From Blah to Blog

In the article “The creator of Godwin’s Law on the inevitability of online Nazi analogies and the ‘right to be forgotten,’” these lines leapt out at me:

“This is the first time in human history where individuals, in this number, have had the agency to be heard around the world on a really large scale…now, everyone is in the position of essentially being a publisher, an autobiographer, a poet” (2).

Underwood Standard Typewriter.  Margarita European Inn.  Evanston, Illinois.  
Photographed by Stephen Milligan (July 13, 2014).

I have to admit at the beginning of the Social Role of the Mass Media course, I was less than thrilled when I read the requirement that we would have to maintain a weekly blog.  I saw it as one more requirement.  And I’ve always been resistant to the idea of blogging. 

Who would really care to sit down and read my thoughts on any given topic at any given time?  Who am I?  A little nobody from South Carolina who isn’t qualified to offer an opinion on much of anything. 

Full Disclosure: I did once win a judging contest held by my cousin’s twin girls (then in elementary school) after their parents and I judged some of their artwork.  Or an impromptu performance.  Or something.  I can’t really remember, but they judged me the best judge of them…I know—I was confused, too, but I did win.  I even got a handmade certificate for my excellent judging abilities.

Anyway…I have friends and colleagues who blog.  One keeps a poetry blog.  One maintains a blog on her experiences as a teacher.  Another blogs about her fledgling wine-making adventures.  The teacher blogger has suggested that I start a blog as well, but I’ve always brushed her off.

Who has time for such pursuits?  In particular, who has time for such pursuits in the middle of the school year while taking a course and trying to keep up with the innumerable deadlines and demands of the journalism program, along with those of “normal” teachers and trying to keep up with all of the yard work and the housework, not the least of which is vacuuming up after two Persian cats?

Unless it’s required.

So I grudgingly wrote the first blog and set up the site, merely using the same hosting site the poetry blogger uses because I had his site bookmarked on the computer.  I customized the blog site with a theme and my own photos…I would never just use the defaults—how pedestrian!

Soon I began to look forward to the weekly blog because it gave me a chance to be creative, not creative for school but personally creative (or at least that’s the way I took the assignment).  I had been putting so much time into school and these classes and photography that I’d gotten away from writing for the past few years.  But now this blog gave me the chance to do a little writing—and get a grade for it!  The blog became a little treat amongst all of the serious work of analyzing the social role of the mass media.

So now I have the agency to be heard around the world…now, I am a publisher, an autobiographer, a poet.

I even have fantasies of maintaining this blog after the course ends—of my own free will!

Until I’m buried again…in the middle of the school year…under the next course…and the journalism deadlines…and the teaching duties…and the yard work…and the housework…and a mountain of cat hair…

Reference
Scola, Nancy.  "The creator of Godwin's Law on the inevitability of online Nazi analogies and the 'right to be forgotten.'"  Washington Post.  11     Aug.  2014.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/08/11/the-creator-of-godwins-law-on-the-inevitability-of-online-           nazi-analogies-and-the-right-to-be-forgotten/

All the News That’s Fit to Broadcast

This has been a pretty good week at school.  Miraculously I have had some time during my planning periods the past few weeks to get the Journalism Work Room and Dark Room (really a storage room since we don’t work with film photography) mostly straightened and cleaned up after months—nay, years—of neglect…including organizing the cabinets and drawers.  Now, as of this week, I have just a couple of drawers and four cabinets to work through before it’s done!  I’m not sure where all of this spare time is coming from, though.  Probably Monday I’ll walk in to an e-mail message reminding me the Japanese translation of War and Peace I should have been working on for the past month is due by 3:15.  Oops!

But that’s not the only good news on the school journalism front.  I also found out one of my best writers from Journalism I, whom I also taught in English I Honors a couple of years ago, will be on next year’s staff.  She skipped a year somehow (probably scheduling), but she’ll be back next year.  And this young lady has already engaged in a partnership with a local media outlet (which I totally forgot to mention in this week’s discussion board question about partnerships).  This past year, she has been an intern with the Columbia Star, a local, independent, weekly newspaper.  I’ll definitely be picking her brain to see if we can take further advantage of the door she’s already opened.

Detail.  Gymnasium wall.  W.J. Keenan High School.  Columbia, South Carolina.  2007.  
Photographed by Stephen Milligan (September 30, 2007).

But wait—there’s more!

Another current journalism student (second year) asked me this week what Journalism III Honors was—she said when she was called in by her counselor to make her schedule for next year, that’s the journalism class she was put into.

And, yes, I am at a school where teachers aren’t given their teaching schedules for the following year much in advance or even have much say in it.  Some years I’ve surmised my schedule based on students telling me they were going to be with me the next year for journalism or English.  But it’s better than it was—the first few years I was there, we received our teaching schedules in the mail along with our welcome-back letters.  In August.  With hardly any time to plan.

But I digress.  And this gets even better.

When I went in to see my principal for my final Goal-Based Evaluation conference for the year, he talked about building up the journalism program.  He pulled out a draft copy of the master schedule and told me there was room for another journalism course, which would being me up to three; in fact, he said I currently have only two English II sections, so this could mean I may…possibly…perhaps…conceivably…perchance have four journalism courses next year.  The most I’ve ever had is three, and that was only one year.

Then the other shoe dropped—he would really like to see a broadcasting component in place.

Beggars can’t be choosers, so I guess I’ll have to take that Kent State broadcasting elective after all.

But imagine what I can do with three or four journalism courses!  Imagine having the time to teach all of the concepts we’ve been learning about and produce the publications!

How exciting!  And how frightening!

Let’s just hope I’m not getting in over my head…      

Down the Photoshop Road

Included in this week’s readings for the Social Role of the Mass Media class was a piece called “Detecting the Truth in Photos,” which detailed the ever increasing ease with which one can manipulate photos.  Not only is Photoshop and its ilk widely available and periodically updated, providing more opportunity for image manipulation, but the rapid nature of social media posting makes the spread of such images more rampant and, I would say, so frequent that only the most dedicated among us has time to do the legwork to investigate whether an image has been altered.

And as a dedicated journalism teacher, I looked down on Photoshop use, even by my best friend Paul, who likes to add filters and effects to photos using the program.

Chicago, Illinois.  Looking northeast from the Willis Tower (formerly Sears Tower).  
Photographed by Stephen Milligan (June 14, 2012). 

I looked down on Photoshop, that is, until the summer of 2012.

That summer I found myself on an architectural pilgrimage to the Midwest to visit and photograph as many Frank Lloyd Wright properties as I could in Wisconsin.  The icing on the cake was the fact that the Wright Plus housewalk in Wright’s Oak Park, Illinois, neighborhood coincided with the first leg of my trip, so, of course, I took advantage of this opportunity!

Now, you may be wondering what this has to do with Photoshop.

When I returned to South Carolina and began pulling the photos off of the memory card to categorize and edit them, I was horrified to see an indistinct gray blob in the top left corner of the last several sets of photos.  Somehow, at the end of the Wisconsin portion of my trip and all the way through my second stop in Chicago (and, yes, there would have been a third stop in Chicago if there had been any way possible), some dust or debris had found its way into the camera and lodged itself on the lens, creating this blob on each photo.  And since I couldn’t see it in the viewfinder, I never even knew it was there. 

My immediate concern was getting the camera repaired before I took any other photos.  Unfortunately, there’s a dearth of camera stores these days, especially around here, so the best and closest one I could find was Biggs Camera in Charlotte, North Carolina, about an hour north of me.  This was in no way a hardship, though, because of the Cheesecake Factory in SouthPark Mall, just minutes from the camera store!

Of course, my next concern was what to do about the spot in the photos.  In some photos, the blob was indistinguishable, obscured by trees or dark colors or patterns, but all shots with sky or light colors at the top left were ruined.  Creative cropping only helped in a few cases.  I certainly couldn’t go back and recreate my trip (although I would have loved to), and I certainly couldn’t discard all of those photos of Frank Lloyd Wright properties, a few county courthouses, and that stunning Chicago skyline. 

So I broke down and bought Photoshop.

I can’t say I did it all perfectly, but I managed to get rid of that gray blob in each photo.  Was I manipulating reality?  Not really, I suppose, because the blob really wasn’t in the sky or on the building or floating above a daylily blossom.  And keep in mind, these photos were not being used to illustrate news—I justify this to myself by thinking of these as artistic photos rather than journalistic photos.

“Detecting the Truth in Photos” tells us the latest versions of Photoshop are so advanced that some changes are practically undetectable.

I needn’t worry about that—the work of my steady hand could be spotted all the way from Chicago…

Let There Be Light!

Citizen journalism.  We have come back around to this topic.  Or have we ever really left it?

Because of the pervasiveness of social media, the citizen journalist has been our bedfellow…our partner in crime…our conjoined twin practically since the beginning of this class.

Grant Wood Studio.  Cedar Rapids, Iowa (1890s).  Remodeled by Grant Wood (1920s).  
National Register of Historic Places (1982-1984).  Photographed by Stephen Milligan 
(July 6, 2013). 

Do y’all remember Gina?  Before she absconded from the class, carrying away her opinions on citizen journalism like a cat burglar in the night, she wrote a blog post for Week 2 entitled “A Case for a Well-Place Period: Citizen.  Journalist.”

Thankfully, Gina exited so rapidly (perhaps more like a smash and grab at a jewelry store than a cat burglar), she didn’t delete her blog, so I was able to look back at it after this week to see how I felt.

This was also the week I had a conversation with Bart at Eye Associates of Cayce, in which I came to a realization.

Now in Week 12, I’m presented with the paper “Can This Marriage Be Saved?  The Love-Hate Relationship between Traditional Media and Citizen Journalism.”

I have to admit I’m still torn on the topic, and while the lightbulb did come on, it’s still in the brightening stage—I’m working on adjusting the dimmer to a comfortable level of understanding and acceptance.

I’m afraid I have no choice—if I don’t get with the program, all of those citizen journalists on social media are going to overload the circuit, and I’m going to be knocked flat by the shock…and find myself with a perm to boot!

Reading the paper helped—in two ways. 

It felt good to have my opinion validated by some of the professional journalists who were interviewed, those who believe in the tradition of journalism as a profession with professional standards of conduct and procedures.

But it also was helpful for me to see other professional journalists who are embracing and working with the citizen journalists to help them be better and provide them guidance concerning professional standards.

This can only be a win-win situation, one that will ultimately benefit the audience: The professional journalists will gain the reach of the citizen journalists in the trenches, while the citizen journalists will profit from the expertise of the professional journalists.

The room just got a little brighter.

The Chicken or the Egg?

The reading this week in the Social Role of the Mass Media class included an article headlined “Cultural production of ignorance provides rich field for study.”

My mind immediately leapt to Facebook and how people use it to propagate such ignorance.

Field.  Boone County, Arkansas.  Photographed by Stephen Milligan (June 25, 2014).

A glance at recent activity on Facebook provides a sampling of the material people fertilize that field with to make it even richer:

“‘Fire of God’ Is Coming!—Warning Signs in America 2015”

“Christians Look to Torah Portion to Prove Solar Eclipse Is the ‘Shadow of God’”

“Obama Hasn’t Congratulated PM Netanyahu—but He Congratulated Erdogan, Sisi, Rouhani…and Putin!”

“Obama refuses to renew 40-year-oldemergency oil supply pact with Israel”

“Russian companies prepare employees fornuclear war”

How can people actually believe this stuff?

It didn’t take much time to find out more about the sites posting this material: one admits to publishing straight news along with conspiracy theory and prophesy; one claims to have neither a conservative or liberal perspective but a Biblical one; one promises to tell the truth about Israel and Judaism; one has a definite conservative republican slant (this one actually appears to be the most believable of the bunch); and one proclaims a Christian, conservative, orthodox worldview.   

How can people actually believe this stuff?  Oh, wait…I’ve already asked that question.  Trying to find any common sense here is like looking for a needle in a haystack.

Now, there may be some kernel of truth hidden somewhere in these stories (it’s always good to start with a little truth for that realistic touch), but there’s an obvious pattern to their subject matter.  Of course, I admit I knew exactly where to look for these stories—some Facebook friends share them with such frequency and in such quantity, it doesn’t take long to figure out their political or religious feelings. 

Interestingly, more than one of these websites proudly proclaims to be publishing the truth that the mainstream media doesn’t.  If only people would examine these stories and sites more carefully before posting—if your source publishes hard news and conspiracy theory, perhaps it’s not the most credible place for gathering information.  That’s a horse of a different color, though—one I’m afraid many people aren’t willing to ride.

Instead, they’re going to go for the pig in a poke: They’re going to read what they want to read, believe what they want to believe, and post what they want to post.  Journalism of Affirmation appears to have a hand in the cultural production of ignorance…or is it the other way around…?   

The Choice of a New Generation

The reading this week in the Social Role of the Mass Media class has primarily focused on cybermedia from the journalist’s point of view: ethics, legalities, mobile reporting, effective use of social media, verification, and so on.

But who’s consuming all of this cybermedia?  Of course, we know from weeks past it’s all of those Millennials, a fact highlighted in this piece from the Associated Press.

Independence Examiner (April 13, 1945).  Harry S. Truman Presidential Museum & 
Library.  Independence, Missouri.  Photographed by Stephen Milligan (June 28, 2014).

To maintain credibility, transparency, and all of those other honest, forthright characteristics of a good journalism teacher, I must admit I didn’t some across this story after hours of in-depth research for this class.  No, while I was trying to grade my way out from under a pile of papers in time for this week’s third marking period report card deadline, this article appeared in my e-mail inbox from none other than John, the lawyer who doesn’t watch local news but instead gets his news from Google and phone alerts—he of student bus driving fame (see my Week 6 blog post).

The story even uses Tom Rosenstiel as a source—he of Blur and The Elements of Journalism fame (see just about every week of this class).

The piece details the results of a survey showing most Millennials get their news online, mostly from cybermedia like Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and YouTube.  The results also show this method of consumption is trickling up into older generations. And news consumers are using up to three or four cybermedia sites for their news.

Still, though, some of those who gather their news from social media have a use for newspapers and television, but they are growing tired of those talking heads spouting off opinions—bad news for those purveyors of journalism of affirmation.

Possibly another nail in affirmation journalism’s coffin: Well over half those who get their news via cybermedia say they subscribe to multiple viewpoints in their feeds.  If only everyone could or would be this open minded!

We can’t have our cybercake and eat it, too, though—most of those surveyed admit to receiving their news through passive consumption instead of actively seeking it out, attending to the stories that pop up in those feeds.  In teaching a new generation of students news literacy, journalism educators can stress the value of active consumption.

A little bit of icing on that cybercake is that even when respondents encountered news randomly on social media, some conducted further research into the topic of their own volition.  Healthy skepticism!  What better way to educate oneself and make an informed judgment?

And a big dollop of whipped cream on that cake: News consumption and cybermedia engagement are increasing in all age groups studied.  Surely this will lead to a more informed, engaged populace

Perhaps there is hope for this new generation—and for the generations ahead of it.

Palmetto Pride

How could I let this week pass without acknowledging—nay, basking in—the pride I and many other South Carolinians have in our former governor, Mark Sanford, who set the example for good health and outdoor tourism with his penchant for walking the Appalachian Trail?

And now, Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel have immortalized Sanford in their text Blur as a cautionary tale—oops, I mean…example…of how interview subjects are booked for television news programs.

South Carolina State House.  Columbia, South Carolina.  1855.  
Greek Revival style.  National Register of Historic Places 
(June 5, 1970).  National Historic Landmark (May 11, 1976).  
Photographed by Stephen Milligan (June 21, 2010). 

Just as Sanford had jetted off to Argentina for a week to court his mistress, upon returning to his job as leader of the Palmetto State, he was immediately courted by television news outlets to come onto their programs to tell his tale of tortured love—mostly on his own terms or with promises of sympathetic interviewers, according to the e-mail messages Charleston’s newspaper, The Post and Courier, snagged through the Freedom of Information Act.

Talk about adding insult to injury!  It’s bad enough the man cheated on his wife, abandoned his job for a week, abandoned his four sons the week of Father’s Day, and lied about the whole mess (there’s that Palmetto Pride showing again), but then he has media franchises clamoring to have him as a guest so he can explain away the whole thing (wait, Palmetto Pride is an organization dedicated to fight litter in South Carolina…how appropriate—I’ll leave that reference in).

I remember Gov. Sanford’s 2009 walk well—I was in Springfield, Illinois, at the time, participating in a fellowship to study Abraham Lincoln for a week.  With only one teacher from each state, as the lone South Carolinian, I was the center of attention the morning the story broke.  A day or two later, the lady from Ohio even accused Sanford of having Michael Jackson killed to deflect attention from his escapades. 

Even more embarrassment—now South Carolina will forever be linked in some minds to the death of the King of Pop!

As a journalism teacher, there is something here to truly be proud of—the investigative reporting (see how I worked that other topic of discussion from this week in) of Gina Smith, The State newspaper reporter who drove four hours to Atlanta in the middle of the night to greet Sanford as he stepped off the airplane at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport that morning—to avoid the Columbia airport, of course.  Smith had gotten a tip that something other than a stroll on the Appalachian Trail was afoot, so she pursued the investigation—did a little digging, did a little raking—and hit pay dirt.

Those are the tools of any good investigative reporter—a shovel and a rake to uncover and sort through the muck politicians like Mark Sanford so plentifully supply their constituents.  If it hadn’t been for Smith’s persistence, Sanford’s dishonesty might have taken longer to be uncovered—or even have been obscured in the glare of his golden boy image.

Stay Tuned—Your Local News Isn’t Next…or Is It?

In Chapter 5 of The Elements of Journalism, “Independence from Faction,” Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel make some predictions about the future of localism.

News consumption will move away from local topics.  National electronic news organizations will arise.  Internet news will further polarize society.  Small interest groups will spring up.  And it’s already happening!

Old Horry County Courthouse.  Conway, South Carolina.  1908.  Photographed 
by Stephen Milligan (April 3, 2011). 

Just when you thought localism might be an antidote to all the ill feelings people seem to have toward the national media…

According to the authors’ research, news consumers have more confidence in their local media than in the national media, but local media may go the way of the film camera if the these startling predictions come to pass.                         

At least the predictions were somewhat startling to me.  Through my rose-colored glasses, I thought people would always want to see their children’s names and photos in the paper or clip and save a beloved relative’s obituary.

What a quaint notion!  Why wait for a photo of a child to be published?  Children are already famous—what parent doesn’t whip out a ubiquitous cell phone, snap a photo of the child doing something allegedly cute, and upload it to a social media site, if not multiple social media sites?  Every moment of one’s existence is captured and published these days.

And why wait for that obituary to be published when it can be found instantly online?  You can even sign the online guestbook—no need to attend a visitation to sign a real guestbook, or rather print in it since no one is taught cursive writing anymore.

In the dark ages of my childhood, my hometown, little old Conway, South Carolina, had two newspapers, The Field and Herald (named for the town’s agricultural heritage) and The Horry Independent (pronounced OR-ee and named for the county, Horry, which developed a reputation for independence since it’s cut off from the rest of South Carolina by rivers; the county was named for local Revolutionary War hero Peter Horry).

Now, keep in mind both of these newspapers were weekly papers, so we had to wait an entire week to see the school honor roll or the latest tobacco crop yield report.

The Field and Herald has been long gone, but The Horry Independent is still thriving; in fact, it’s part of a larger publishing group, Waccamaw Publishers (named for the river that runs through the heart of the county; ultimately named for the local Native American tribe), that prints weekly newspapers for several of the smaller, rural towns and communities in the county (The Sun News is the county’s daily paper out of Myrtle Beach).

Maybe this publishing group is an anomaly, an anachronism, in today’s media world.

Or maybe localism is still alive…in your local newspaper, your local magazine, your local radio news show, your local television news program.

In another word—dare I say it?  Locally.

From Mining Disaster to Media Disaster

In Chapter 6 of Blur, “Evidence and the Journalism of Verification,” Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel tell the story of the January 2, 2006, Sago Mine disaster in West Virginia to illustrate the journalist’s need to verify information by knowing it as opposed to merely relying on observation.

The tragedy of the mine’s explosion was compounded by the tragedy of the media’s misreporting of the number of survivors.  Thirteen miners were trapped in the mine.  Initial media reports went out saying twelve miners had survived (meaning one hadn’t), but the reality was horribly, ironically the opposite: twelve miners had perished and only one had survived.

Ariail, Robert.  Robert Ariail.  "The Miners Are Alive!"  Editorial Cartoon.  The State.  6 Jan. 
2006.

I remember this story well and have used it in Journalism I before in a discussion of ethics.

Like many newspapers across the country, Columbia’s newspaper, The State, published the story on January 4, 2006.

Once the truth of the number of survivors came out, the media’s thought and decision-making processes were evaluated in detail.

On January 5, 2006, The State ran two explanatory pieces about what went wrong from the media’s perspective.  Unfortunately, a quick search of the internet didn’t produce any links to these pieces.

The first was headlined “Late-hour revelation hamstrings media” with the deck “A Chronology of Confusion.” This was a sort of standalone that included a timeline attributed to Cox News Service and graphics of other newspapers’ front pages showing how they had published the same error.

The other explanatory piece, a story headlined “Erroneous reports lead to media soul-searching,” was datelined New York and attributed to wire reports.  The story details how the news of the real death toll wasn’t widely known until after most newspapers, particularly on the East Coast, had already printed and begun distribution, whereas newspapers on the West Coast were a bit more reliable because of the time difference: The Sacramento Bee published the story headlined “Joy to Despair,” and the Los Angeles Times was able to recall trucks of papers with incorrect stories.

      

In a rather quaint fashion (compared to today’s lightning-fast social media reporting), the story pointed out that most internet and television news outlets were able to correct the mistake before many news consumers woke up that morning.

The State localized the story in a sidebar by explaining its own publication timing and showing graphics of two different versions of the paper’s front page.  The first edition, printed to be sent to the far reaches of the state (Charleston, Greenville, Myrtle Beach, Spartanburg) ran a story headlined “One body recovered; ‘we need a miracle.’”  The Capital Final edition, which is the version most Columbia-area residents would have received, was redesigned and sent the presses in about thirty minutes with the headline “12 miners rescued; 1 dead.”

I see now that combined with The State’s former staff cartoonist, Robert Ariail, and his perspective (the cartoon above is so old, it’s not even in his online archives), along with the discussion of the events in Blur, these explanatory pieces can be used to teach other concepts aside from ethics: building relationships with the audience, gathering and use of evidence, independent confirmation, skepticism, sourcing, transparency, verification.

If only this gold mine of a lesson hadn’t come from a coal mine of disaster. 

Relevant Revelations

This past week, I had lunch with my friend John, thanks to some dead presidents.  No, not dead presidents as in money but dead presidents as in time—Presidents’ Day.

As I was bundling up to leave the restaurant and face the frigid winter temperatures that have descended upon us, I spied a reporter from WIS, Columbia’s NBC affiliate, at a nearby table.  Out in the parking lot, I asked John if he had seen her, and he informed me he didn’t even know who I was talking about because he hardly ever watches the local television news; in fact, he couldn’t even pinpoint his last memory of tuning in to the local news.

Skyline.  Columbia, South Carolina.  Photographed by Stephen Milligan (May 30, 
2010). 

This revelation may not amaze anyone, considering how America’s news-consumption habits are rapidly changing, but this is a response I would expect from, as Tina Fey so eloquently put it on the “Weekend Update” segment of Saturday Night Live’s fortieth anniversary special just the night before, “whatever you call the little dummies who are live-tweeting this right now instead of watching it.”

Now, John is no dummy, and at just a couple of years older than me, he is in his mid-thirties…well, okay—mid-forties (I suppose I must try to maintain a few shreds of credibility here as a journalism teacher), so he doesn’t fit Fey’s description.  To top it all off, John is a lawyer who works closely with county governments in South Carolina. 

So shouldn’t a lawyer associated with county governments keep abreast of local news?

I quizzed John about where he gets his news, and, of course, he responded that he gets it online because it’s available instantly.  He went on to say how he sees local news increasingly cluttered with meaningless fluff pieces presented by anchors who aren’t really engaging to him.  John’s scorn over the word anchor was even evident.

I later scanned my copy of The Elements of Journalism to see if John had received a ghostwriting credit!  It was as if Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel were right there with us.

In Chapter 8, “Engagement and Relevance,” the authors discuss the effects infotainment has had on the news industry and its wisdom (or lack thereof) as a business strategy.  They cite the research that says viewers are becoming apathetic in their choice of local news stations, if they even watch at all—and what a dramatic decline that figure has experienced.

So where does John get his news?  His top choice is—another shocking disclosure—Google News (and I almost passed out when he used the word aggregator—many commoners outside of journalism probably would have thought he’d mispronounced the word alligator), followed by local news alerts sent to his phone from news outlets in Columbia and Greenville, about two hours away.

As Bill and Tom and John departed the chilly parking lot, I thought back on the most fascinating revelation of the day—during a discussion over lunch of the snow predicted for Columbia this past week (which never materialized) and memories of past snowfalls, John revealed he had been a school bus driver when he was in high school.

I’m still trying to wrap my head around that news alert. 

You Can’t Please Everyone…

Since this week’s topic for the Social Role of the Mass Media class is a continuation of last week’s topic, handling sensitive issues, I thought I would make this blog post sort of a continuation of my topic last week, the shooting on the University of South Carolina campus.

I realized I hadn’t looked at any of the coverage done by the university’s student newspaper.  When I was a student there, The Gamecock came out on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays and may have been at most eight pages each predominately black-and-white issue.  Now The Daily Gamecock publishes daily and, of course, has an online presence, which put last week’s coverage at my fingertips.

Capstone House.  University of South Carolina.  Columbia, South Carolina.  1967.  
Modern style.  Photographed by Stephen Milligan (May 30, 2010). 

A special memorial edition of the newspaper was published last Friday, the day after the murder-suicide.  Also that morning, the Editor-in-Chief, Hannah Jeffrey, posted an editorial headlined “Letter from the Editor: Why you won't find individuals' names in Friday's paper.”

In the piece, Jeffrey explains the thought process behind the newspaper’s decision to not publish the names of the victim and the assailant that Friday morning since official word had not yet come from the Richland County Coroner (long after the paper’s press run). 

Exactly what we’ve been immersed in the past couple of weeks: Sensitivity.  Verification.  Transparency.  Maintaining credibility.  Time being the enemy of accuracy.  Informing the reader of editorial choices.

How professional of Jeffrey to explain the decision to the reader when so many rumors surely would have been traveling all over campus and Columbia.  Some of the posted comments agreed with her, applauding the decision for its good journalism and ethical standards.

Interestingly, though, a few of the comments harkened to this week’s other newsworthy topic: Brian Williams.  Some of the readers accused The Daily Gamecock staff of tooting its own horn and making the news about the staff instead of the murdered professor.

“You see, you can’t please everyone,” as Rick Nelson sang in “Garden Party.”

But Jeffrey did what she thought was right for her readers.

“So you’ve got to please yourself.”

Close to Home

Well, I wish this one hadn’t fallen into my lap.

Today at approximately 12:56 P.M., a shooting, an apparent murder-suicide, occurred at the Arnold School of Public Health at the University of South Carolina, my alma mater and less than five miles from my house.

Detail.  McKissick Museum.  University of South Carolina.  
Columbia, South Carolina.  1939.  Works Progress Administration 
Romanesque style.  Photographed by Stephen Milligan (August 
15, 2009). 

Coincidentally, at about the same time, a car accident occurred just outside the building at the corner of Assembly and College streets (USC is an open, downtown campus), so among all of the confusion, the misinformation began to fly on social media.  According to WIS, Columbia’s NBC affiliate, rumors of the shooting’s nature and location were spread on social media: It was an active shooter situation.  It took place on the Horseshoe, the original part of campus.  At Russell House, the university union.  Even at the South Carolina State House, just blocks away.

WIS devoted all of its 5:00 and 5:30 news broadcasts to the event (with only a two-minute look at the weather) and much of its 6:00 broadcast.  The reporter on the scene, after discussing the inaccurate social media reports with the evening anchor, who had joined her there, then exhorted the audience to verify any information before sharing it on social media.

Details are still emerging as I listen to WIS’s 7:00 news report, most of which is devoted to the shooting, but I’ve already noticed a little time is being devoted to sports, weather, and traffic, but no other news has been reported.

Not only is this story close to home geographically, but it’s also close to home as far as the Social Role of Mass Media class goes.  Verification.  Erroneous Twitter reports.  Accuracy.  Completeness.  Sensitive issues.  All of these were topics of this week’s class readings.  And all of these issues are embodied in this story:

Verification?  The reporter chose the responsible route by asking the public to verify information before sharing on social media to minimize the spread of mistaken reports. 

Erroneous Twitter reports?  The rumors in those initial reports have been dispelled…but will probably be replaced by others. 

Completeness?  Obviously the story is incomplete at the moment, so much of the 7:00 news involved reiterating and discussing—no information about the two who died can be released until the Richland County coroner gives approval. 

Accuracy?  WIS is, for many, the best source of television news in the Midlands, so I’m sure accuracy is something each reporting team is striving for.

Sensitive issue?  Definitely.  
  

Back to Business

“In deed if not in name, by 2000 America’s journalistic leaders had been transformed into businesspeople.  Half of newspaper newsroom leaders reported that they spent at least a third of their time not on journalism but on business matters” (70).

So write Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel in The Elements of Journalism.  As a teacher of journalism, I was struck by how closely this statement could apply to the field of education.  Just substitute a few words, and you’ll have a description of most educational leaders I know: We spend a great deal of our time on business matters instead of what really matters—the students.

Harry Truman's second grade report card (1894).  Harry S. Truman Presidential 
Museum & Library.  Independence, Missouri.  Photographed by Stephen Milligan 
(June 28, 2014).

The term “educational leaders” conjures up images of principals, assistant principals, and district office officials, but I would argue the real educational leaders are the teachers, the ones actually doing the work of education.

Unfortunately, it seems the real work of education, like the real work of journalism Kovach and Rosenstiel refer to, is increasingly moving toward the business end of things.  Like those newsroom leaders who spend one-third of their time on business, I would venture to estimate many teachers spend much more than a third of their time on endless paperwork, incessant meetings, and other administrivia.

And just like those journalists who don’t get to spend that time on journalism, those teachers don’t get to spend their time on educating the students.

January 16 was a teacher work day, one of those rare days all teachers hungrily look for on the district calendar because they know they will have time (that beautiful, elusive, ephemeral notion) unencumbered by meetings (we hope) to make a dent in some of that business work: lesson plans to be written; papers to be graded and recorded; handouts, tests, quizzes, exams, activities, and/or projects to be typed, formatted, and copied; guidance referrals, discipline referrals, attendance referrals, Student Intervention Team referrals, nurse referrals, and/or social worker referrals to be filled out; parents to call, e-mail, or send letters to; e-mail messages and phone calls to respond to…and those are just a few of the things all teachers do—throw in an extracurricular activity, club, organization, and/or sport to sponsor, and you add a whole other dimension of paperwork and business to take care of.

Now I know how those journalistic leaders—those newsroom leaders—feel because they don’t have time to devote their full attention to their craft, journalism.  I remember how elated I was when January 16 rolled around—I would have time to do my paperwork job without those pesky students hovering around needing attention and an education!

And as a teacher of journalism, I feel doubly put upon by this emphasis on business.  Each profession alone is evolving into a business…put them together, and you have big business.

What’s a business without customers?  District leaders love to throw that word around.  Students, parents, and visitors are “customers,” and we must practice good “customer service” when dealing with them.  Customers have become an important part of the journalist’s business, too:

“Bringing business accountability to the newsroom brought the language of business as well.  In some cases this meant applying the language of marketing to news, with readers and viewers becoming ‘customers,’ and to understand them became ‘marketing’” (Kovach and Rosenstiel 83).

So here I am—an English education major who stumbled into journalism and now has become a businessman.  Enough lamenting my fate for now, though—I have some customer papers to grade.

Reference
Kovach, Bill and Tom Rosenstiel.  The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect.  Third      Edition.  New York: Three Rivers Press, 2014.