Some fans may have to throw out their favorite sports team t-shirt

THE Washington Redskins’ NICKNAME AND LOGO WERE “RETIRED” ON MONDAY. (Photo from team website)

Two popular fan choices to replace “Redskins” as the nickname of Washington’s NFL franchise are “Pigskins” and “Red Tails” (in honor of the World War II fighter pilots from Tuskegee, Alabama). I suggest owner Daniel Snyder make everyone happy with a compromise choice of “Pigtails.” (Please push your automated laugh track button now.)

Sports team nicknames can be funny, but the Washington franchise’s adherence to its 87-year-old name in the face of multiple protests in recent decades is not funny. Native American activists brand the name as racist. The franchise cites tradition and says the name pays tribute to the heritage of American Indians. But on Monday, Snyder, who once vowed he would never change the name, agreed to do so. It’s part of a national awakening about memorials and symbols that demean traditionally oppressed groups, but mostly it’s because some big-time corporations threatened to withdraw sponsorship of the Redskins.

I can attest that this is a media issue, also. Somewhere in the early 2000s, when I was sports editor of The Birmingham News, one of our regular high school football correspondents, Veto Roley, objected to use of the team nickname in stories about the Oneonta High School Redskins. I decided that Roley could omit the name from all of his bylined stories but that the name would continue to appear in other reporters’ stories because, well, that’s what the school called itself (and still does). It was a deliberated, judicious decision. And, I now realize, completely wrong.

“Redskins” has carried derogatory connotations for most of its history. The stated intent of an adopter doesn’t change that. I’m aware of polls that found most Native Americans do not find the name offensive, but I put more stock in a larger, more recent study by the University of Michigan that surveyed Native Americans who engage in cultural practices and concluded the opposite.

The NFL team’s decision doesn’t put the issue to bed. According to the MascotDB database, 123 high schools or colleges still use “Redskins” and 50 still use “Redmen.”

Roley, who is now a teacher in Mississippi and has Creek Indian ancestry, maintains his objection to the name “Redskins” today. He looks at it from the context of “an unrelenting war of physical and cultural genocide against Native Americans” from the time of Columbus through the middle of the 20thCentury.

But is it the media’s place to judge? Some already have. A Pew Research study in 2013, when the issue was again in the news, found about a dozen news outlets and a dozen individual journalists who had stopped using “Redskins.” More followed. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune was among the earliest – in the early 1990s. “My sports staff was not happy and criticism came from many corners,” Star-Tribune editor Tim McGuire wrote. In the city where the NFL’s ex-Redskins play, The Washington Post does not use the name on its op-ed pages but does use it in news stories.

OH GOSH. MAYBE JUST IGNORE EVERYTHING I WROTE IN THIS POST.

The debate for the sports world and its media is even broader than “Redskins.” Many advocates for Native Americans seek eradication of all nickname references to Native Americans, such as “Indians,” “Braves,” “Chiefs” and “Blackhawks.” According to a New York Times search of the MascotDB database, more than 2,200 high schools use Native American imagery in their names and mascots, in addition to several pro teams. That number has been trending downward, in part because some states have banned public schools’ use of “Redskins” or Indian-related names in general.

Roley says those more mainstream names aren’t slurs, but he finds some offshoots of the names – logos, Indian war dances, fans in stereotyped dress – to be disrespectful. “When we use caricatures and comical representations, we dishonor Native Americans,” he says. Pro teams have eliminated many of those offshoots, but the Atlanta Braves and the Chicago Blackhawks said earlier this month they won’t change their nicknames. The Kansas City Chiefs haven’t commented. The Cleveland Indians, however, announced a review of their name.

Teams that continue to use Indian-related names are obligated to establish ties with today’s tribes and to educate the local community about them, Roley says. He commends Florida State, for instance, for its close relationship with the Seminole tribe. At the pro level, he says, franchises “can lead the way by educating the public about American Indian culture and history, not with poorly thought-out, slapped-together displays put in the corners of the stadiums, but with living history and museum-quality exhibits that are in the center of the stadium.”

University of Alabama professor Dr. Andrew C. Billings, a department colleague, co-wrote a book on this subject in 2018, “Mascot Nation: The Controversy over Native American Representations in Sports.”  The current discussions represent progress, he believes. The public attaches different degrees of acceptance to names, to images and to rituals. For his book, Billings surveyed 1,000 people and found that the Atlanta Braves’ nickname had the highest acceptance rate among Native American names, but acceptance was much lower for the fans’ Tomahawk Chop. So the debate for that franchise someday might be whether it has to ditch the name in order to ditch the chop, he says.

Billings thinks the best trigger for change might not be the Washington NFL franchise’s decision – because “Redskins” stands out in its overtness – but rather a decision by the Cleveland MLB franchise to drop its more common name of “Indians.”

As long as schools and pro franchises keep using such names, the media must reckon with their policy on use. Yes, team nicknames are a bread-and-butter part of a traditional sports story. But I can think of numerous instances of media foregoing certain facts as a matter of policy when publication of such facts causes harm to people. That is the case with “Redskins.” Ceasing to publish other Indian-related nicknames would seem like overzealous correctness and a lack of local pride. But it would be a meaningful act of respect for the cultural diversity of the nation. And maybe you’d have no regrets in 20 years.

“Changing the way we talk is not political correctness run amok. It reflects an admirable willingness to acknowledge others who once were barely visible to the dominant culture, and to recognize that something that may seem innocent to you may be painful to others.””

— Slate editor David Plotz on the decision to stop publishing "Redskins" (poynter.org, 2013)

Sometimes, media have to remind government who it works for (that’s you)

Imagine giving some money to an investment broker and when you later ask what the broker did with it, you’re told it’s none of your business. I see no difference between that and what agencies of state and local governments in Alabama do whenever they reject or ignore a citizen’s request for government records.

This happens too often in Alabama and elsewhere:

• In June, the City of Decatur denied open-records requests by multiple media outlets for disciplinary records of a police officer involved in a physical assault of a storeowner.

• In May, the environmental advocacy group GASP and the Environmental Defense Alliance filed a lawsuit against three State of Alabama agencies that have denied access to emails involving state opposition to a federal environmental cleanup of a North Birmingham neighborhood.

• Last year, the state Attorney General’s Office (one of the agencies sued by GASP) rejected a request by an Alabama Media Group reporter to see a contract signed with an industrial safety expert as part of a new plan to allow death-penalty executions by nitrogen gas.

• In 2017, WBRC-TV asked to see the $2.6 million contract between the City of Birmingham and a company called ShotSpotter that detects gunshots and pinpoints their location. The station also asked for data compiled by ShotSpotter. Three years later, the city still has not provided the data or even the contract.

• You’d think that in a pandemic, when smart behavior depends on having full and accurate information, that there’d be no secrets. But you’d be wrong, as shown by the Alabama Department of Public Health’s refusal of an AMG request to identify individual state-licensed nursing homes that have reported coronavirus cases.

In each of these cases, there is a legitimate public interest. And in each of these cases, the reason cited for rejection was an incorrect interpretation of Alabama’s open-records law. For more examples of valid records requests that were denied or ignored, read this alarming commentary written in July 2019 by WBRC News Director Shannon Isbell.

Government should be an open book. The access rights of the public spring from the public tax money that supports government, from the implicit pact made between voters and successful candidates during election campaigns, and from the open-records and open-meetings laws of every state.

Which brings up a big honkin’ problem in Alabama. Our open-records law is terrible.  It mandates that citizens can see all public writings – printed or electronic – unless a specific law says otherwise. So far, so good. The fatal flaws are these: no specified time period by which a government agency must respond to a records request; no appeal process (other than a court of law) if an agency turns down a request; and no clear definition of reasonable copying costs. So, governments in Alabama can quash the public’s rights by perpetual delay, or with outlandish fees, or by groundlessly denying a request knowing the requester probably doesn’t have the money to go to court.

Several members of the state media have said publicly that Alabama’s law is the nation’s worst. Some research says they’re right. University of Arizona professor David Cuillier examined open-records data from 2014 to 2017. The lowest compliance rate in the nation – at a ghastly 10 percent – belonged to Alabama.

A bill sponsored by Sen. Cam Ward of Alabaster and Rep. Chris Pringle of Mobile to fix the problems with the state’s law regrettably died in a legislative committee in February. The main opposition? Local governments, which claimed compliance with a stronger law would impose too much burden on the small staffs of some cities and counties. No one ever explained how other states manage to do it. And I’d like to note you’d never hear a small police or fire department claim that responding to the public is sometimes just too burdensome to do. 

All of this matters not merely because of concepts of ideal government. There are tangible consequences. Research such as Cuillier’s has shown that less openness correlates with more waste and fraud. So, what can be done to try to achieve greater access to records in Alabama or anywhere?

Journalists know the fundamentals: how to write an effective request; to continue to apply pressure; and to write publicly about rejections. They also know to push editorially and in person for better legislation, ideally with the support of vocal citizens. This is especially critical in Alabama.

Kyle Whitmire, state political columnist for the Alabama Media Group, says comparisons to other states show the “absurdity” of Alabama’s law. Whitmire has written valiantly about the situation. “The more we talk about this, the more likely we are to get a better law … We have to show why we need it,” he said in an interview.

He knows why. “Whenever public officials deny a records request, they automatically show people they’re hiding something.”

security camera video of a police assault on a decatur storeowner in june. the city is withholding officer disciplinary records and other records related to the incident.

I’d like to see news organizations pursue cases in court more often. This expensive tactic has fallen off significantly in recent years in Alabama and everywhere as news companies flounder financially. Increasingly, freedom-of-information lawsuits are brought by advocacy groups, such as GASP, rather than by media. Such suits are worthy no matter who launches them, but depending on single-issue advocacy groups likely means fewer suits than if media were regularly initiating actions on multiple fronts.

Dennis R. Bailey, general counsel for the Alabama Press Association, points to a hopeful sign: an increase in collaborative litigation among state media, which lowers cost for each outlet. In 2015, for instance, the APA represented multiple outlets in suing for release of Gov. Robert Bentley’s divorce records. In 2018, the Alabama Media Group, the Montgomery Advertiser and the Associated Press filed an eventually successful case against the Alabama Department of Corrections for release of the department’s execution protocol.

Going to court can be risky, of course, as there’s always the chance of ending up not just with a loss, but also with a precedent that makes access worse. Whitmire believes court often is “home-field advantage” for governments. But a demonstrated resolve to litigate would send statewide notice that the media are serious about their records requests, especially if they could persuade a judge or two to make offending governments pay the media’s attorney fees.

A new records law supported by selective but determined litigation would change the freedom-of-information climate in this state. Open government is essential to accountability, which is essential to good governance. It is highly insufficient to claim accountability can wait until the next election. Accountability needs to be constant, no matter how uncomfortable that makes some government officials. They need to remember it’s part of the deal. And the public, with help from the media, needs to insist on it. Because secrecy is the safe harbor of incompetence and corruption.

Execute journalists? Don't think it hasn't happened

THE OAKLAND TRIBUNE, AUG. 3, 2007

President Trump’s reported statement that journalists who publish leaked information should be “executed” is a more explicit and heinous extension of his repeated “enemy of the people” trope. It’s so far beyond the pale that the only necessary reaction is ridicule, then dismissal as nothing more than Trump venting berserkly in private*.

Except for the fact that it has happened.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reports that in the past 18 months, 14 journalists around the world have been murdered because they were journalists. UNESCO reports some that CPJ does not, including one as recently as this month. Some of the assassinations have suspected ties to governments officials, others to political or criminal groups. The highest-profile execution tied to government orders in recent years was that of Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, in October 2018. Journalist killings are especially frequent in Mexico and Russia.

But this does not happen in the United States. Except for the fact that it does. Just some of the cases worth remembering:

In June 2018, a man angry over stories published about him entered the newsroom of the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Maryland, and shot five newsroom employees to death. 

In June 1984, white supremacists used automatic weapons to kill Denver radio talk show host Alan Berg in the driveway of his home. Berg’s liberal views had incensed the group.

Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles died after a man detonated dynamite planted under Bolles’ car in June 1976. Court testimony connected the man to a prominent Arizona businessman who had been the subject of several investigative articles by Bolles. At the time of the car bomb, Bolles was working on a story about prominent people with ties to organized crime. After the killing, Investigative Reporters & Editors (IRE) and other journalists from around the country formed a team to successfully finish the reporting that Bolles had started. IRE, which now gives an annual investigative award named for Bolles, explained the point of the collaboration: “Even if you kill a reporter, you can’t kill the story.” 

In August 2007, an assailant shot and killed Chauncey Bailey, editor of the Oakland, California, Post, as he walked to his office. The hit man worked for a fringe Black Muslim group that Bailey was investigating. My friend and former colleague Mike Oliver knew Bailey from their time together at the Oakland Tribune. Oliver served as regional editor for the Tribune and other Bay Area publications. Bailey moved from the Tribune to the Post just months before he was killed.

“Reporters went out to have justice brought forth.”

— Mike Oliver

“It was shocking,” said Oliver, now a senior managing producer and columnist for the Alabama Media Group. “One of the worst things you can think of as a journalist is being confronted by an angry source with a shotgun.” The suspect group made death threats to other journalists. The Tribune hired police officers as constant security. “It was a little bit scary,” Oliver recalled. “It was a reminder that people (were) out to hurt us.”

The journalistic response from Bay Area journalists was much like that which followed the Bolles killing: More coverage, not less. Staff from different organizations created The Chauncey Bailey Project, which uncovered details about the assassination and the criminal activities of the Black Muslim group. “Reporters went out to have justice brought forth,” Oliver said.

Look, outrageous statements by Donald Trump are not going to cause a spate of journalist killings. What’s troublesome, though, is that such sentiments from the president create a climate hostile to the news media – not like those in some countries where journalists are assassination targets, but a climate in which journalists are more frequently physically assaulted, or verbally abused, or threatened with harm, or arrested, or sued in court, or denied access to information. Indeed, that’s where we are now.

* Trump is not alone. In a private, taped conversation in 1971 about obstacles to winning the Vietnam War, President Richard Nixon suggested to “kill all the reporters.” In 1972, his aides actually discussed possibly killing a particularly troublesome investigative reporter.

Coverage of protests brings out internal newsroom anger

The homicide of George Floyd and the subsequent street protests have illuminated failings not only among law enforcement agencies but also among many mainstream news organizations. Along with other issues, the well-documented lack of racial diversity on newsroom staffs has shown itself in harmful and embarrassing ways.

Philadelphia Inquirer headline june 2 that triggered avalanche of criticism

Perhaps a black journalist in The New York Times’ chain of editing*, or simply a heightened awareness created by a more diverse department, would have anticipated the valid internal and external criticism that U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton’s published idea to send the military to “restore order” in American cities posed a safety threat to protesters and journalists, especially black ones. “This puts our Black staff members in danger,” the newsroom union wrote.

Perhaps the same would have avoided the Philadelphia Inquirer’s headline “Buildings Matter, Too,” an insensitive variation of Black Lives Matter. That touched off a litany of complaints and a “sick day” by most of the Inquirer’s journalists of color. “We’re tired of shouldering the burden of dragging this 200-year-old institution kicking and screaming into a more equitable age,” they wrote in a letter to management. “We’re tired of being told of the progress the company has made and being served platitudes about ‘diversity and inclusion’ when we raise our concerns.”

More importantly than helping to fix internal blind spots, a newsroom that demographically reflects its community is better able to establish connections within that community and to report important stories. This is especially so with minority and marginalized groups. Karen Attiah, global opinions editor of The Washington Post and who is African American, said Sunday on CNN’s Reliable Sources media show, “We are still fighting for integration in our newsrooms so that the communities we cover and that we are a part of actually trust us.”

In many large cities where street protests over police brutality are taking place, it is more likely that black protesters view the media as an uncaring part of the white establishment than as a familiar and empathetic forum for expression of concerns. And fairly or unfairly, the perception is partly affected by who’s holding the camera or the notebook. There’s no question that a good journalist of any race can effectively tell this story, but I think it’s also true that a journalist of color can bring a deeper understanding of issues, born from life experiences. “(The media) are uniquely unprepared overall to cover this moment,” Attiah said. 

The numbers aren’t good. Using U.S. Census Bureau data, a November 2018 report in the Columbia Journalism Review titled “Decades of Failure” reported that racial and ethnic minorities made up 17 percent of all staff in print/online newsrooms in the U.S., 25 percent of TV newsrooms and 12 percent of radio newsrooms. That’s despite comprising 40 percent of the American population. Newsrooms look even worse when focusing on leadership positions: for print/online outlets, the number was 13 percent. The American Society of News Editors quit doing its annual diversity survey in 2019 due to low response from organizations. The coroner labeled the cause of death as embarrassment.

tweet by Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reporter may 31 that prompted management to ban her from protests coverage

Hand in hand with the question of adequate representation is the matter of how to take advantage of the perspectives that minority journalists bring. They shouldn’t be (and aren’t) hired solely for coverage that relates to their own demographics. But they are the best option for certain stories and certain beats. Minority journalists outside the opinion staff shouldn’t be allowed a greater license for political advocacy than other staff members. But it’s important not to neutralize their insights.

In other words, don’t do what the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette did this week. Management deemed a black reporter’s protest-related tweet as indicative of bias that would compromise the integrity of coverage and so banned her from further protest reporting. Then it did the same for at least one other black journalist who publicly showed support for her. Bad pro/con analysis by Post-Gazette editors.

Editors who hire would likely say they’re not seeing as many applications from minority candidates as they’d like. I see considerable talent among black students in my classes every semester. But many of them are not interested in journalism as a career. That’s another indictment of the industry.

*A black photo editor who was asked to provide a companion photo raised concerns, but to no avail.

“How can you cover this moment when your own newsroom doesn’t reflect the community or the country that you cover?”

— Jemele Hill, writer for The Atlantic, on CNN's Reliable Sources, June 7

In the middle of protests, reporters find news -- and danger -- on the streets

Hey students: Are you interested in a career in journalism? This exciting field offers not only low pay, long hours and no job security, but also the chance to go to dangerous places where everyone hates you. Sound good?

Recent street protests in Minneapolis and other cities have illuminated the risks that journalists face when they report from the scene of civic unrest. At least six reporters have suffered physical harm in Minneapolis, primarily from getting hit with crowd control ammunition, according to reports on the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker website. One photographer was permanently blinded in one eye from a rubber bullet. In an especially alarming case – because a clearly identified journalist was singled out – a police officer used a baton to strike a cameraman.

In Denver, police hit a Denver Post photojournalist with pepper balls. The photographer reported that, despite his having visible press credentials, a police officer intentionally shot at him twice. A representative of the Colorado Press Association told The Post, “There seems to be a frightening trend of restraining and targeting reporters during public protests and other civil unrest even when clearly displaying press credentials.”

That assessment was supported by yet more reports of authorities knowingly targeting journalists in multiple cities on Saturday night.

Protesters pose threats, too. They attacked at least three local journalists in Pittsburgh, according to a Saturday night tweet from Pittsburgh Public Safety. Similar reports came from other communities Saturday night. Previously they damaged the CNN Center in Atlanta and angrily chased away a Fox News reporter in Washington, D.C. (an episode that was probably more predictable than most). (REGRETTABLE UPDATE 6/1: On Sunday night, a few protesters assaulted at least two local journalists in downtown Birmingham. One was punched in the face and another was hit in the head with a cup of ice.)

TV journalists face particularly taut circumstances because cameras and lights are dead giveaways of location. You’d think that protesters would welcome TV as the best way to impactfully make their statements, but in some cases they see this most visible of media as part of their problem. The real and perceived partisanship of channels such as Fox, CNN and MSNBC helps to fuel the fire.

The overall situation is so worrisome that on Friday the Poynter Institute, a journalism education program, posted recommended safety tips for journalists. Among them: Consider hiring a bodyguard; maybe don’t take the assignment if you’re not physically fit enough to run from trouble; and don’t wear a credential lanyard around your neck because someone might use it to strangle you.

Anger toward media in such settings isn’t limited to big metro cities. My friend and former colleague Carol Robinson, the Birmingham public safety reporter for AL.com and about whom I’ve written previously, kindly interrupted her one-week furlough to recall covering a protest over the fatal police shooting of an African-American man, E.J. Bradford Jr., in Hoover in 2018. Demonstrators surrounded her car and called her a racist, she said, but she was able to drive away. 

Protests are not the only events that pose risks. These days, so do certain political rallies for causes or candidates. Rallies for President Trump – the purveyor of “enemy of the people” sentiment – have been the most notorious, prompting media to bring security personnel with them. In mid-May, a reporter for a Long Island TV station recorded a video of non-stop harassment and insults directed at him by demonstrators at a rally to end COVID-19 shutdown measures. 

Even if conduct does not go beyond verbal threats and harassment, it produces a climate in which worse can and sometimes does happen. U.S. Press Freedom Tracker reported 34 physical attacks on journalists in 2019. But even if that is rare, that is no consolation to a reporter on the receiving end of a vehement verbal assault.

An ethical news organization would not send a reporter to an assignment if he or she believed it was too dangerous. So why, in light of alarming incidents, would a journalist go willing? That’s a stupid question, actually. Because the conviction of good news journalists to deliver firsthand information that the public needs to know runs very, very deep, and always will.

Beat writer reflects on Michael Jordan’s brief dance with baseball

Apparently a lot of sports fans around the country discovered Sunday night that Michael Jordan’s manager during his 13-month minor-league baseball career was Terry Francona.  Birmingham sports fans – at least those of a certain age – have known that forever.

PHOTO FROM NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME AND MUSEUM

Francona, the manager who ended the infamous World Series drought of the Boston Red Sox, began trending on social media after the most recent installment of ESPN’s 10-part documentary “The Last Dance,” which chronicles the 1990s dynasty of the Chicago Bulls and its superstar. Sunday’s segment included an interview with Francona as it explored Jordan’s stunning decision to leave the NBA and try his hand at playing baseball for the Double-A Birmingham Barons in 1994.

I remember it well. I had been the sports editor of The Birmingham News for maybe one month (translation: clueless) when our Barons beat writer, Wayne Martin, informed me that the world’s most famous person was coming to Birmingham. Oh gosh. What do I do with this?

Some national media at the time dubbed Jordan’s decision as a public relations stunt that was embarrassing the sport. In fact, the 31-year-old Jordan had every intention of legitimately earning his way to the major leagues.

“The Last Dance” has prompted a number of interesting reflections on Jordan’s flight of adventure. I wanted some from one of the reporters who was there for every home game, Martin.

Martin, who covered the Barons for 20 years, agrees with Francona that were it not for the 1994 players’ strike that cut the season short in August and delayed the start of the next season, Jordan would have made it to the majors with the Chicago White Sox. Considering he hadn’t played baseball since high school and was learning the game at the Double-A level, some of his stats were remarkable, Martin said. That included 51 runs batted in and 30 stolen bases. Even a .202 average in Year One was impressive, in Martin’s view. Jordan began the season with a 13-game hitting streak. “Then they started throwing him curveballs,” Martin said. But Jordan was undaunted, constantly taking extra batting practice.

Wayne Martin, RETIRED FROM THE Birmingham News

The White Sox assigned Jordan to Double-A, rather than the easier Single-A, partly because the Hoover Met provided less public access and greater security than other minor-league stadiums in the Sox organization, Martin said.

Still, Jordan didn’t act as if he were special. Same locker setup, same hotels, same bus (albeit a new, luxury bus). Knowing he put his teammates through the “hardship” of unprecedented media attention – “(Reporters) were almost going with him into the shower,” Martin said – he occasionally bought meals on the road for them. He spent considerable time in the manager’s office playing Yahtzee with Francona, and true to the player’s well-known competitive streak, they kept score all season.

Martin met Jordan for the first time in an empty locker room in Sarasota, Florida, during spring training. One of the world’s greatest athletes was eating a McDonald’s Big Mac. “McDonald’s pays me a lot of money,” he told Martin. “People who pay me, I use their products.”

Despite tense relations with the Chicago media, including questions about Jordan’s gambling-related activities, that wasn’t the case with Martin and the other local beat reporter, Rubin Grant of The Birmingham Post-Herald. “He said, ‘You are the local media. You have access to me when nobody else does,’” Martin recalled. “And he stuck by it all year.”

He’d sometimes get annoyed, though. Martin’s editor (that would be me) required at least a short Jordan-focused story after every home game. So Martin routinely approached him. “He would say ‘Don’t come to me. I didn’t do anything tonight. Go talk to (a teammate).’”

Martin recalled Jordan getting angry only once. The News published a story by sports writer Doug Segrest on how Jordan spent his free time in Birmingham, including occasional visits to a pool hall and Sammy’s Gentlemen’s Club. Grant wrote a commentary that Jordan should spend less time in places like those and more time interacting with people in Birmingham’s inner neighborhoods. Jordan didn’t like that criticism and summoned for Grant before that night’s game. “He chewed him out a little bit,” Martin said.

Jordan could be kindhearted too. During a pre-game “Field of Dreams” promotion, Jordan stood next to a young special-needs player in a wheelchair in right field during the National Anthem.  The boy’s mother later asked the Barons organization if she could send an enlarged print for Jordan to sign, but was told no because all such requests had to go to Jordan’s agent. So, at the team’s suggestion, she came to a later game and stood along the right-field wall, holding up the enlarged photo while Jordan shagged pre-game flyballs. He returned to the dugout, with the mother thinking he hadn’t noticed her. But soon, at Jordan’s request, a clubhouse attendant found her in the stands and took the photo for Jordan to autograph.   

“It’s things like that that made me pull for him,” Martin said. “If he wanted to be a major leaguer, I pulled for him to do it.”

Amid downturn from COVID-19, Alabama Media Group tries a new tactic

First came one wave of devastation. Then swiftly came another.

That’s not the precise story of the coronavirus, though in the end it may turn out to be. But it is the story of newsrooms getting piled on by adverse conditions.

Lost advertising put the journalism industry into a decade-long spiral of closures, layoffs and diminished products that was still happening at the time of the virus outbreak. COVID-19 halted events, shut down businesses, and savaged advertising even further. News companies around the nation responded as they always had, with yet more slashing of expenses in the forms of  permanent layoffs, temporary furloughs, and pay cuts that they present as temporary but which are likely to become permanent. 

Some sad examples from around Alabama, all within the past few weeks:

• The Tuscaloosa News (owned by Gannett) laid off its executive editor and sports editor.

• The Gadsden Times (also Gannett) laid off three people, according to poynter.org.

• The Anniston Star lost three journalists, including its immensely respected executive editor (and a former colleague of mine) Anthony Cook, who volunteered to leave because he said the community needed reporters on the street more than it did managers in an office.

• The North Jefferson News (owned by CNHI) essentially folded by merging with the Cullman Times.

• Alabama Media Group (owned by Advance Local) implemented one-week furloughs and temporary pay cuts from 2% to 20%, with higher salaried personnel taking the higher percentage reductions. Other Advance Local properties took similar steps.

In mid-April Advance Local took another step that I found remarkable. The company that has resisted the industry trend of requiring a paid subscription to access online content launched a campaign asking readers to voluntarily buy a digital subscription for $10 per month. No extra content comes with that. In Alabama, all the content on AL.com remains free to everyone. The company is in essence asking willing individuals to help sponsor the cost of its journalism. It’s a wise time to ask, as the need for pandemic news has spiked online readership around the country.

Alabama Media Group (full disclosure: I used to work there) believes its content, especially during the pandemic, offers value that’s worth paying for. That’s a reader by reader judgment, of course. I bought a voluntary subscription for multiple reasons, only one of which is that they do some good work. I’m also highly empathetic to the idea of, in essence, donating money to sustain a vital civic purpose, especially knowing that some people who need news would never be able to afford it if it became for paying subscribers only.

On the other hand, there’s a legitimate, more hard-ass view that any seller of anything just needs to make its product so indispensable that people will pay without any element of civic charity thrown in. AMG’s ask of its audience, I think, is a tough one, partly because money is tight for some people right now. It also still matters that corporate HQ did a disservice to its local communities (Birmingham, Mobile and Huntsville) in 2012 by changing daily newspaper publication to three days a week. Further, at least in Birmingham, a substantial decline in neighborhood coverage and some other kinds of grassroots coverage sacrificed a measure of community good will that might have translated into voluntary subscriptions today. Social media reaction following AMG’s subscription launch in mid-April was generally unkind, for reasons both fair and unfair.

Kelly Scott, Vice President of content, alabama media group

Kelly Scott, AMG vice president of content, told me in an email that she couldn’t discuss the number of subscriptions purchased so far (Advance Local is a private company) but “we are grateful for the response.”

I don’t know for sure, but my inclination is that Advance Local’s push for voluntary digital subscriptions is a precursor to mandatory subscriptions that will put most content behind a soft paywall. A “soft” paywall means readers get a certain number of free articles but must buy a subscription to get more than that. Advance Local began doing this in one market, Syracuse, New York, in late 2018. The company often tests ideas in one market before deciding whether to expand them elsewhere. In the rollout of its subscription campaign, two words stood out in a Frequently Asked Questions post: “For now, your support of AL.com is voluntary” (italics are mine).

Scott cautioned, however, that Advance Local’s voluntary subscription effort “was a different decision than one day moving to a paywall business model.”

Subscriptions mean more money but they run the danger that a chunk of audience will refuse to pay and instead seek their information from other, free online news sources. Reducing “traffic” to websites and social media channels cuts at the heart of any revenue strategy that relies on advertising. Advertisers insist on eyeballs and they pay according to the numbers.

AMG has done remarkably well with this kind of strategy. Not well enough to avoid sending more than half a newsroom of talent out the door in recent years, but still relatively successful.  An investment in video – and not just news video – has helped, as have other revenue sources such as books, events and marketing consultation. And crucially for advertisers, AL.com is “one of the largest local websites in the country,” Scott pointed out, referring to traffic metrics.

But the bulk of the evidence nationwide has been and will continue to be that any news company leaning too much on advertising is going to topple over. Google and Facebook pose too much competition. Ad rates are too low. Website visitors hate ads (unsurprisingly, AL.com denies access to content if you have an ad blocker). And advertising is too subject to the whims of economic downturns and viruses.

Advance Local may be figuring out that it’s going to need another revenue source in its collection. Then we will see who among us thinks AL.com is worth paying for. 

Students should enjoy pass/fail grading option while they can

On the scale of life disruption caused by COVID-19, the effect upon college students and professors ranks only moderately high. Still, banishment from campus and conversion to online learning represent a difficult and unexpected challenge.

One controversial way that many universities have responded is to offer students a choice of having all or selected courses graded by pass/fail rather than by letter grades. Public arguments ensued over whether this is appropriate and compassionate help for students who may struggle under new conditions or another case of sparing fragile minds the burden of dealing with adversity.

Colleges have implemented different versions. The University of Alabama and UAB give all students an irreversible, course-by-course choice by the last day of classes (but before final exams). A course grade of 60 or higher (a D-minus) qualifies for “pass” and counts as credit hours toward graduation and the requirements of a student’s major. A “P” does not affect grade-point average. An “F” does.

Auburn University does it differently. It lets students decide after professors post final grades and offers three choices: “SP,” which is a passing grade for a C or better; “SS,” which is a passing grade for a D; and “UU,” which is a failing grade. Unlike UA, none of those ratings count in GPA calculations, and also unlike UA, an “SS” does not count toward major requirements if a department already required at least a C.

Some universities – Stanford and MIT, for instance – eliminated letter grades and require students to accept pass/fail. That’s nuts, if you ask me. Some colleges haven’t changed their grading at all. Big University of Georgia didn’t. Little Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa didn’t. “It is the intent that the same learning outcomes will be achieved, thus not requiring a different approach to grading,” says an email from Simpson’s president to students.

Plenty of compelling reasons exist to give students a relief valve this semester. Personal stresses that fade to the background while on campus re-emerge upon a return home: family tensions, the burden of caring for other family members, the need for income. I know one student who had to bail out on a very good letter grade because being at home with two young children and a wife working from home was too chaotic of an environment to keep up with school obligations.

“Students who are split up among time zones, without reliable internet access, saddled with home responsibilities and new expenses, and without in-person office hours are at a severe disadvantage, and going through emotional and physical distress.”

— Online petition seeking pass/fail grading at Samford

Some students face obstacles with resources. Library references and professors are reachable online, but it’s just not the same as on campus. Try doing your best work with an unreliable internet connection or having to wait while someone else uses the only family computer. On-campus education masks a lot of socioeconomic disparities.

Universities that expanded pass/fail grading know that some students just don’t learn well online. Many students need the structure of face-to-face education. On their own, some of them lose track of assignment deadlines and online class times. My Blackboard Grade Center proves that. And I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge that some professors – who, me? – are just not as effective teaching online as in a classroom, especially if it’s an emergency conversion.

Many students around the country demanded that universities provide a broader pass/fail option in the wake of campus shutdowns. A Samford University student, for instance, got over 1,400 signatures on an online petition. (Samford did broaden its pass/fail policy for this semester.) Some students elsewhere even argued that all students should pass all classes automatically. Really. Also nuts, in my book.

The pass/fail option intends to help students whose ability to achieve has been set back by circumstances. But those are not the only students taking advantage of it. One professor in another department said 65 percent of his students in one of his courses registered for pass/fail. In all of my courses, 12 percent did. A few students who have done “D” level work all semester in a course required for their major will now pass and move on to more advanced courses. Previously, that level of work was insufficient to pass. I worry about how those students will fare.

“We are confident our students will rise to the challenge, and the (University System of Georgia) will do everything in its power to help them do so. We trust our faculty to teach and grade students effectively. In times of adversity, we should reach higher, not lower. ”

— March 30 statement on not offering pass/fail grading

I also know that some students opted for pass/fail to protect a very high GPA. Fourteen students of mine would have scored 80 or higher but chose pass/fail. Can you blame them? Graduate school programs, professional programs, scholarship and award selectors, and hiring managers all make GPA a big deal.

My moments of exasperation aside, I see more benefit than harm to the pass/fail option in our virus-addled educational environment. It’s an empathetic action. (Avoiding a lot of formal grade appeals may have weighed on some administrators’ minds, too.)

But I hope students will remember one thing: The real world isn’t pass/fail. When adversity strikes out there – a business in an economic downturn, or journalists and essential workers in a disaster, or whatever – your future job won’t become pass/fail. Bosses, customers, audience and community will all expect you not just to pass, but also to excel in the face of calamity.

We need pandemic wisdom. Because so much is at steak.

In a pandemic, our gravest danger besides the virus itself comes from the avalanche of politically motivated mis-informers, fact deniers, conspiracy theorists and simple idiots. To find truth and level-headedness, we must seek the wisest, most credible sources. We should all turn to ….

The social media account of a frozen beef product.

In the past two weeks, the social media account of Steak-umm, maker of frozen steak products such as Philly cheesesteaks, has gone viral with a collection of Twitter threads about the dire need for factual accuracy, human compassion and resistance to bad actors in the midst of the coronavirus crisis. Its initial thread on April 6 has surpassed 68,000 likes and 18,000 retweets. Multiple commenters said they found greater intelligence in the thread than in some of the government leaders dealing with the outbreak.

On the importance of accurate information:

On bad actors:

On the need for social harmony in a pandemic:

On appreciation for essential workers:

On how individuals can help:

On the credibility of journalism:

The account even used its spike in fame to help raise money for Feeding America.

Tweeters responded favorably:

• “Who’d of thought frozen meat would be smarter than half of the US population….”

• “Steak-umm offering the sensible, rational defense of truth, repudiation of opportunism, and call to humanity that we all need right now.”

• “Whatever they are paying you, SteakUmm dude, tell them I said to double it.”

That dude is Nathan Allebach. He’s a millennial who works for Allebach Communications, a food marketing company in Souderton, Pennsylvania, that is owned by his father and has Steak-umm as a client. His age and who he works for are relevant because, according to a 2018 profile on melmagazine.com, millennial disaffection and a feeling of isolation lie at the heart of Allebach’s history of unconventional topics for a commercial marketing social media account (with the obvious blessing of Steak-umm corporate HQ). Such accounts inherently involve some degree of embellishment, for no one’s product is completely as good as they say it is. The twist that Steak-umm is now crusading against misinformation isn’t lost on Allebach: “We’re a frozen meat brand posting ads inevitably made to misdirect people and generate sales, so this is peak irony,” he tweeted.

It’s a fully formed circle of irony, in fact. Allebach refers to his approach as “anti-marketing,” but social media comments suggest that Steak-umm now has a lot of new customers.

It’s interesting that Allebach chose to make his posts on the brand’s account rather than a personal one. Anticipated benefit to his client was no doubt one reason, but he also made this observation: “For some reason people are more inclined to listen when it’s coming from a brand rather than a person which is pretty unfortunate.”

In a politicized pandemic, social media can do enormous damage to truth and to proper response. But they can also offer an oasis of sanity, even if you have to look in an unexpected place.

COVID-19: The past is the past, but we still need to know everything about it

New York Times, April 11

Never more than Monday have I worried that Donald Trump spends too much time trying to defend his past actions and not enough on forging a plan to eradicate the coronavirus and return the country to normal.

While crucial decisions remain – about massive testing, about massive contact tracing – Trump spent Monday’s press briefing deflecting and lambasting reporters’ questions. He reached a new level of defensiveness with a jaw dropping, tax funded, musically enhanced propaganda video. The whole thing was enough to cause CNN’s chyron writer to go bonkers.

But really, can we blame Trump for this? He is responding to two recent, eviscerating pieces of in-depth reporting on how Trump ignored multiple warnings about the dangers posed by the virus, one on April 4 by The Washington Post and the other on Saturday by The New York Times. So, where’s the logic in criticizing Trump for too much looking backward when the press is looking in that direction, too? CNN’s Brian Stelter, chief media correspondent and host of the excellent Reliable Sources show, tweeted Monday night: “Every minute Trump spends talking about the past, he's not talking about the present or future. He's not talking about the pathway out of this.” That correct sentiment was met with some support but mostly with pot-and-kettle accusations from thread commenters.

 But looking backward is exactly what the news media need to do. For many reasons:

Washington Post, April 4

• This pandemic is the top story of a generation. It is essential to know as much about how it happened as possible, and as soon as possible.

• Today’s reporting is the foundation of the vital historical analysis to come.

• The president is trying to permanently rewrite events. That can’t happen.

• Stories such as these can bring pressure to bear – from the public, from other elected leaders, from administrative advisers – to address failings and respond differently going forward.

• The idea that such retrospection can wait for resolution is wrong. The insiders who can tell the story have clear recollections now. They may have motive to get the story out now -- if not to bring change then to clear their names. Plus, telltale documents and emails are available now, rather than hidden as they someday will be. 

• There’s an election in November. Voters need to know everything possible about the performance and fitness of their president in a catastrophe, because this one isn’t the last one.

The media can walk and chew gum at the same time. They can, and must, dissect the past, paint the present, and explore all paths for the future. It remains to be seen whether anyone can make the president do the same.