Finally, It Is Admitted

I periodically take "media relations" classes just to see what the reporters are saying their lives are like these days. I have been on both sides of the communications fence, pitching stories as a public relations practitioner and fending them off as an editor.

In last week's class, a television reporter actually said That Which Is Never Said. The general manager sends down "must cover" and "must cover favorably" edicts that usually are associated with an advertiser. It's "an ethical dilemma," he shrugged. This has been the standing procedure everywhere for decades, but no one ever, ever admits it. In this era of dying old-school media, I was startled that at last we had come to that level of desperation where the obvious cannot be denied anymore.

The following week we had a newspaper reporter who was so low energy, I was dying to ask him how in the world he had gotten his job. He had majored in something unrelated -- like psychology -- and then as is often the case, didn't know what to do with the major and needed a job. So he went to a small paper and was hired.

These stories amaze me. I made the apparently bad mistake of actually majoring in journalism, only to hear from the managing editor of the Richmond News Leader back in the 1970s that editors didn't like journalism majors. "They have preconceived ideas," or something like that. They preferred to hire any other major but journalism and then mold that person to their liking. At 22, I was still pretty moldable, but it didn't matter. I was tainted. At least it was better than what Alf Goodykoontz, now deceased in a car accident, told me the following year, that he wouldn't have a single mother in his newsroom because we were "emotionally unstable."

Emotions of Another Kind at the War Memorial

It was sobering to be in a room surrounded by photos of young men and women who were recently killed because they picked the military or CIA for their careers. The Social Media Club of Richmond VA (SMCRVA) held their August meeting on cyber bullying in one of the meeting rooms at the Virginia War Memorial on Belvidere. It's a great facility, but the holiness of the place is kind of inhibiting.

I have not been there since they built the addition and was blown away by the museum part (wow, those mannequins in the wars exhibit look like real men! It freaked me out) and the little outdoor amphitheater. This is a beautiful spot with a commanding view of the downtown skyline, two bridges, the river, and the Ethyl Corp building, often confused with the state capitol. (As for the catering, no. Also, $2 for a Coke? No.)

TMI facilitated the meeting with their nifty poll-taking clickers, which I had used at my workplace when TMI facilitated our employee restlessness. We learned the evening's attendees were mostly white women under 34 who lived in Richmond and liked Facebook and Twitter, and used Twitter at work. It was a relatively small group since the polling kept closing between 59-64 votes.

We heard touching and emotional stories about racial discrimination, homophobia, sexism toward female gamers, Kindness Girl urging less ass-holism and more kindness, and one guy confessing to pretending to be someone named Regina George on social media and getting his comeuppance after posting a party photo of a tasteless Sept. 11 party cake (toy planes crashing into cake towers). He swore to never be a cyber bully again, but I heard the next day from some people in my Twitter feed that they didn't go because of him and were not ready to forgive him because of things he had tweeted in his bad old days. He carefully went over all the steps necessary to be an online troll and why trolls troll, and maybe they need 12-step programs now, but whatever. (Also, I had to look up Regina George because I didn't get that at all, and learned it's because I have never seen "Mean Girls." I keep thinking I have, but what I saw was "Clueless." Not the same. Is "Heathers" the same?)

The groups that would have benefited the most from this really nice presentation were not there -- which is middle and high school students who live in the heart of inflicted cruelties and the people who post comments on the TV news' Facebook pages. I know Kindness Girl wants us to love everybody, but anyone who spends any time reading comments on the Internet must come away with the sure knowledge that most of us are astoundingly ignorant, biased, mean, sometimes viciously mean, sexist, cruel, and unable to spell worth a damn. And we all have computers and Internet access. I really have a hard time loving everybody.

When You Have to March, March

I was born too late for the romance of the old newsrooms...and also the wrong gender, probably...when characters were not only tolerated, they were celebrated. I have always loved to read those stories, so I was pleased when Roger Ebert moved on from memories of his childhood and got to the good stuff in his biography, his days as a reporter on the Chicago Sun-Times.

Here's his introduction to his editor, Bob Zonka.

"...Zonka taught me his newspaper code, which he liked to express as, 'When you have to march, march.' This included writing a story you lacked all enthusiasm for, meeting a deadline no matter what hours were necessary, getting an interview after you'd been decisively turned down, not falling in love with your deathless prose, remembering you were there to write a story and not have a good time. These were not rules he enforced. They were standards he exuded."

Life Itself by Roger Ebert, Grand Central Publishing, 2011