The Secret to Avoiding a Mess? No Secrets

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The announcement of a new structure for Auburn’s student media has created an outcry, particularly among staff and readers, current and former, of The Auburn Plainsman student newspaper.

Rather than talk this through 140 characters at a time, I’ll address the situation through my blog.  It’s not sports, but as a former Plainsman editor (1977-78), it’s close to my heart.

Two broad points to make: 1) The new plan is not a disastrous structure for The Plainsman or any student medium. 2) The Division of Student Affairs should have been more open and inclusive in the process that arrived at this new structure.

First point.  Auburn student media should be merged under one umbrella.  It has been talked about for years, even before an external review recommended it in 2010.

Universities across the country organized student media this way.  It recognizes the media’s move toward multi-platform reporting, it unifies advertising sales strategies, it eliminates redundancy of role, and it has the potential to save equipment money and better utilize office space.

That all student media would be under Student Affairs authority is again, neither unique nor dangerous.  Student media operate under a variety of administrative situations: student affairs, journalism academic units and (probably the worst) a university’s public relations office.  Some are totally independent and operate off-campus.

My one strong recommendation for Auburn’s structure, however, is that the four advisers to be hired (editorial, broadcast, technical and sales) not all report to the Office of Communication and Marketing within the Division of Student Affairs.  That creates an inefficient horizontal organizational structure and concentrates authority in the wrong position.

I strongly recommend that one of the four advisers be designated the director of student media, with day-to-day authority over his/her specific area, and be placed directly under the vice president for student affairs, Dr. Bobby Woodard.

Nothing against anyone who works under Dr. Woodard, but Student Media needs its own strong voice and it needs to be someone who works on the Student Center first floor, with student media.  That would give all student media the leadership and protection it needs and deserves.

Now, on to point 2.  The way this restructure was devised and planned was as bad as everyone is saying it is.  That Student Affairs devised it with no input from the students involved created the majority of the problems you see here.

Woodard claimed that the students were excluded because it involved private personnel decisions.  But students have served on personnel search committees in the past, and have observed the confidentiality of the situation.  I believe that Student Affairs, ironically, sold students short in this process.

But why not take it further? Why not openly discuss and devise this new structure?  Why all the secrecy anyway?  It always mystifies me that universities, with all of their theories of academic freedom and open discussion, revert to secrecy in practice, whenever an important decision looms.

I realize that personnel changes would occur, and that individuals could face drastic job changes.  These people are my friends too, and I respect what they bring to their work.  But as we’ve seen, the pain created was only made worse by the process used.

I honestly feel that the Division of Student Affairs leadership, including Dr. Woodard, owes the students an apology because of the mess that their approach created.  They can pledge more openness in the future, but whether they follow through on that pledge remains to be seen.

If the Division of Student Affairs claims to have such faith in the quality of students at Auburn, and such a commitment to their growth, maybe they should demonstrate it by including them in such important decisions.  It is counter-intuitive that they chose not to, in this case.

In closing, I recognize that Auburn student media will survive this, and with wise personnel decisions for the four advisers (including student participation in the search process), I think that all of the projects — The Plainsman, the Glom, Eagle Eye, WEGL and the Circle — will turn out the better for it.  And some loyalty toward the people who have served these projects faithfully is definitely appropriate and honorable.

As a result, all of the students who participate, whether School of Communication and Journalism majors or not, will have an experience that will help them, whatever profession they enter.

Update, April 3, 6:20 p.m.: I have accepted an offer to serve on the search committee for the editorial student media adviser.  I have been assured that students will serve on all search committees.  I would not have accepted if that were not the case.

But for goodness sake, Student Affairs: If you’re going to continue to oversee any kind of media project, do it in a way that respects the openness that the First Amendment protects, and under which our students will learn and work best.

Shame in the Game

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First published in the War Eagle Reader. You can find it here. MilesTweet

So perhaps West Virginia freshman Daxter Miles Jr. was not too smart in calling out Kentucky before their Sweet 16 game last night.

Predicting a Mountaineers victory was preferable to pre-signaling defeat. But to claim the Wildcats “don’t play hard” might have been reckless.

But the media’s post-Daxter takedown on Twitter following Kentucky’s 78-39 double-down was an unnecessary slaughter of its own kind.

Some samples:

@SportsNation: “Daxter Miles had the same amount of points as Kentucky has losses. None.”

@JimRome: “36-1? Maybe Daxter meant the score.”

@darrenrovell: “Daxter Miles Jr., who said West Virginia would beat Kentucky tonight, finishes with ZERO points for the Mountaineers.”`

@BasketballPics: “Y’all misinterpreted Daxter Miles; He said ‘Kentucky would have a 36-1 run.'”

Reports emerged that Miles “hid” in a bathroom stall and had to be coaxed out to face the media, and the laughs grew louder.  (Hey, Dax: For future reference, when the pros hide from the press, they use the training room.)

And just as predictably, when Kentucky player Devin Booker tweeted “36 and WON” postgame, the rout was on off the court as well.

At this point, of course, I should qualify that the shaming was by no means unanimous and many media members either defended Miles’ expression of confidence or at least condemned the over-reaction to it.

Still, one of the most curious unintended consequences of Twitter is its enabling of mass shaming.  The verbal equivalents of an embarrassing Snapchat photo descend on an unfortunate individual whose decision deserved the drop, but not the flood.

Sometimes it’s a good thing — when Twitter’s democratic muscle calls the rich and/or powerful to account.  But when the media mob attacks an 18-year-old (and the takedown continued old school, on “First Take” and the other morning talk shows), is it going too far?

My thoughts are not directed at the fans.  Fans are fans, and if they were rational — well, I shudder to think what we would watch on CBS and three cable channels this week.  The UK faithful were as savage toward Miles as would be expected.

For Auburn fans, Miles’ words reminded them of a similar situation involving Tre Mason before the 2013 Iron Bowl.  Mason expressed a confidence in facing an Alabama team that was being hailed as a juggernaut similar to this year’s UK hoops team.

Tre did not suffer the same fate.  After al.com columnist Kevin Scarbinsky took Mason to task for his comments, the snarky backlash swarmed Scarbinsky more than Mason.  And of course, Mason’s team fared better than WVU.

Still, I wonder about those tasked with covering sports.  It is bad enough that sports style has evolved into a more personal, opinion-laced style.

But throw in the snark potential of Twitter, and if there is a line out there, sports journalists often cross it. The profile plea, “Tweets are my own” are no excuse.  Readers can connect the name dot to the byline dot.

At another place and time, I would have joined in the fun — maybe not toward Miles, but certainly at a more satisfying target.  And when the culprit is a misbehaving media member, the sharper the comment, the better.

As I’ve thought it through, a recent article by Kelly McBride of the Poynter Institute provided focus and clarity.  Whether as participants or as detached observers who end up making a situation worse, journalists need to be careful around those who play with fire.

McBride concludes, “My hope is that … professional journalists will distance themselves from the shamings of private people that create very little social good, recognizing them as click bait and nothing more.  Most Internet stone throwers could be ignored.”

I would extend that standard to shaming of other public figures, including athletes, where there is no social good, only ridicule.

One reason for my re-thinking: Within the past couple of years, I had the chance to interact with a journalist who had been the object of shaming as a result of some reporting that had gone wrong.

I will be honest; I had at first participated in the flip criticisms of the reporter.  But from an outside source, I learned some mitigating details that caused me to backtrack on Twitter and to suggest critics take a second look.

From there, a mutual friend on Twitter encouraged me to contact the reporter, who was dealing with the firestorm.  So I reached out, in confidence (which is why I am being as vague as possible here).

We talked through the situation and possible remedies.  I did suggest some courses of action but was mainly there as a listening ear and an encouraging voice.

The reporter, through excellent subsequent work, has prevailed.  The firestorm is but a distant memory, and I don’t want to dredge it up here.  We DM on Twitter from time to time.  But the experience taught me, maybe more than I was able to help the reporter. No, it’s not as dramatic as those stories where a celebrity confronts a troll.

But it did have a disturbingly similar effect, reminding me that the people we snark on — whether a college basketball freshman or a well-known media member — are flesh and blood and feelings.

That, plus a desire to stand firm within the shifting sands that swirl traditional news and social media, have shaped my thinking.

As I have written before, one of my goals is to avoid being “that guy” on Twitter.  When you draw together enough “those guys,” it only gets worse.

No doubt Daxter Miles Jr. has learned his lesson and will probably do his talking on the court from now on. Sports journalists should realize that for them too, silence can be golden.

Rather than talk the talk on Twitter, they should walk the responsible walk.

Why Bill O’Reilly Is Not Brian Williams (And What It Says About Ethics)

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Please forgive a topic unrelated to sports, but the recent Mother Jones article about Bill O’Reilly’s supposed wartime exaggerations deserves comment. It is more a demonstration of the absurdity of 2015-era media than a serious ethical discussion.

A couple of weeks after Brian Williams was suspended by NBC because of misrepresentations about his Iraq War experiences, MJ presented allegations about how O’Reilly described his experiences during the 1982 Falkland Islands War.

Not only are O’Reilly’s “offenses” not as serious as Williams’, but the comparison also demonstrates the tit-for-tat bickering that marks so much of advocacy reporting today.  And it’s an unwelcome distraction from the Williams mess, which points to the media’s lack of enthusiasm to police itself aggressively.

I am no fan of O’Reilly’s.  I find his “no-spin” hype disingenuous, his self-promotion annoying and his content anything but journalism.  One reason I minimize his offense compared to Williams is because I take Williams’ role more seriously than O’Reilly’s.  Bill is an entertainer playing to a core audience.

Describing what he did more than 30 years ago as a “war zone” reporter for CBS News, complete with an anecdote about rescuing a photographer from an advancing army, is certainly an embarrassment, but it should not detract from the seriousness of Williams’ actions — or of NBC’s foot-dragging in addressing it.

It is telling that while Williams’ reporting in New Orleans on Katrina has been questioned, the same has not happened to O’Reilly yet.  He has also referenced reporting assignments in the Middle East and Northern Ireland, but neither Mother Jones nor any other outlet has disputed that.

Enough has been written about Williams’ journalistic sins.  It’s not like all he did was to describe being in Kuwait as “war zone” reporting (to try to draw a parallel with O’Reilly).  Instead, he related an RPG attack on his helicopter in Iraq — some 21 years more recent the Falkland Islands War — that happened to another helicopter in his group.

What’s done is done, and Williams has admitted his dishonesty.  What concerns me more is the broad defense of Williams, not only within the NBC offices at Rockefeller Center, but among journalism professionals.

Williams benefited from a lot of goodwill early in the controversy, with many respected colleagues minimizing his offense.

I was not one of them.  As I noted earlier, I consider Williams’ approach preferable to O’Reilly’s.  But we don’t judge journalists (or pseudo-journalist/entertainers).  We judge their actions.

And once a journalist crosses the line as clearly as Williams admitted to doing, journalists must protect the standards of our profession.  Instead, so many journalists hemmed, hawed, shrugged, harumphed … anything to avoid confronting a serious ethical breach from a high-profile personality.

The response should have been stronger, even if regrettably so.  Though we judge the action and not the journalist, we penalize the journalist for the action.  To minimize the penalty for a well-liked personality — or strengthen it in the case of O’Reilly, who is a lot more irritating — minimizes the action.

The article by Mother Jones, stirred into the pot, only makes it worse.  It’s the intramural back and forth that punishes Fox News for glorying in NBC’s plight by pointing out a supposed mess for Fox.  It implies a covenant of mediocrity: one network stinks as bad as another, so let’s accept it and not single anyone out, lest we be outed ourselves.

I exhort Auburn journalism students to aspire to a higher level when confronted with breaches of ethics.  Episodes like the Brian Williams debacle are regrettable.  Excuses and distractions are too.