of school isn’t your dream job (it won’t be).

The one caveat I’ll offer here is the one based on my own sense of paranoia: There’s nothing wrong with leaving a job because it’s not what you want or need. That said, have your next move already to go upon your decision to quit.

I equate it to the old “Tarzan” movies when he’s swinging from vine to vine across the jungle. Don’t let go of one vine until you have the other in hand.

TOMORROW: Life, or something like it, after college.

6 thoughts for new journalism graduates on the job hunt that have nothing to do with actually getting a job (A Throwback Post)

It’s not quite graduation time yet, but given the palpable anxiety I am sensing from my students, the job hunt for soon-to-be graduates is clearly underway. A young woman with a great set of experience showed up in my office this week with that “frustrated nnnnnggghhhh” vibe about her, as she had put multiple resumes into the field and gotten few responses.

“Should I call them or something?” she asked. “They’re not getting back to me and I’m worried.”

“When did you apply?” I asked.

“Last week…”

So that was a “No” on my end, as well as a reminder that as to how she needed to look at this whole situation. As I began to say it, she cut me off.

“I know, I know,” she said. “You were right. This is like bad dating. I need to be patient.”

Along with that pearl of weird-dom, here are a few other thoughts for your graduates looking for some help on life beyond the ivory towers and dive bars that formed their college experience.

6 thoughts for new journalism graduates on the job hunt that have nothing to do with actually getting a job

Graduation swept through town this weekend, and along with it came the speeches, the pomp, the circumstance and academic regalia (When I wear mine, I look like Henry the VIII got a Mr. T starter kit for Christmas).

I no longer have the beard, but the medals are still pretty sweet…

Along with all this comes the anxiety of, “OK, now what?” Some students have jobs and they’re worried about how well they’ll do at them. Others have no jobs and wonder if they’ll ever get one. Parents worry that their children will be happy. Some probably also wonder if they’ll have to give up the home gym or a spot in the basement for a returning grad who hasn’t “found it” yet (whatever “it” is). What comes next?

For journalism grads, the anxiety can be even more palpable, as everyone seems to be telling you that your field is dead and you should have gone into business. Other fields can spend months or even years cultivating students for a job that’s waiting for them upon graduation. Journalism? I’ve been told once during a first interview, “We’d like to offer you the job today (Saturday). Could you start Monday?”

I asked the hivemind of pros and profs what advice they had for you all and it was really a mixed bag this time. Usually, everyone chimes in and it’s all in the same vein. This time, things were all over the place. One professor friend of mine noted:

My adult daughter just moved back home, soooo I got nuthin’.

I have often relied on the famous William Golden quote about Hollywood as well: “Nobody knows anything.” Whoever tells you, “This is how to get your perfect job” is either lying to you or trying to recruit you into a cult. Unlike all of those multiple-choice tests you’ve taken over the years, this question doesn’t have a right answer. That said, here are a few to think about as you try to game up for the next stage of life:

You have to be idealistic, but you have to be practical: U.S. Olympic hockey coach Herb Brooks once said this in explaining his team’s chance to do well in the 1980 Olympics. His point was you should shoot for the best possible outcome, but you shouldn’t do so without a reality check. In the case of the job search, take a shot. You want to work at a top five newspaper, in a top 10 TV market, a Fortune 500 company or whatever right away? Toss an application out there. What’s the WORST that can happen? They say no and you don’t get the job, which is right where you are right now.
That said, a 22-year-old journalism graduate with five clips from an internship at the Tamany Tattler and a year’s experience at the student newspaper isn’t likely to land at one of those spots right away, so feel free to look elsewhere. Apply to starter jobs, smaller firms and other places that have openings and you think would be worth a shot. You have to eat. You have to pay rent. And, as they mentioned in “Bull Durham,” it beats selling Lady Kenmore’s at Sears.

Don’t become a desperate psycho-hose-beast: As Tom Petty noted, the waiting is the hardest part. For you, this is the most important thing ever, especially if you’re searching at this time of the year. Even if it’s not cold, snowy and gray where you are, a winter job search can be danged depressing. You know that you don’t want to go home for the holiday where every well-meaning relative will ask, “So, what are you doing now that you’re graduated? Do you have a job?” (Side note 1: When you say “No” and they look at you like you just came down with an incurable disease, remember that look so that you never give it to anyone else ever. Side note 2: Realize that these people will always ask you questions like this that will sap your will to live, even after you get a job. “Do you have a job?” will become “Are you dating anyone special?” will become “So when are you getting married?” will become “Don’t you two want kids?” will become “Are you sure you only want (1, 2, 3…) kids?” Your only hope is to outlive this person so you don’t have to hear, “Are you sure you want to be buried here?”)
This can drive you crazy and it can manifest itself in a number of ways, none of which are good. The worst thing you can do is take it out on potential employers as you decide to call, email or text repeatedly to find out exactly WHERE they are in the hiring process. Most people can smell desperation a mile away and it naturally repels them. Think about the guy at the bar who is insistently trying to buy a gal a drink, a shot, an appetizer, a game of darts or a 1979 Chrysler Cordoba. Does that interaction ever end well for that guy? If you ever need a reminder of how bad this can get, catch the classic “Mike from ‘Swingers’” scene (NSFW- some cussing) or the “Wayne’s World” look at Stacy’s unrequited love.
In short, don’t push it. Breathe.

Look more deeply into your toolbox: The premise of both of these books is that we’re putting tools in your toolbox that you can use in a variety of ways. If you can find the perfect job that makes you happy right away, that’s great. If not, don’t be afraid to apply those tools elsewhere. A recent grad sent me this note, which touched on something I never considered:

After I graduated while I was looking for work I hooked up with a temp agency. It’s a great way to try different stuff without major commitment, you gain experience (and interview skills), you get to network, and you get a weekly paycheck. And some positions are temp-hire.

A journalism professor noted something similar:

Think creatively about ways you can use your journalism skills for other professions, such as PR, teaching, trade publications, advertising, web producer and social media manager jobs. Many more people cross back and forth into journalism and other careers these days than they did back when we were journalists.’

Look around you and see what kinds of places need your skills and don’t fret if they don’t have your exact degree specified in the requirements. You will bounce a lot in this day and age (sometimes by choice, sometimes by necessity, sometimes against your will), so look for things that you think might pay the bills and give you a leg up the next time your perfect job comes around.

Remember the Johnny Sain Axiom on Old-Timers Day: Sain, a longtime pitcher and pitching coach, used to disdain Old-Timers Day. It wasn’t the concept he opposed, but rather that banter among the older players. Sain used to note that “The older these guys get, the better they used to be.”
The same thing can be true for you when dealing with people who are more than happy to tell you that when they were “your age” they got a job right out of school or they had a perfect job waiting for them or whatever. In their mind, they had it all figured out perfectly and made a seamless transition between their education and a career, so why can’t you?
The truth is, it wasn’t that easy for most of them. Some people just got a fortuitous bounce, a lucky break or a family connection. Others don’t work in your field, so comparing your search to theirs is like comparing apples and Hondas. It’s not that they’re better or stronger or faster or whatever. It’s just the way it happened for them. Each search and each job is unique (and I mean that in the truest sense of the word), so don’t let what other people tell you about how great life is get you down.
Even more, don’t presuppose that people you see as your role models nailed the perfect job on the first take. I met with a couple students last week who kept referring to a recent grad as “having it all worked out.” She was their role model who, according to them, interned at Company X, graduated into a full-time job at Company X and then got promoted at Company X in less than a year. She was their Golden Goddess.
What they didn’t know was all the anxiety she had about getting ANY internship, how she had been rejected twice by Company X for an internship and how she ended up sobbing in my office multiple times after that. They also didn’t know about the office fights and other less-pleasant aspects of Company X. In short, the grass isn’t always greener.

Don’t keep up with the Joneses: The easiest way to make you hate yourself and your job search is to compare yourself to other people in a constant game of one-upmanship. If Billy gets a job in a top 75 market, you shouldn’t try to get one at a top 50 market. If Jane gets a job as a writer at a 50,000 circulation newspaper, don’t just go looking for a job at a 100,000-circ paper to prove a point.
I watched this happen constantly among peer groups of students at several of my previous stops, in which it wasn’t enough to get A job, but rather it was crucial to get a job that was better than someone else’s job. Here’s the problem: Just because a job is at a bigger place or somewhere with more cachet, it doesn’t follow it’s a good fit for you. This was how one of my former students ended up in Kentucky doing night-cops, despite not wanting anything to do with Kentucky or a night-cops beat, simply so he could look more impressive. It didn’t work out and he was miserable, before eventually going back to a job that was more “him.”
I know it’s hard to push back against that competitive thinking. (Trust me, it happens everywhere, even in my gig. Former professors will tell their former doctoral students, “Oh, I see you’re at (less prestigious university)… Did you know that James is now at (mega-university) and he’s a dean?”) However, if you find something you like doing, you’ll never really work a day in your life.

Never forget this moment: You will eventually get a job and you will do well. You will get older and get more responsibility. You might change jobs or careers or whatever. However, what should never change is your memory of this moment right now, when you’re scared out of your mind about getting any job at all, making rent, dodging Aunt Ethyl and her questions at the family holiday party, trying to avoid calling the Beaver County Tidbit 1,002 times to find out if they are still interested in you and everything else you feel.
If you can remember the feeling you have at this moment, you will never lose your empathy for the future generations who are going through it. It might help you in little ways like not asking the “Aunt Ethyl” questions of your younger family members or hustling a bit more to get through that stack of resumes you need to read. It might help you in big ways as well, like thinking a little better about the next generation instead of a little worse of it. (People more than occasionally ask me if being around younger people all the time doesn’t make me kind of envious of their youth. My answer is always, “Hell, NO!!!!!” I survived my 20s the first time and made it this far. There’s not enough of anything in the world to make me want to go back to that point in time).
When it comes to getting employed, things almost always work out. I know that sounds ridiculous, but my batting average on things like is pretty good and in the end, you’ll have some great stories to tell.
And thanks to your journalism education, you’ll tell them well.

A Lot at Steak: How U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon’s AI Blunder Led to Marketing Gold

THE LEAD: Secretary of Education Linda McMahon managed to confuse AI (artificial intelligence) with A.1. (steak sauce) while delivering her comments at the ASU+GSV Summit last week.

The gaffe became fodder for all sorts of internet humor, but company responsible for making the condiment saw an awesome opportunity and took full advantage of the mistake:

A.1. Sauce capitalized on McMahon’s blunder by posting an Instagram post on their verified account saying, “You heard her. Every school should have access to A.1.”

“Agree, best to start them early,” the picture attached to the post reads.

Other Instagram users loved the response from the Kraft Heinz-owned brand. One user even commented, “I will be buying a bottle or two because of this post.”

KRAFT-ING MARKETING GOLD AGAIN: Kraft Heinz, which markets A.1., has a decent track record of grabbing a cultural moment and running with it. The company took advantage of the “Barbenheimer” explosion by introducing a pink “Barbie-cue” sauce and has also linked a ranch dressing to Taylor Swift. In each case, the company drew attention to its brand, garnered some nice free media publicity and avoided the kinds of gaffes often associated with trying to ride a trend.

Despite the random uncertainty in the market these days, the stock closed up on Friday and has shown a gain from $27.60 on April 9 to $29.33 on Friday. Although that time frame corresponds with the comments McMahon made about A.1., it’s a bit simplistic to say the gains were solely connected to that mistake.

In its rating of best food stocks to buy according to billionaires, Insider Monkey rated Kraft Heinz at the top of the list for a number of reasons, including global supply chain and reliance on AI (not A.1.) for keeping factories humming. Still, people are saying they’re buying a bottle or two of the steak sauce as a result of the gaffe:

So far, A.1.’s loyal fans seem to be in support of its “new sauce.”

“My husband wants a bottle for his desk,” one commenter wrote under the brand’s post. “He teaches middle school, at least until they replace him with A.1.”

BLOG FLASHBACK: Kraft Heinz isn’t alone in taking advantage of dumb situation with some marketing genius. As we noted back in 2018, Country Time Lemonade drew a lot of attention after it created its “Legal Ade” defense fund for kids who had been fined for not having a business permit to run their lemonade stands.

Like the A.1. effort, this worked because it was on the right side of the argument, made fun of the utterly ridiculous and didn’t run a significant risk of hurting its brand with this maneuver.

Other organizations tend not to be as lucky when they jumped in on trending hashtags or didn’t think about potential blow back before entering the larger discussion.

DISCUSSION TIME: What do you think Kraft Heinz should do next? Ride the wave? Leave it alone? Try something else? Also, what other marketing maneuvers have you seen that tried to connect with a trend? Did they succeed or fail in your eyes? Why?

The Junk Drawer: Only Good News Edition

I’m sure I put my happiness in here somewhere…

Despite all evidence to the contrary, this blog will not be renamed “Dr. Vinnie’s Trip Through Depressing News and Abject Sadness.” Over the past couple weeks, we’ve focused a lot on things that range from “not all that great” to “Can we get that asteroid Bruce Willis supposedly destroyed to take another shot at us?”

In a somewhat Quixotic attempt to make for a brighter day, despite the fact it might still snow here today and it’s likely that next week, the Easter Bunny will be frozen to the ground, we’re going to do a round up of a few things that give us some happiness. At least that’s the goal…

Let’s start with the best news for journalism…

AP’S BACK IN THE (WHITE) HOUSE: The Trump administration banned the Associated Press from the White House Press Pool in February for not agreeing to use the preferred term of “Gulf of America” when referring to the body of water everyone else calls the “Gulf of Mexico.”

AP sued to regain access and a judge found in favor of the wire service on Tuesday:

In a sharply worded opinion, Judge Trevor N. McFadden of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia wrote that the Trump administration must “immediately rescind their viewpoint-based denial” of The Associated Press from presidential events.

“The government repeatedly characterizes The A.P.’s request as a demand for ‘extra special access.’ But that is not what The A.P. is asking for, and it is not what the court orders,” he wrote. “All The A.P. wants, and all it gets, is a level playing field.”

Trump actually appointed McFadden to his current position, so there’s no room for the argument that he’s some sort of Commie-Pinko, Barak-Hussain-Obama, Panickan judge. (I’m sure someone will argue that anyway, but still…) The judge did actually stay the order for five days to give the Trump crew a chance to appeal, but the opinion is very pro-AP.

Speaking of awesome journalism wins…

A LOOK AT THE UT-DALLAS STUDENT-MEDIA DEBACLE EMERGES: Of all the stories we’ve discussed about student media getting shafted, the one I dodged was the story of UT-Dallas. The reason was that a good guy and former staffer at the school’s paper, Ben Nguyen, was working on a deep dive about the topic. He and I first crossed paths at a student media conference in Minnesota, when he and one of his colleagues ended up breaking a story about a professor at UTD saying disgusting things on social media.

In this case, the story looked like a short piece on how the school wasn’t acting right. Ben had sources and background on all of that. However, the more he dug, the weirder it got. We talked a couple times about where this could go or what he had found.

He just emailed me a little bit ago with the published product and a note:

Throughout everything, I’ve appreciated our conversations while I’ve put this draft together. It’s definitely ended up twice as long and about 5 months later than I initially expected, but I hope it’s at least a more comprehensive record of what was a truly absurd chain of events.

Click here to read all of Ben’s hard work.

Speaking of journalistic hard work…

TAKE SOME POYNTERS FROM A GREAT SOURCE: Barbara Allen, the former director of college programming for the Poynter Institute, has taken on a new adventure with the launch of her new project that covers college journalism from all angles. The website can be found here, where she outlines the kinds of stories she covers, the resources she provides and the content she curates for educators, students and media folks.

You can also subscribe to the newsletter she puts out weekly, which keeps you up to date on the crucial events impacting student media as well as highlighting some amazing pieces that students are doing in their own communities. I was proud to be one of the early adopters on this one and I have found a ton of great stuff on this site.

And finally, speaking of being proud of something…

THAT’S “HEY, YOU DISTINGUISHED IDIOT” TO YOU, PAL: I try to keep the personal promotional stuff to a minimum here, as this blog isn’t about me, but rather it should be about stuff you care about.

That said, I have to mention this because it speaks volumes about what makes for a good job and a good boss.

I was submitted for a promotion earlier this year, and when a rather specious decision came back from the committee, my boss and my boss’s boss had my back. They could have easily said, “Well, the committee makes the decisions,” or “Well, you’ll get ’em next time.” Instead, they said, “This is stupid and wrong and we’re going to fix it somehow.”

And they did. So, along with not having to file an extra post-tenure review report, I got the benefit of being named a “distinguished professor” at UW-Oshkosh.

The title is nice, although I still go back to all the students who wrote fire briefs in which they noted how firefighters “distinguished the fire.” I also think back to the “Doctor of Paper” origin story. Trust me, I’m not getting cuff links made with “Distinguished” on one and “Professor” on the other.

However, I will continue to tell my students that while more money or a cooler title can be appealing during your job search, finding the kind of boss you’d walk in front of a bus for is really worth a lot as well.

I hope this was positive enough for everyone. 🙂

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

PS- I’ll be headed to Missouri to speak at the Missouri College Media Convention this weekend, so the blog is on break until next week. Can’t wait to blog all about it.

When the marketing pitch is juuussst a bit outside (A throwback post)

In spite of what the optics suggest, my goal in life is not to write a book for every possible subject I might ever teach. In fact, I’m often on the look out for a good book for certain courses, including blogging, principles of advertising and feature writing (the one I have been using is discontinued).

So, when a company pitches an email at me about a book I’ve requested (usually through an online form or as a “standing order” in case they find something), I’m all ears. That said, here’s an email I got this morning that isn’t going to cut the muster:

Here are a couple reasons why this pitch isn’t going to work:

I’m not teaching a convergent media class any time soon, nor have I taught a class in a while that might fit this bill for this book.
I didn’t actually request this book, or access to it.
Most importantly, if I wanted to peruse the book for any reason, I wouldn’t need a special code for this, as it’s my book.

Look! It’s got my name on the cover and everything!

I understand that publishers are in need of reaching out to sell stuff, and I’m glad that my other publisher (Focal) is doing something to try to connect people with this book. However, it does make me question their overall approach when they a) couldn’t bother to eliminate the author from the sales database and b) approach the selling like those scam texts that are “just providing you with information that you requested on this exciting opportunity!”

So, for the last Throwback Thursday before Spring Break, here’s a look back at another time where the pitch a publisher threw was juuuuuuusssssst a bit outside….

So… No, then? (or why it’s important to research your readers before you pitch to them)

I understand this blog tends to skew more toward news than some folks might appreciate, given that my entire pitch for the “Dynamics of Media Writing” is that ALL disciplines of media (news, PR, Ad, marketing etc.) can get something of value out of it. The skew is due to trying to cover both the media-writing text and the news reporting and writing text in one spot. It also also comes from the idea that a lot of things people perceive as “news” things are actually valuable for all media, including skills like interviewing, research, inverted-pyramid writing and so forth. Finally, it seems that news folks tend to make more public mistakes than do some of the other disciplines, so I get more content there. (If you want me to hit on more topics in the PR/Ad/Marketing stuff, feel free to pitch me some thoughts. I’d love to do it.)

That said, occasionally there is a specific foul up in a specific part of the field that bears some analysis. Consider that when you look at this email I got the other day. I redacted the identifiers as best I could:

Dear Professor Filak,

Greetings from (COMPANY NAME)! I hope this finds you well. In the coming months, (AUTHOR NAMES) will begin to revise the twelfth edition of their introductory journalism text, (REPORTING BOOK NAME). This text strives to give students the knowledge and skills they need to master the nuts and bolts of news stories, as well as guidance for landing a job in an evolving journalism industry.

Right now we are seeking instructors to review the twelfth edition of (REPORTING BOOK NAME) and provide feedback. This input is invaluable to us, as it gives us a greater sense of how to best address both instructor and student needs. If you are currently teaching the introductory news reporting and writing course or will be teaching the course soon, would you be interested in offering your feedback?

If you would like to review, please respond to this email and let me know if you will need a copy of the printed text. You should plan to submit your comments via TextReviews by 2/6/18. In return for your help, we would like to offer you (MONEY).

At your earliest convenience, kindly respond to this e-mail to let me know if you are available and interested in participating. Again, please let me know if you will need a copy of (REPORTING BOOK NAME)…

I’m always happy to help people and I’m not averse to making a buck by pretending to know what I’m talking about, but this felt both awkward and ridiculous. One of the things both “Dynamics” books push a lot is the idea of making sure you know what you’re talking about before you ask a question. The books also push the idea of researching your audience members so you know how best to approach them. Either the person writing this email didn’t do that or just didn’t care.

Here’s how I know that: It’s called “Google.”

Had this person done even a basic search on me she would have learned several things:

I am teaching the courses they associate with this book. I teach nothing but these courses, as you can find on the UWO journalism department website. The line of “If you are currently teaching the introductory news reporting and writing course or will be teaching the course soon…” tells me I’m on a list somewhere and this is a form email at best.

I wrote several books, including one that is likely to be some form of competition for this book. (I’m not saying it will be as good or better or anything, but my title includes words like “news,” “reporting” and “writing,” so it’s a pretty safe bet we’re vying for the same students.) This was literally one of the top five items on the first page of my Google search. She also sent her message the same day I got this alert from Amazon:

(I have no idea how Amazon quantifies “#1 New Release in Journalism” but I’ll take it.)

The point is, it wasn’t a secret, so it appeared that she didn’t look me up and was like the guy at the bar telling me, “Hey, see that babe over there? I’m totally going to score with her!” and I’m like, “Uh, dude, that’s my wife…”
On the other hand, maybe she did look me up, found the book and asked anyway, which is like the even-worse guy at the bar who’s saying, “Hey man, your wife is pretty hot. Any chance you can give me some tips on how to score with her?”

Thinking about all of that for a moment, I did the polite thing and emailed back, explaining how I felt this would be a conflict of interest (it is), and that any advice I gave her would be likely be somewhat problematic as the author of a competing book (it is). I also noted that I know the book she is pitching well (I do) and I know the authors well (I do), so this would also be a bit awkward for me (it really is). Here was her email back to me, which again made me think she wasn’t actually reading this:

Hi Professor Filak,

Thanks so much for letting me know. We will certainly keep you in mind for future projects!

So, again, the point of the blog isn’t to beat people up for doing things poorly but rather to offer advice on how to do things better. Here are a few basic tips:

Research first, then write: You don’t have to do an Ancestry.com profile on every person to whom you market or with whom you engage in outreach, but it’s not hard to Google someone. Most people put more social-media stalking effort into learning about the “new kid” at school than this person put into finding out about me. In marketing, you often have access to proprietary data as well, so you can find out if this person had any previous engagement with your organization. In my case, I used that book for more than a decade and still keep up with it, so that might have been something she could have found.
Personalize when possible: If you are sending out 100,000 requests for something like a survey and you are expecting a 10 percent response, you will not have the ability to personalize all of the information on everyone’s card or email. That makes sense. However, when you are microtargeting a group of people with a specific set of skills or interests and that group isn’t going to overwhelm a data center, work on personalizing your content. That line about “If you are currently teaching the introductory news reporting and writing course or will be teaching the course soon…” could have easily been tweaked to say something like, “I see you have taught writing and reporting courses at UW-Oshkosh…” and it wouldn’t have taken much. Making these minor tweaks shows that you have done your research. Engaging in some personalized communication shows your readers you care enough to see them as individuals as opposed to a wad of names on a spreadsheet.
Try not to screw up, but if you do, don’t ignore it: The one thing that stuck with me when I got that response email from her was that I didn’t think she figured out what she was actually asking me or why it was weird. I had that feeling that if I had written her back and said, “I’m sorry I can’t do this because I’ve just been placed in an intergalactic prison for the rest of my life for murdering a flock of Tribbles with a phaser I set to ‘kill’ instead of ‘stun,’” I would have gotten the exact same email back. The whole exchange really reminded me of this scene:

The thing that is important to realize is that you are going into a field that has two important and scary things going for it:

It’s small enough that you’re really about two degrees of separation from everyone else, so people know other people.
People in the field love to talk.

If you end up screwing up because you didn’t do the first two things suggested above, don’t compound the problem.

I have no idea if I’ll ever get approached by this publisher to review anything, but I know I will always carry with me the memory of this interaction. Had it been a great interaction, that would have been good for the publisher. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case.

A Brief Follow-Up on Fact-Checking A Flaming-Fart Claim

Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who saw the claim that Gorman Thomas once lit a fart and took off one of Alfredo Griffin’s eyebrows in the process:

Clearly, I hit a nerve…

This was the most traffic I got on a single post in one day since the opening of the blog. By 6 a.m. Thursday, I had more visitors than I have on most normal days. A former student hit me up on Facebook to let me know his friends had found it while Googling this topic and that my post was pretty high on the list. So, I took a look on Google and found this:

I’m now famous for all people who Google “Gorman Thomas” and “fart.” Mom would be so proud…

My post was at the very top of a Google search, something I never thought could happen on anything not sponsored. Apparently, I should have pivoted the blog away from journalism years ago and focused primarily on fact-checking retro-claims of the farts produced by athletes…

I guess if there are a couple key points to make about all this, they are:

I’m thrilled that so many people took the time to try to fact check the claim about Gorman Thomas, as it gives me hope that maybe we aren’t all digital lemmings. I’d be even more thrilled if folks were digging into things with a little more societal gravitas, but we all have to start somewhere, so let’s be happy for a moment on this one.
Oddity still remains a key interest element. Every time I rework the books for subsequent editions, I try to make sure that they’re aging well. When I pitched the FOCII mnemonic for knowing what tends to draw people to information (Fame, Oddity, Conflict, Immediacy and Impact), I could point to specific examples I was seeing to support each element. In each subsequent edition, things in the world kept getting weirder and weirder, so it wasn’t always clear if we had become kind of numb to Oddity. Apparently, we haven’t. Or we all just like the idea of lighting farts.
If someone out there knows Gorman Thomas and is reading this, tell the man I’ve got his back.

And tell him I’ve still got the ball he signed for me.

Until next week,

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

Let’s Reinforce the Driver’s Ed Rules of Journalistic Writing (A Throwback Post)

The view from my driveway this morning told me two things: 1) It wasn’t going to be an easy trip to the office and 2) at least 75% of my students would suddenly come down with food poisoning and couldn’t possibly make the 8 a.m. class.

The first decent snow of the year in Wisconsin provided me with the impetus for this week’s Throwback Thursday Post.

When it comes to weather like this, we generally have two types of drivers that account for 95 percent of the people on the road:

The driver who goes 12 mph, is constantly sliding all over the road, can’t avoid skids on curves and practically stops about every quarter mile. In spite of this, they will continue down the road and drive just fast enough to prevent you from passing them.
The driver who has the philosophy of “I got my jacked up 4 x 4 with brass truck nuts on it and God is my co-pilot, now let’s DO THIS!” as they fly past everyone at 95 mph on a two-lane road.

I spent my morning behind the former and noted a few of the latter had landed in the ditch all along Highway 21. (Dad’s theory on four-wheel drive was always, “It just means you get stuck deeper in the ditch.) Throughout my drive, I found myself going back to my days of driver’s ed, where I learned how to reverse the gas and brake process while making sure I didn’t stomp on a puppy. (It makes sense if you read the rest of this, I swear.)

I thought this post might also help those of us who are near the end of the semester and feeling a bit vexed by the students who STILL can’t seem to figure out how an attribution works, what a fact really is or why they should not have 21 adjectives in the average media-writing sentence.

As much as it seems like a good time to throw our hands up and say, “Screw it. Write however you want.” it’s actually a good time to double down on those “driver’s ed rules” of writing and pound them in even harder. The kids might not like it now, but they’ll come to value it later.

Teaching the Driver’s Ed Rules of Journalism

The guy who taught me driver’s ed at the “Easy Method” school was a balding man with a ginger mustache and sideburns to match. He told us to call him “Derkowski.” Not Mr. Derkowski or Professor Derkowski. Just Derkowski.

I remember a lot from that class, as he basically beat certain things into us like the company would murder his children if we didn’t have these rules down pat.

Hands on the wheel? 10 o’clock and 2 o’clock.

Pedals? Release the brake to go, release the gas to slow.

Feet? One foot only. We were required to tuck our left foot so far back into the seat that we could feel the seat lever with the heel of our shoe.

Seat belt? You touch that before you touch anything else in the car or you fail the test. (Or as one of my dad’s friends told me just before the exam, “Get in the car. Put on your seat belt. Then, have your mom hand you the keys through the window.”)

There are a dozen other things that still stick with me, ranging from the left-right-left view of the mirrors to the probably-now-unspeakable way to look behind you when backing up. (“Put your arm across the back of the seat and grab the head rest like you’re putting a move on your girl at the drive-in,” he told me once, I swear…)

After 30 years behind the wheel, I still can’t shake some of this stuff, and most of it is still really helpful. Do I use it all the time? No. (I’m sure the man would be having a stroke if he saw me eating a hash brown, drinking a Diet Coke and flipping through the radio all at the same time while flying down Highway 21 at 10 over…) However, it was important to have that stuff drilled into my brain so that I knew, when things got iffy, how best to drive safely.

When I had to drive 30 miles up I-94 in a white out, in a 1991 Pontiac Firebird that had no business being a winter car, you better believe I abided by the gospel of Derkowski.

I had my hands in the right spots, I was looking left-right-left before a lane change and I treated those pedals like I was stepping on puppies (Another one of his euphemisms, I believe; “You wouldn’t stomp on a puppy!” he’d yell at someone who did a jack-rabbit start or a bootlegger brake.)

It took two hours, more than four times what Mapquest would have predicted, as I slowly passed among the littering of cars and semis that had slid into ditches and side rails. Still, I got there alive.

The reason I bring all of this up is because with the advent of another semester (we still don’t start for two weeks, but I figure you all are up and running), many folks reading this blog will be teaching the intro to writing and/or reporting courses. That means in a lot of cases, students will be coming in to learn how to write the same way I came into that driver’s ed class so many years ago: All we know is what we have observed from other people.

My folks were good drivers, but even they were like lapsed Catholics when it came to the finicky points of the rules: Five miles over the limit was fine, seat belts were pretty optional and one hand on the wheel did the trick. Outside of them, the world looked like a mix of “Death Race” and “The Dukes of Hazzard.” Gunning engines at stop lights, squealing tires, the “Detroit Lean” and more were what I saw.

Students coming into writing classes have been writing for years, so they figure they’ll be fine at it. They also figure writing is writing, so what’s the big deal if I throw 345 adjectives into this hyperbolic word salad of a sentence and call it good? Nobody ever said it was a problem before…

The students need some basic “rules” pounded into the curriculum, repeated over and over like a mantra, to emphasize the things that we find to be most important to keeping them out of trouble in the years to follow. Mine are simple things: Noun-verb-object, check every fact like you’re disarming a bomb, attributions are your friend, one sentence of paraphrase per paragraph… It’s as close to a tattoo on their soul as they’re ever going to get.

It’s around this time I often get into random disagreements with fellow instructors about this stuff. Some are polite, while others react like I accused them of pulling a “Falwell Campari” moment. In most cases, the argument centers on the idea that there aren’t really rules for writing or that “Big Name Publication X” writes in 128-word sentences or that paragraphs often go beyond one sentence, so why am I teaching students these “rules” this way?

It’s taken me a long time to figure out how best to explain it, but here’s it is: I’m teaching driver’s ed for journalism.

In other words, you will eventually be on your own out there and you won’t have your instructor yelling at you about where your hands are or if you looked at the right mirror at the right time. You probably won’t die if you drive without your foot all the way back against the seat, nor will not maintaining a “car-length-per-10-mph” spacing gap lead to a 42-car pile up on the interstate.

In that same vein, you won’t automatically lose a reader if your lead is 36 words, or confuse the hell out of them if you don’t have perfect pronoun-antecedent agreement. Libel suits aren’t waiting around every corner if you don’t attribute every paragraph and if you accidentally (or occasionally deliberately) tweak a quote, you won’t end up in the unemployment line.

However, if the basics get “The Big Lebowski” treatment up front, there’s no chance of those students being able to operate effectively when the chips are down. (There’s a reason the military teaches people to march before it teaches people how to drive a tank.) Until those basics are mastered, the students will never know when it’s acceptable to break a rule or why it makes sense to do so.

Of all the things I remember about Derkowski (other than that godawful straw cowboy-looking hat thing he wore) was that even though he enforced the rules with an iron fist, he could always tell us WHY the rule mattered and WHY we needed to abide by it. Say what you want to about the items listed in my “this is a rule” diatribe above, but I can explain WHY those things are important in a clear and coherent way. Even if the students didn’t like them, they at least understood them.

Sure, over the years, the rules change (Apparently 10 o’clock and 2 o’clock is now a death sentence…) with AP apparently deciding to keep all of us on our toes almost to the point of distraction. We adapt to them as instructors and the ones that are most germane to the discipline, we write into our own version of gospel.

We also know that we’re not going to be there to press the point when a former student at a big-name publication uses “allegedly” in a lead. (That doesn’t mean we still don’t. Just ask any of my former students and they can tell you about conversations we’ve had about quote leads and lazy second-person writing.)

I tell the students once they get off of “Filak Island,” they can do it however they want or however their boss wants. (I also tell them to ask their bosses WHY they want to use allegedly or randomly capitalize certain words. In most cases, the answer is silence mixed with “duh face,” I’m told.) However, my job is to teach them the rules of the road, and I think that’s how a lot of us view things in those early classes.

I will admit, however, that it’s fun when I hear back from a long-graduated student who tells me how they can still hear my voice in the back of their head when they’re writing something. (It’s even more fun when they tell me how shorter leads or noun-verb attributions are now the rule at work.)

If we do it right, enough of the important things will stick, they’ll revert to the basics when in danger and they’ll be just fine, even without us there to pump the brakes.

Why the hell I’m at UW-Oshkosh, Why the scholastic journalism division of AEJMC is wonderful and the most important question you should ask yourself more frequently: The 2024 AEJMC SJD Honor Lecture

Amy and I had a blast in Philly, where I received recognition for the Scholastic Journalism Division’s Honor Lecture. Photo courtesy of Bradley Wilson

Every year, I volunteer to present sessions at the Kettle Moraine Press Association’s Summer Camp, a week-long event on the UW-Whitewater campus that gives high school students a chance to learn from pros and professors in advance of their school year.

After I’d finished up with my sessions, one of the college kids who had helped with the workshop approached me with a few questions. He was the editor of the Royal Purple, the student newspaper on campus, so we talked a bit about open records and crime reporting. Then, he paused.

“Do you mind if I ask you a personal question?” he began.

“Sure. Go ahead.”

“You taught at Ball State, right?”

“Yeah…”

“Well… I don’t know how to say this, but… What the hell are you doing at UW-Oshkosh?”

My first instinct was to say, “Dude, you’re at Whitewater. This is like Spud Webb calling Muggsy Bogues short.” I stopped short on that and started to laugh as I explained how life led me to where I am today.

A moment of levity before things really got out of hand. Photo courtesy of Bradley Wilson.

That experience with the high school kids and the subsequent diss on my place of employment kind of kick-started my approach to the AEJMC Scholastic Journalism Division Honor Lecture I gave about a month later. Since I got word that I’d received this major honor, I was wracking my brain trying to figure out what to say and how to say it.

I also found myself trying to avoid being a massive hypocrite, as I spent about 99.3 percent of my time lecturing students that they need to think about the audience, they need to avoid making everything about themselves and they need to actually make a point that matters.

Based on what I heard back from the people who attended the lecture, I figured out how to dance the line between what I think matters, why I think the division itself is amazingly cool and what I thought might be helpful to them.

The folks at the SJD recently posted the text of the Honors Lecture. See if I pass the muster.

It’s time to do the “but I need a better grade” dance again… (A Throwback Post)

It’s about this time of year that I realize I’m apparently a lot funnier and a lot more intelligent.

The email salutations have turned from “Hey,” to “Hello Professor” to “Dear Almighty Master of Wisdom and Knowledge…”

I am also definitely much more handsome, striking and engaging, almost to the point of being an immortal being.

Yep, grades are coming due and some folks realize they’re screwed so here comes the suck-up.

The bi-annual dance between students and professors begins once again, with finals week upon us. With that in mind, today’s throwback post takes a look at both sides of the discussion as we try to survive just a teeny, tiny bit longer…

Translating “The Dance” between professors and students over final grades

As the term winds to a close, students and professors engage in what I refer to as “The Dance” over grades. It’s a tactical, nuanced discussion that involves trying to beg without it looking like begging, trying to answer an email without promising anything and basically engaging in nuclear-treaty-level diplomacy. If we were all trapped in a “Liar, Liar” world, it would essentially look like this:

Student: Pass me and stop being a jerk, you asshat.

Professor: Oh, now you care about this class, you little twerp? Go to hell and take a left.

However, since we have to “Eddie Haskell” it on both ends, here are the legendary begging statements I’ve gotten from students over the years or variations on those themes provided by the hivemind. I’ve added a few “internal thoughts” your professors have had over the years when it comes to responding to these pleas. Enjoy:

“Could you just add XX small points to my final grade?”

First, all points are created equal. Second, that figure has ranged from 1 to about 100, depending on the level of desperation. Third, when you kept doing the same stupid thing over and over again because instead of reading my comments, you just looked at the grade and thought, “Screw you, dude” you might not need those “small points.”

“I’m graduating this term…”

Not if you need to pass this class, you’re not.

“Is there anything I can do?”

Can you invent a time machine, go back in history and tell the earlier version of yourself to turn stuff in on time, not skip every third class and generally give a better overall performance than a disinterested Jay Cutler on a trick play? If not, no.

Prayer can help, although I’m not certain how strong God’s will is to help you out here.

“Is there extra credit?”

Sure, because when the syllabus said, “There will be NO EXTRA CREDIT in this class, so plan accordingly,” I clearly included a loophole for people who didn’t care about anything until the very moment they realized they were screwed.

“Could I rewrite (half of the assignments) for additional credit?”

Sure, because nothing says, “I’m ready to do a good job,” like not doing a good job on anything all term and then expecting to make all of that up in 72 hours before grades are due with no real interest in learning anything other than how many points you need to slide by.

“Could you bump me up just this little bit?”

Sure, because I’m sure that won’t tick off the six other people in your class who sweated bullets to get a passing grade through hard work on that assignment you blew off to go to Cabo and party on the beach.

“Could you possibly round me up?”

I could. Now ask me if I will. Welcome to the grammar lesson you skipped.

“I had some issues this semester…”

Yeah. No kidding.

“Your class is very important to me…”

Um… I believe a lot of things people tell me to make me feel better about myself. This isn’t one of them.

“I don’t understand why you downgraded me…”

You mean the page and a half of comments I included in the body of your paper didn’t clue you in that this random series of unattributed content, fragmented sentence, shifted verb tenses, incorrect word choices and cripplingly bad structure didn’t help? This wasn’t a news story. It was a disaster movie filmed out of sequence.

“This isn’t fair that I should have to take your course over again.”

It isn’t fair I had to grade this pile of sheep dung you referred to as “completed assignments,” but we all have our crosses to bear, I suppose…

“I need (A/B/C grade) to (pass/maintain my scholarship/keep my ego afloat)…”

This is not Burger King. You don’t get it your way.

Volleyball court overrules Supreme Court: Learning audience-centricity through the eyes of a child

I’ve had some interesting back-and-forths with folks online about what journalism is or what journalists should be doing. For some people, if we’re not engaging every day in watchdog journalism that demonstrates a seriousness to the craft, we’re failing.

For others, it’s about how to get out of a rut where we seem to be telling the same story to an increasingly disinterested audience. Important content gets lost among the random string of click-bait and cat TikToks, they argued, because people don’t “get it” when it comes to the value of news.

For me, everything goes back to the basic rules of audience-centricity and storytelling. A great story will grab and hold readers when it is told well by skilled craftspeople in media.

When it comes to audience-centricity, it comes back to answering two questions:

What happened?
Why should I (as the reader) care?

The problem with professors and journalists in that regard is that we sometimes fail to connect on these basic elements, something that came through to me in a story I recently retold.

As part of my job at UW-Oshkosh, I get to be a Team Fellow for our volleyball team. The gig is great: I volunteer to serve as a homework helper, a college-range life coach and basically an ear for anything the athletes feel they need that they can’t get from the other resources available to them on campus. Some times, like last week, I end up helping out by talking to recruits they bring around, which is where this story kind of starts.

I know almost nothing about volleyball, even after seven years of trying, but the kid who was being recruited was a libero, so I told the kid the one story about a libero that I knew.

When Zoe was in grade school, she wanted to play volleyball. The sport, generally speaking, is dominated by giants who play above the net on offense and defense, so my lilliputian child was going to be at a disadvantage, something she found completely deflating.

Around that time, I took her to a UWO game and she got to watch Rachel Gardner, the team’s fireplug of a libero. She was having an amazing game, throwing her body all over the place with reckless abandon.

Rachel Gardner, my kid’s volleyball hero.

“Do you see Rachel out there?” I asked Zoe.

“Yes,” Zoe said. “She’s the BEST PLAYER on the court!”

“What else?”

“She’s small like me!”

After the game, the team did an autograph and meet-and-greet session with the fans. I’d run into Rachel earlier that week and explained the whole “Zoe is short” situation and told her how much she’d love a picture after the game. Rachel said she’d love to.

When Rachel saw us in line, she asked, “Are you Zoe? Come on around in back here!”

Rachel gave her a big hug, we took a couple pictures and we essentially made my kid smile for a week.

Later that month, my mom, Amy and Zoe went to the American Writers Museum in Chicago to hear Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor do a reading of her book and sign copies of her children’s book for kids. Only children were allowed to meet the justice and get pictures, which Zoe was more than happy to do. It was an amazing night for everyone involved.

An impressive resume, no doubt, but did she average more than 5 digs per set her senior year?

Fast forward to the next holiday gathering of our family where we were all talking about the cool things we’d gotten to do over the past year. I then told Zoe, “Why don’t you tell everyone about the really cool experience you had recently?”

“Yeah!” she said. “I got to meet RACHEL GARDNER! She’s a libero on the volleyball team, and she’s small like me and she’s -”

I interrupted, “Um… I meant the time you and nana and mama went to Chicago for that reading…”

“Oh, yeah,” she said. “There was a judge lady who was nice. Anyway, Rachel gave me a hug and we took a picture…” And on and on it went.

In thinking about it from an adult’s perspective, meeting one of the nine people responsible for our nation’s highest legal opinions would have been an epic moment. Even more, Justice Sotomayor was the first Latina appointed to the Supreme Court and only the third woman to ever hold a spot on it.

To my kid, she was just a “nice judge lady.” Now, on the other hand, Rachel Gardner was something to truly behold: A small, tough, amazing student athlete who gave Zoe something to which she could aspire. In short (sorry for the pun), it was so much easier for her to grasp the “what happened” (I met Rachel Gardner, volleyball superstar) and why it mattered (She’s doing something I care about in a way that I can’t right now, but I could if I worked hard enough).

In conceptualizing audience-centricity through the eyes of a child, you learn to figure out that what WE as journalists think is SUPPOSED to be important isn’t always what IS important to the audience we serve. Learning to meet the audience where it lives is crucial in making sure we connect with the readers and viewers in a relevant and useful way.

Even more, it puts a larger impetus on us as media professionals to better explain the answer to that second question. I don’t know if telling Zoe everything this incredible woman did in terms of shattering glass ceilings and shaping juris prudence would have helped the justice measure up to a libero in her eyes. That said, I think it might have helped her think about Sonia Sotomayor as a bit more than a “nice judge lady.”

Even if she couldn’t outdo Rachel Gardner.

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