Students Say ‘Sure’ and Get the News Reported

 

Home page of MMU Times, thanks to some new students getting involved.

Advising an online student news site has been a journey. The Mount Mercy Times at Mount Mercy University, where I teach, gave up a print newspaper last year.

I’m sure it was the right move. We were throwing away too many printed copies, and finding a newspaper in Iowa with a press to handle our small press run was becoming too difficult—too much cost, too much waste, too much hassle. Thus, now we’re the online Mount Mercy Times.

The biggest disadvantage of that is, even if the printed papers were mostly tossed, they were a visible reminder to the campus that the Times exists, and the need to fill a print edition pushed the students to organize, collaborate and get things done. Sadly, with no print deadline to push us, the Times produced far less journalism last year compared to years before.

It did not disappear, but it hasn’t yet found its legs as an online news source.

Still, today was a hopeful day. Mount Mercy was set to announce a new football program today, a big deal—but one of my few staff students (we’re still building the staff for this year), the sports editor, had class at the same time as the announcement was being made.

However, in a general education communication class I teach, there is a student who had expressed some interest in writing for the MMU Times this semester. The Oral Communication class ended at 11:20 a.m.—would this student be willing to rush over to the Plaster Athletic Complex, take a camera with him, and cover his first story?

He thought about it for a second. He has a science test this afternoon. But, heck, he had a few minutes. “Sure,” he said.

So, Jonas shot a picture of me to get used to the camera, and then took off. But a few minutes after class, he and Lillian, another student from the class, saw me walking across the Rohde Family Plaza, heading for the library. “Professor Sheller!” Lillian yelled. “Where is the ceremony?”

At the Plaster Athletic Complex. A quarter mile from where we stood. In 10 minutes. Jonas looked a little doubtful. “Can you give him a ride?” I asked Lillian. I would have offered, but I ride a bike to work and Jonas would not fit on my bike's front handlebars (besides, I had to meet a student in the library and could not go to the ceremony myself anyway).

She thought for a second. “Sure,” she said.

Sometimes, “sure” is the best thing you can have a student say.

Jonas, chauffeured by Lillian, covered his first news story—a major one, as it turned out, that ended up on the top of the Times home page.

Jonas Gutierrez, MMU students, writes his first story for the MMU Times, I hope he writes many more.

Not all my problems with the story were over, however. As anybody in the news business can tell you, shooting images and writing a story is only the start. Who would edit the story?

As it happened, Keira was in the Times office to take a mid-term exam in a PR writing class. Would she be willing to have me, both her professor and the Times faculty advisor, have her take a brief break to read and copy edit a story Jonas had just finished typing?

“Sure,” she said. Well, I don’t recall if she used that exact word, but it seemed to be the word of the day, and in any case, she agreed and did it so she said “sure” in spirit.

Keira Carper in the MMU Times office, where today she edited her first Times story. In the middle of a mid-term exam.

The ceremony started at 11:30 a.m. I put together a shell of a story based on a statement posted by MMU, so Jonas could have a head start entering his information. When he came to the Times newsroom in the library at about 12:15 p.m., he said “here is the camera, now I have to go take my exam.”

Great—but any chance you could add your quotes and finish the story before your exam? He didn’t exactly say “sure,” but I’m sure he meant it, because, again, he paused for a second, thought about it, and then agreed to do it. The story was drafted by 1. By 1:30, Keira had edited the story. By 2 or so, it was posted to the MMU Times web site.

Cheerleaders at ceremony. One of the images made for MMU Times by Jonas Gutierrez.

Well, reporting news on the same day is one advantage of being an online news source, over being a paper printed twice a month. Nevertheless, it was a roller-coaster of a day for me—would we have a story? Would we have images? Early this morning, it seemed like the stars would not align, but here we were in the afternoon with a news web site updated.

There’s more to come. Another student shot more images at the ceremony, and I’m sure we’ll update the Times web site with a longer photo gallery from this big day as soon as I get my hands on the Times camera that she used. And our sports editor will be collecting campus reaction for a second-day reaction story on the news.

Still, score one for student news media at MMU. They pushed themselves, and scored a sports news touchdown today. And may many more students say “sure” and keep student news alive at Mount Mercy University.

Honoring A Graduating Great Student Journalist

Note: This post is the text of the presentation I did at the 2023 Honors Convocation at Mount Mercy University, May 12, 2023. Convocation is kind of the kick-off event of a series of events associated with commencement at MMU. The first two images below were used during the presentation, the rest are just bonus images from Annie’s time at Mount Mercy.

Annie Barkalow reflection

Hello, my name is Joe Sheller, associate professor of communication at Mount Mercy University. Many know me for being faculty advisor to the MMU Times, as well as official DJ of the Times office.

Here is an early image I made of Annie Barkalow, covering an event in fall 2020, when she came to Mount Mercy and first began writing for the Mount Mercy Times.

Fall 2020--The masked era. Annie Barkalow covering a speech for the MMU Times.

By fall of this year, she achieved the high office and dignity of Editor-in-Chief of the campus newspaper.

Fall 2022--Annie as editor recruiting students at Involvement Fair.

As you can see, some things have changed over the years. Annie has grown, partly fueled by new life experiences. She herself wrote in her final column for the Times that being on the editorial staff of the newspaper, and of the MMU literary magazine Paha, were important to her. As Annie states:

Quote: Being part of these publications was the highlight of my school experience and proved to be invaluable. Writing for the Times, I learned how to ask strategic questions, honed my writing and photography skills and met a lot of interesting people. Unquote.

Annie was quite complimentary to both me and to Dr. Mary Vermillion, advisor of Paha, and I appreciate her kind words. Kind, but heartfelt, too, because that was Annie—she has the attributes that a great journalist and writer needs: a big heart combined with a critical-thinking mind.

I am proud to have been part of Annie’s growth over the past three years. True, Reece’s Peanut Butter cups were also a part of that growth, for both of us, but I mean the growth of her skills and mind.

Every student faces a balancing act of life and school and activities, and Annie showed a lot of grit and determination completing her undergraduate degree as a non-traditional age student whose balancing act is incredibly challenging. I hope that her family shares fully in the pride those of us at MMU feel in seeing what Annie has been able to do. As a journalist for the MMU Times, Annie covered key stories with maturity, balance and insight. She wrote about MMU removing art installations in a controversy last spring. She wrote about the struggles of teachers in a challenging time for education. She covered a Holocaust remembrance ceremony in a story that was recognized as the best feature story in the state by the Iowa College Media Association. Her personal blog, Anne with an E, was recognized twice by ICMA for being among the best student journalist’s blogs in Iowa.

More than the accolades from ICMA, I think Annie will long be recalled for her clear devotion to the newspaper and its service to MMU. She innovated, creating, for example, the “Flashback” feature that is an ongoing aspect of the Times.

She wrote many of our best news stories, staff editorials and features, and made many of our best photographs, over the three years she spent on The Hill.

It is my pleasure to recognize the many contributions that Annie Barkalow has made to Mount Mercy as a journalist. The outstanding student journalist of the year for 2023 is Anne with an E, a.k.a. Annie Barkalow.

It’s Not Just Elon Musk Making Us Sadder

Crowd ready to listen to Dr. Travis Lacy speak. I helped carry in extra chairs, and yes, I wore my mask. Most popular event of this year's MMU Fall Faculty Series.

Dr. Travis Lacy, assistant professor of religious studies, speaks.

"So when at times the mob is swayed
To carry praise or blame too far
We may choose something like a star
To stay our minds and be staid."

Quote from "Choose Something Like a Star" by Robert Frost, quoted by in a presentation by Dr. Travis Lacy.

I live in the modern world, too, even if I learned to keyboard on a manual typewriter and didn’t own my first computer until the 1980s were almost the 1990s. So, like many who live now on the planet, I exist in a zone that includes both the actual reality around me and the virtual reality that beckons like a siren.

Does social media make me sadder? Probably. Am I addicted to what Dr. Travis Lacy, assistant professor of religious studies at Mount Mercy University, noted is a “hit of dopamine” we get from “likes” on social media?

I’m not sure that something that is habitual is an actual addiction, in a psychological or medical sense, but it’s something like that. And yes—I write three blogs that have fairly low readership, but if someone responds to what I write, or even just likes the link or image that I post on Facebook, it does make me feel better.

Of course, I think there is more going on. I think writing, for me, is more than just a habit or a means to get the next hit of positive brain chemistry—it’s the muscle I used for years to earn my living and that now I do for the pleasure of creation. It’s brain therapy, too—it keeps my most important organ, the one between my ears, a bit more in tone.

Ironically, to me, thus what I post on social media is partly the antidote to social media—I am ruminating on my life, processing my experience, connecting, in an introvert’s lonely way, to reality. Not just running from it. Author (and social media creator) John Green recently talked about the value of creating online:

But I do use my smart phone to “kill time,” as Lacy called it. Dr. Lacy spoke Nov. 15, giving the final presentation in a fall faculty series at Mount Mercy University on “Humans and Machines” in a provocative discourse that he entitled “Scrolling is Unpaid Labor.” The thing that we do when we feel private and alone on our phones or tablets is not as alone as we think—it’s an act that is recorded, watched and commodified.

Our attention is a product that we produce. And advertisers pay, according to data cited by Dr. Lacy, more than $500 billion a year to catch some of that digital audience's attention. Oddly, as he noted, online ads are weirdly different from classic advertising, in that most of us don’t recall much of those ads we see on Instagram or Facebook or YouTube—and an impression that funds the marketing marketplace of cyber commerce is defined as half of a screen being on our device or at least a second.

Dr. Travis Lacy makes a point.

True, ads exist to motivate consumers. True, that is not a new concept, in our culture, as the main system that funds American media—both news and entertainment—has historically been ads. But what feels weird is the brief snippet of eyeball attention that somehow seems so disconnected from an act in the real world would be so valued.

Then again, consumers tend to define themselves as immune to ads in a way that advertisers know they’re not. If online attention were completely divorced from actual commerce, it would wither. It’s not withering.

Yet, the way social media is constructed, it’s almost insidiously rewarded for making us sad. As Dr. Lacy noted, an addict is most vulnerable when the pain of their real life demands some balm. Whether whiskey or the Meta-verse, whatever drug we turn to when we’re down can give us a brief relief, but often leaves us hollow in the long run, more divorced from our lives, more troubled in our souls.

Book title from my notes, propped against my computer screen as I write this post. "Iber Pumpon Makes You Stupid?" How dare Iber Pumpon.

I’m not trying to recreate Dr. Lacy’s whole message here. I’ve skipped Karl Marx and his insight into labor. And I wrote down the title of a book Dr. Lacy cited, because it sounded like something I would want to read, but my handwriting is so bad that I can’t make it out. “Something Something Makes You Stupid” states the illegible ink squiggles, on my notebook’s page. The something-something in my notes looks like “Iber pumpon,” which seems a bit unlikely as a book title.

Update Nov. 20: Thanks to Dr. Lacy (and Dr. Joy Ochs) for noting the title of the book in question. It's “How PowerPoint Makes You Stupid,” by Franck Frommer. Iber Pumpon seems more like a prescription drug name than the name of slide-making software.

I tell my communication students that the act of hand writing notes helps fix memory, and I believe there is some truth there. Still, it can fail. It may help if the squiggles themselves aren’t made by an old southpaw whose handwriting was always iffy (a consistent D grade on my paper report cards in elementary school), and whose crippled index finger and arthritic hands aren’t improving his finger dexterity.

Above and below, others making notations during Dr. Lacy's speech. May their notes be more legible than mine.

Nonetheless, while I was sitting in that room, listening to Dr. Lacy read a long script (not as bad as it sounds, speech students, as I say in class, you should learn to deliver from an outline so you can engage an audience, but if you’re experienced, you can learn to read a script and still be engaging, and Dr. Lacy has achieved that higher level of speech competence), I was connected. I was not “killing” time, but inhabiting it, living in it, enjoying it at the slower pace that the unfolding world can provide.

I don’t hate social media. I understand it’s a force that can, and often does, isolate us and make us sadder. But we each construct our own social media—my Google is not yours—and can, I believe, learn to use it to also inhabit the real world in a more healthy way. Used in reasonable doses, it’s like red wine. It would hurt us if we use it too much, but modest use is not only OK; it can even improve us.

Above and below, people listening to Dr. Lacy, not killing time on social media, but inhabiting time.

Maybe by listening to each other. Maybe by making images, writing essays and then sharing our actual creative work.

Even if it’s unpaid labor. Because creating a full thing that you’re engaged in and care about is not labor that alienates you, it connects and grounds you.

Now, turn off your phone and go take a walk.

Key audience members, connected in reality to the speaker. And maybe social media just made you a little happier.

First Edition of Student Paper Arrives

Sept. 6--Painter working at Warde Hall, oldest building on Mount Mercy University campus. Some things that are old are worth holding on to. Like reading.

For years, thinkers have written (irony) about a “post literate” world. And, indeed, in our culture we can see all kind of odd impacts of a tendency to avoid reading.

Reading, it seems to me, is such a fundamental act. There is simply no way to tune into long narrative or to absorb certain kinds of raw information that works as well. Yes, I have used YouTube videos when I want to use a new technique or discover how to fix something—I don’t deny that there are other key ways that we humans communicate.

But I see reading as representing a deeper dive into abstract thought.

Well, while reading as an activity is on decline, it hasn’t disappeared. Both reading and writing can still be observed among the young.

In August, I gave one class of writers the assignment to start their own personal blogs—to give themselves a public platform from which to show the world their writing skills. I’m liking the results, including this post one student wrote on the importance of reading.

Aug. 26--Above and below, students in a writing class at MMU begin working on their personal blogs.

And Sept. 15 will be a key day at Mount Mercy University. The first edition of the student newspaper, The Mount Mercy Times, of the fall semester will be distributed. Thus a mass of student writing will be available to student readers—and readers may be a minority of the student body, but they are there.

Today, I handed copies of the paper out in a class where students have written for the paper for the first time. One young man saw that his story was the anchor of the sports page, and I’ve never seen him beam more. It’s heartening to see how excited students can be due to their words.

Front page of Sept. 15, 2022 edition of the Mount Mercy Times.

Right now, the student newspaper is rebuilding. We had a lot of experienced editors graduate last year, and a new crew is just getting started. But the first edition came out. It’s a tabloid this year—we’re saving some paper by using the smaller pages, and emphasizing posting our news online.

So some of the news that is available in paper Thursday was been available online already. Still, the arrival of the first print edition marks something important.

Reading is still alive. And writing can still excite students. Which makes Thursday, in my book, a good day.

A few of the students who brought MMU this edition of the Times, from a "meet the editor" event in the University Center:

A Classy Class Visit from Another Tiger

Nicole Agee speaks March 22, 2022 in a Mount Mercy University journalism class. This image was made by a student in the class--images in this post are about half my work, half student work.

The focus of good journalism shouldn’t be the journalist—an important point made by Nicole Agee, a local TV anchor (KCRG-TV Channel 9, Cedar Rapids, Iowa) in one of my classes.

“I’m not the story, the people I interview are the story,” she said.

Agee kindly volunteered to visit the class and talk about journalism storytelling, in particular, storytelling via video. As a sample, she showed a clip from KOMU, the Columbia, Missouri TV station associated with the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Journalism.

In video, the images and sounds are a key part of the reporting. Video in a story, Agee said, “takes the place of words.”

Here and below, four more image of Nicole Agee speaking.

It’s a large and complicated idea—it helps explain many of the differences between journalists who primarily work in words (we used to call it “print,” although these days, I read New York Times stories on a screen) vs those who are using video recordings. Agee also noted that radio, such as presented by NPR, is another medium with its own story telling style.

But whether words, video or audio, a journalist needs to be an accurate and compelling story teller.

Besides that, I think a beginning journalist needs to be ready to dive in—to get more experience however they can. Agee herself noted a history as a high school and college newspaper journalist before pursuing a graduate degree in broadcasting at Mizzou.

Agee also had some interesting thoughts on the skills needed to be a journalist. Primarily, she argued for the centrality of journalistic curiosity. “We want to know more, we want to know why,” Agee said.

In fact, she said it’s easier to work with a curious new journalist than with a new journalist who considers themself primarily a great writer. “It’s easy to train somebody to write well,” said.

Well, she’s wrong about that and right about it at the same time. A person has to have some base level language expression skills in order to be competent enough to be trainable as a writer. And I think curiosity is a driving force of most really good writers—to be a writer is not just to have facility with the language, it’s to have facility with ideas that can be expressed in language, which requires curiosity.

Annie Barkalow, managing editor of the MMU Times, listens to Nicole Agee.

But she’s right, too. Given a base level of writing competence, it’s easier to work on the information processing skills—whether writing, making images or shooting video—of a curious person. Students who struggle in one of my editing courses don’t always agree, but anybody can learn to create a page or web site using InDesign. What’s harder to teach is what should be on the page.

What’s required is the curiosity to seek new answers to common questions. Where do you go for information? What information is important for an audience you’re serving?

Curiosity may kill cats, but it is the life force of journalists.

So, although I work a lot at trying to teach writing—I think I’m fundamentally in agreement with Agee.

Me, helping a student solve a problem with a camera.

She made another key point, too. That is, a journalist must cultivate connections. She referred to building a personal Rolex when you arrive in a new community (while noting the term is outdated, today a network of contacts may be more related to a list on an Android phone than written cards that are quickly becoming antiques). In other words, a good journalist is active and aware and builds contacts before they must begin working on a given story.

I like to think of it as related to the role of imagination in journalism. That is, journalism, if done correctly, is not at all fiction. None of it is made up. But a journalist must be able to see possibilities, to sense patterns—not to impose narratives, to but recognize them and act on them. That’s related to the challenges of writing and editing, but also to the ability to think creatively when casting the net for information—for cultivating and well using a wide range of connections. An information, or source, network.

I can't imagine what Nicole Agee was thinking about here, but whatever, it was worth listening to here.

And the best photographers and videographers also have imagination. Again, not for deep fakes, but to know when to shoot and what to shoot and where to be to get the image or the recording.

The class Agee visited was small—the smallest introduction to journalism class I’ve had in my time as a professor. Yet, as she noted, the skills one learns in a newsroom—working on deadline, being flexible, imaging the possibilities, acting on your curiosity—serve professionals in a variety of circumstances.

She was speaking of the many former journalists she knows who are working in other venues. I think it is one reason why college journalism remains important for a university. Of course, student journalists serve their community as journalists serve any community, by making overt what is hidden and should be known. But they serve themselves, too—developing habits of mind and skills that are keys to a curious, interesting, well-written life.

Final image.

Getting Ready for 9/11 Speech I Dread

Dr. Joe Hendryx introduces the first event in this year's Fall Faculty Series at MMU. On Sept. 29, Dr. Jim Jacobs, a computer science professor, reviewed events in history that led to 9/11. Jacobs served in the Marines in the decade before, and interspersed his experience with research.

In the Mount Mercy Times, the excellent student editor-in-chief wrote a recent book review of “The Anthropocene Reviewed,” and one point Jada Veasey made in her review is that she finally understands why there is so little fiction about the flu pandemic following World War I.

“As it turns out, living in the time of a plague is terrible, like, absolutely the worst,” she writes, which tends to discourage authors.

Jada and I share high regard for John Green’s nonfiction book.

But the pandemic isn’t all that makes these times so troubling. Besides battling a new virus that is killing far too many, we’re also facing a rising tide of BS.

Which is not a coincidence. It helps explain the lameness of our pandemic response. And that rising tide of disinformation got a boost just as the internet was becoming a huge factor in our lives two decades ago.

MMU Fall Faculty Series 2021 log.

A handful of hijackers, armed with nothing more sophisticated than box cutters, brought down three airplanes on prime targets on Sept. 11, 2001. They struck the Pentagon and caused the collapse of the World Trade Center twin towers in New York.

Speculation is that the Capitol, stormed by our own delusional right-wing mobs on Jan. 6 of this year, was also a target, but passengers fought back and the fourth plane crashed in Pennsylvania.

Conspiracy is not new to the human condition. John Wilkes Booth didn’t entirely act alone when he gunned down Abraham Lincoln. The shot that killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand and brought on both World War I and it’s sequel, World War II, was fired by a young man who was part of a shadowy nationalist group.

We humans conspire all the time. But we also imagine, enlarged and embellish false conspiracy narrratives. All kinds of wild tales grow up around fantastic, unexpected events—and 9/11 was the Mother of all Conspiracy hotbeds.

It spawned an early viral internet video, even before YouTube was a thing, that fed the conspiracy narratives.

And today, we live in a communication environment rife with speculations that seem farfetched to most rational people, but still move millions to believe.

For example, many believe:

• The Chinese government developed the virus for COVID-19. In China, the corresponding lie is that the Americans did it. We don’t in truth know the origins of this virus, and the lack of transparency by an authoritarian government isn’t being helpful. I don’t know that China did it. I don’t know that they did not. Nobody, except those potentially involved, yet does, and in the unknowing is fertile ground for uninformed certainty.

• Donald Trump had the election stolen. He didn’t. He lost in 2020 by about the margin he won the race by in 2016. The persistence of this particular false narrative, and its fervent backing by too many Republicans, is an existential threat to our democracy based on a fake conspiracy theory.

• Insert X false narrative about the current pandemic. Masks don’t matter. Vaccines aren’t safe. Microchips from Bill Gates. Whatever. This pandemic seems to breed false claims faster than a flexible respiratory virus morphs into new variants. Both the infection and the lies surrounding it are proving hard to fight.

So, I’m going to tackle this big topic next Wednesday night as part of the Mount Mercy University fall faculty series called “9/11 Twenty Years Later.”

I don’t exactly know what to expect. I thought Dr. Jim Jacobs gave interesting context to the whole 9/11 event, and I feel like I’m sort of looking at it from the other side—how that event has reverberated in our information and disinformation cyberspace.

Dr. Jim Jaobs speaks Sept. 29.

The towers weren’t the only thing that seemed to fall on 9/11. Our very trust in ourselves and in reality seems a bit more fragile, two decades later.

Sadly, I’m mostly going to describe the problem. I don’t have a solution, but then again, I don’t know how to end the pandemic, either. Plagues and pandemics can linger for years, but don’t last forever. Maybe there’s some hope that the public may tire of the nonsense, that “doing your own research” may come to mean actually using some discretion on which sources you’ll believe rather than tuning into the alt-universe of lies.

I hope the presentation, called "Conspiracy, Myth and Misinformation," goes well. But I’m writing, not about the pandemic, but about something that does not make me happy, and that I don’t really want to be writing about.

Jada, I feel your pain. But I hope to see many people next Wednesday at 6 p.m. in Flaherty. If the pandemic makes you worry, make sure to join in via MMU’s YouTube live-stream.

Not every internet video feeds the disinformation monster.

The Decline and Fall of the American Empire

Delivered papers around campus Wednesday morning--first edition of MMU campus newspaper of the year. Looking forward to having a work study student do this!

 

After two decades, it is apparent that the Afghan military we built to hold the country together was unwilling to resist an Afghan extremist faction taking over Afghanistan. I’m no expert in either military strategy nor in foreign policy, but this does not make President Biden look good.

Nor, to be fair, does it make the younger President Bush look good. Nor Obama. Nor Trump. Two decades of no end point were not enough for us to achieve the impossible goals that we never articulated anyway—although there is also a saying that Afghanistan is where empires go to die. Just ask the British or the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

Bad as it is to walk away from 20 years of money, sweat and death, the comparison with Vietnam ignores how much bigger an impact that conflict had on America. We lost almost 2,500 American service people in Afghanistan. Tragic as that is, about 17,000 American service people died in 1968 alone in Vietnam, and in the decade that we were engaged in combat there, well over 50,000 American souls were sacrificed.

In both wars, the people of the country where the battles took place paid a much higher price than we did in lives and destruction, something we ought not forget, either. And, as a wiseass man once said, one of the great lessons of history is: “Never get involved in a land war in Asia.” See “The Princess Bride.”

Anyway, to me, the decline of the Pax Americana is only tangentially related to Afghanistan. What we face, more fundamentally, is a crisis of discourse—a tendency to ignore unpleasant facts that don’t coincide with our point of view. We have culturally long downplayed the value of education, and now we’re reaping the rewards of a post-literate culture.

What we have here is a failure to communicate. (Too many movie references, sorry. Thank you, “Cool Hand Luke.”)

And it partly is a result of the decline of the American newspaper. In pre-social media days, Walter Cronkite would report the news to America—and CBS in that era was often influenced by sources like The New York Times or The Washington Post. It was the Post that pursued the Watergate scandal, and CBS that eventually started to pick up the story, too.

Well, I don’t want to be a Luddite. The cortex (a “Firefly” reference, what a great name for the internet) may spread lies too quickly, but it does open the world to many more voices. What’s wrong is that the audience isn’t doing well in knowing which of those voices to listen to. In ancient history (say, the 1990s) there was a vibrant newspaper industry that served as the information algae of the media ocean. And today, that medium is in rapid retreat. The base of the info food chain is drying up. A general economic crisis more than a decade ago knocked the newspaper business model off kilter, and the days when the Penny Press model worked are not coming back.

There are recent signs of that decline in my corner of the world. The Marion Times, a weekly paper that served the largest suburb of Cedar Rapids ceased publication this summer. The Gazette is now that community’s primary newspaper news source. And The Gazette is in decline, too. This summer, delivery of the paper to my house became sketchier, as the paper shifted to “driveway” delivery, which will be fun to cope with this winter.

And more recently and importantly, the paper decided to shut down its press. Mary Sharp wrote a long and interesting feature on the move, see link earlier in this paragraph.

Despite owning several daily papers, The Gazette’s local parent company apparently can’t keep that giant, expensive machinery going, and our paper will now be printed by The Register in Des Moines

Why the neighborhood gets to see me in my PJs, paper on the driveway. The horror.

And so, it goes. The world turns.

Not all the media trends today are negative. The New York Times recently reported it has reached a subscription level of 8 million. I’m sure that rating number would embarrass Tucker Carlson, but still, old school journalism is, for some players, growing—at least online.

Online—the Wild West. As Americans, we can’t even agree that Joe Biden won the 2020 election, although it’s clear he did. Some significant portion of our population would rather listen to its own crazy echo chamber than tune into the factual universe. Rachel Maddox calls it Earth 2, and it is Earth 2 that is causing America to lost its spirit.

At the university where I teach, my student editor wrote a column in the first edition of the student newspaper this year stating that Mount Mercy University is lucky to still have a print paper. 

She’s right, although we’re also trying to transition to be a more online source. The problem is, once online, will any students pay attention to us?

Special early issue of MMU Times paper.

Of course, do they pay attention to us now? It’s a bit depressing how “reading” has become so old school among young adults who aspire to be college educated.

Post-literate. Not illiterate, just too busy, too amused, too self-indulgent to bother.

But there is hope. Even if it is the world where a jackass like Tucker Carlson shouts anti-Cronkite nonsense in too many ears, there are 8 million New York Times subscribers and growing. And it was a student, a young American adult, who recognized the value of what a little newspaper on a little campus contributed to that campus culture.

Editor of MMU Times making mages for the issue of the paper that came out this week.

Just today, I received a sweet message from a former student. I had posted on Facebook (the modern town square) that I was distributing the first edition of the school paper, and she let me know how much the paper meant to her while she as in school.

This is what she wrote:

Hey Joe!
I was thinking yesterday while doing real estate photos how much the newspaper and you believing in me helped me be able to do this job 🙂 I have social anxiety that was way worse in college. But having events to go to, having friends on the newspaper really helped me face that fear. Just wanted to say thank you 😊 Hope you’re well!

I am well, thank you. I think I would feel more well if I felt a bit better about the state of our democracy. Seeing Afghanistan collapse didn’t feel good—but it’s not the heart of our darkness.

Students Begin New Blog Adventures

On Sept. 11, a student in my writing class works on a blog post draft.

I am teaching a writing class in this odd fall semester of 2020, and students in that class will be sharing their perspectives via personal blogs. I’m writing this on Sept. 11, 2020—a somber anniversary, but many students are choosing to write about the global pandemic. They are in a writing lab, drafting their first posts that should be published next week.

I always like this blog assignment—it’s one I often use in almost every media writing class. For one thing, it means students are gaining experience actually managing their own personal web sites. It also means that their writing is what professional writing should be—public. We get used, in school, to writing for each other and not writing for the world at large—but for my media students, the world at large is meant to be their audience.

A student in the school uniform of 2020. Masked, and focused on writing.

I have told students before about Jenny Valliere, the program manager of Z102.9 radio station here in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Jenny has told me that having her own blog was helpful to her in launching her radio career because she was able to show a prospective employer that she’s already active online and creating original content. Her blog.

Lindsay Leahy, another former student, writes a very interesting blog about how faith has helped her overcome adversity. She graduated long enough ago that I don’t think I required her to write a blog, but I did have a hand in helping her become a better writer, I hope—most of all, she was managing editor of the “Mount Mercy Times,” and although I thinking this blogging exercise is valid, student media experience is gold. Her blog.

Anyway, once students have started their blogs, I will share some links. In the meantime, it’s nice to see students at work, creating something new. That’s the power of writing—we writers get to be creators.

The power of blogging is that we then get to share those creations so easily with the world.

Spotlight on a Film that Gets Journalism Right

Brian d’Arcy James and Rachel McAdams in Tom McCarthy’s Spotlight. Photograph: Allstar/Open Road Films—from The Guardian.com. I like how they hold pens and use notebooks--a small thing, but that's what a reporter would look like during an interview.

 Last week, students in my media law and ethics class got to snack on pretzels and enjoy one of those rare classes where Joe didn’t spend too much time talking. We watched most of the 2015 movie “Spotlight.”

It’s a sobering film to watch at a Catholic university. But it’s a great film, in my opinion. NPR liked it, too.
 The all-star cast does a great job of creating the feel of journalism as it actually is, something that is very rarely seen in movies. These people aren’t glamorous or rich—they are inquisitive, intelligent writers who are feeling around in the dark, trying to find the story. They don’t know what the story is when they start.

And the people they are dealing with are not simple, either. There are multiple points of view, multiple levels of deception and truth telling.

As I re-watched the film with students, I was struck by the many memorable lines in the film:

Liev Schreiber, playing the new editor of “The Boston Globe” Marty Baron, introduces us to some journalism jargon, noting an opinion column about an abuse speech. “What’s the follow on that?”

That a priest would abuse so many kids “strikes me as an essential story for a local paper,” he adds. One overt key lesson of the movie, to me, is the importance of the kind of journalism that the Spotlight team at the Globe represents and that sadly is passing away as American journalism contracts.

But on to the memorable quotes from the movie. Stanley Tucci, as lawyer Mitchell Garabedian, is conversing with a Globe reporter and notes the system of secrecy that existed in the Archdiocese of Boston. “If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to abuse one,” he says.

The class I was teaching lasts an hour and 50 minutes, and the movie is a bit over two hours long. I put a DVD on reserve in the library, and students are required to finish the movie, and write an essay answering some discussion questions I posted.

The class movie viewing was last week. Papers are due Thursday. I’m excited to read what students think. The movie, I hope, will pack some impact with them.

And at least they got to see one movie with actors and actress who actually look and act like the journalists I worked with during my newspaper career.

Boonville Daily News, circa 1985. JK. Michael Keaton, Liev Schreiber, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, John Slattery and Brian D'Arcy James are members of the Boston Globe investigation team that uncovers a sex-abuse scandal involving the Catholic Church in the film, Spotlight. Kerry Hayes/Open Road Films—from NPR.org.