ChatGPT is really cool, but yeah, it’s also cheating

It’s quite fashionable to be the progressive educator who embraces the latest new technology for teaching in college classrooms. I’m that sort, of course. For example: I no longer grade assignments on paper.

The introduction a few months ago of the artificial intelligence program ChatGPT has divided college educators, some of whom welcome it as a teaching tool and student resource and others who see it as the doom of writing assignments and an invitation for academic misconduct. Some universities have taken steps to limit its use by students.

Students can go online to the ChatGPT website, enter a prompt or question (such as one that matches the subject of a writing assignment), and receive a fully written, AI-generated answer. It’s amazing and alarming at the same time.

I tried a few tests and, yes, it produces an acceptable essay free of writing errors. It wouldn’t get a student on the Dean’s List.

I teach a media ethics course and ChatGPT’s answer to my request for an analysis of whether journalists should use confidential sources offered persuasive points on both sides (without endorsing either side). I asked for a longer analysis and it fulfilled the task with some additional valid points but also with repetition and hot air. When I asked for five famous examples of reporters using confidential sources, ChatGPT delivered accurately.

However, when I asked for the same analysis using the reasoning model contained in our ethics course textbook, it bombed. It claimed it was using that model, but it produced nothing from the book.

Educators have freaked out about technological advancements before. Everyone was sure the advent of the calculator would destroy math skills. It didn’t. Everyone was sure the website Grammarly and similar spellcheck programs would make writers lazy and dependent. They haven’t. But we’ve never had a tool that can instantly generate a whole piece of cogent writing for free.

That kind of use is educationally defeating. The process of writing – developing, organizing and expressing thoughts -- is fundamental to learning. To go further, use of ChatGPT for writing is academic misconduct because it’s not original work.

I can, however, see acceptable uses of this new tech, such as using it to review course material prior to an exam. I asked ChatGPT to explain some ethics terminology – what a stereotype is, for instance – and it nailed it. Nothing wrong with that.

I also would sign off on engaging ChatGPT to locate examples, citations and other aspects of research. Because I don’t think there’s a huge difference between that and, say, a Google search.

this is chatgpt’s response to a prompt i entered on the website

Teachers have nothing to worry about if students aren’t considering use of ChatGPT.  According to a study by test prep company Study.com (linked story written by my former student Micah Ward for University Business), 90% of the 1,000 U.S. students surveyed knew of ChatGPT and 53% reported using it to write an essay. Two-thirds of respondents supported student access to it. Almost three-fourths of the 100 college professors surveyed said they worried about the potential for cheating.

Those student numbers seemed awfully high. So I surveyed one of my classes (foolproof method). Only 14 of 32 students said they were familiar with ChatGPT. I asked how many knew of a student who had used ChatGPT to write a college assignment. One.

There are some reasons why I believe this likely won’t turn into an epidemic. First, I do not believe students cheat as much as Study.com and plagiarism detection companies claim. (Cue scandal that will make me look like a fool for saying that.)

Also, it’s possible to determine when students use it. OpenAI, the company that created ChatGPT, announced its own detection software in January, though it lacks reliability. Turnitin, the plagiarism detection software used at UA and elsewhere, said in December that it will enhance its ability to spot AI-generated writing, including ChatGPT, this year. And, of course, professors can enter queries that match an assignment and compare similarities.

Finally, there’s the problem of ChatGPT’s inaccuracies and knowledge gaps, like the reasoning model in the ethics course textbook that’s a mandatory part of that course’s writing assignments. And, particular to my department, ChatGPT can’t produce the original reporting that journalism assignments require.

Speaking of knowledge gaps, I asked Chat GPT if it knew what The Arenblog is. It didn’t. What a fraud.

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Sometimes you shouldn’t stay out of the story

brandi smith of khou-tv in houston flags down a rescue boat while reporting on hurricane harvey in 2017.

In late December, a reporter for the Bend (Oregon) Bulletin who was assigned to report on dangerously cold weather wrote a first-person account of his decision to summon help for a shivering woman living in a tent. He feared she might not survive the night. Compassionate and heroic, is it not?

Apparently not, because he got torn to shreds on Twitter – so much so that the next day he posted that he was taking a break from the “unrelenting hatred” on the platform.

I commend the good Samaritan act and I appreciate whenever someone initiates discussion of good ethical practices in journalism, which is what the reporter’s account did. (It’s also what The Arenblog sometimes tries to do.) But like others, I didn’t care for the piece. At all.

That was not because the reporter chose to get involved in the story he was covering. It was, partly, because of the “Hey, look at me” quality to his decision to go public. And it was, primarily, because he framed his actions as contrary to the journalistic principle to never get involved. “There is a well-established ethical rule among journalists that, no matter how bad things get, you don’t do anything that could impact the story,” he wrote.

No, not really.

Certainly, journalists must avoid involvements that create conflicts of interest or cast questions about their fairness or neutrality. But in matters of immediate life or death, or immediate health and safety, I don’t interpret any creeds of journalism as preventing action by a reporter.

It has happened many times, usually when a natural disaster hits. When Hurricane Harvey struck Houston in 2017, for instance, a local TV reporter doing a live broadcast spotted a truck driver trapped in the cab as it filled with water. She ran to flag down a rescue boat. Also during Harvey, a CNN reporter missed a scheduled live shot because he and his crew ran to save a driver who drove into a flooded ravine moments before the standup. The episode ended with the driver thanking the crew on national live TV.

In his story, the Oregon reporter cited two “horror stories” of journalists supposedly not acting to save a person from harm. One involved an Alabama TV news crew that “sat back” while a Jacksonville man set himself on fire to protest unemployment in America in 1983. But according to an article in the online United Press International archives, the crew from WHMA-TV did try to stop him.

bryce dole is a reporter for the bend (oregon) bulletin. he did the right thing.

The writer’s second example is famous: A photographer who won a Pulitzer Prize for a 1993 photo of a little girl who collapsed on her way to a food center during the famine and civil war in Sudan. In the background, a vulture waits for her to die. It’s often overlooked that the photojournalist eventually did chase the bird away, and that he couldn’t help the girl because armed soldiers were present to prevent the press from interfering with circumstances. (The photographer reported that the girl was able to resume her path to the center, where her parents had gone to get in line, but her fate after that remains unknown.)

This is not to say there are no concerns or gray areas when reporters debate whether to step out of their roles as uninvolved witnesses. What about situations that aren’t immediately urgent? Should journalists writing about poverty, for instance, offer money to the people they use to humanize their stories? (I have no problem with that, provided the offer comes after the reporting.)

Writing in 2018 about the famine in Yemen, Declan Walsh of The New York Times raised valid questions about whether it’s ethical to single out some people but not others for help, and whether people looking for assistance might embellish their stories to pull a little harder on the hearts and wallets of foreigners with money. He also asked how much long-term good a one-time gift could possibly do.

In some cases, reporter intervention could mean loss of a worthy story. In 2012, photographer Sara Naomi Lewkowicz was documenting an ex-convict’s attempt to return to normal life when one night he began assaulting his live-in girlfriend. Knowing that someone else had called police, Lewkowicz kept shooting the attack rather than trying to stop it. The result was a rare and blunt look at the awfulness of domestic violence. Letting the events happen produced a public service (and the girlfriend let Lewkowicz continue to follow her life).

Deciding when to stop being a hands-off journalist in adverse circumstances isn’t easy. But doing so is certainly not an automatic violation of the rules.

Damar Hamlin’s horrifying collapse gives some football writers pause

ESPN PHOTO

I’m well aware of the many ways I benefitted in my years as a sports journalist from the popularity of football.  That’s true for all the sports media that report on, and therefore indirectly promote, football at any level.

More readership and ratings. More status and money.

It’s all good until a moment comes along that demands a look in the mirror and an answer to the question “Should I really be doing this?”

I saw some of that in the aftermath of Monday night’s horrifying collapse of Buffalo Bills football player Damar Hamlin seconds after a normal tackle on live national TV.  Emergency medical staff administered CPR and electrical shock while players kneeled and prayed and cried. Fans in the stadium hushed.

Stephen Holder of ESPN tweeted the next morning: “I’ve been covering football forever and the NFL, specifically, for 18 seasons. Every once in a while, there’s a moment so terrifying that it creates complicated feelings for me about what I do for a living. Last night was one of those moments.” In response to a reader comment, he added: “I love football. That won’t change.”

No doubt many writers who make a living from this enjoyable but dangerously physical sport share those complicated feelings right now.

“It’s often difficult for me to reconcile this business and this sport with real life and humanity,” tweeted Gregg Bell, who covers the Seattle Seahawks for the Tacoma News Tribune (and was a great guest speaker to the Tuscaloosa chapter of the Associated Press Sports Editors last year). In a podcast with a Seattle radio station, he said the possibility that an athlete might have died as a result of a hit in a game “shook us to the core.”

The sport creates multiple episodes of trauma every season on every level, though not necessarily with the same potential life-or-death consequences as Monday night. See, for instance, the two concussions – that means a brain injury – sustained by former UA and current Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa within three months of each other this season.

But it’s not just the obvious, catastrophic collisions that raise questions about the safeness of football. A growing volume of research indicates that an accumulation of sub-concussive hits – that means routine contact – can cause brain damage that slowly shows itself in later years.

Decision-makers in the sport have made many changes to rules and equipment to try to make the game safer. And players understand the risks. But for people who see the big picture, such as sports journalists, that doesn’t remove the question of whether they should give attention and promotion to a sport of such great potential harm to its participants – all for the sake of profit and entertainment.

“Honestly? This is the Faustian bargain every one of us who watches/writes about/talks about football has made for a long time,” tweeted St. Bonaventure journalism professor Brian Moritz while Hamlin was being resuscitated. A Faustian bargain means sacrificing a moral value for a material gain. (Moritz writes a very good sports journalism blog, by the way.)

In 2017, one sports journalist decided he wasn’t going to accept that bargain anymore.

Ed Cunningham, a former NFL player who was a college football analyst for ESPN, quit the job because he said he could no longer play his supporting role for a sport that was injuring or gradually killing some of its players, including some former teammates. “I just don’t think the game is safe for the brain,” he told the New York Times. “To me, it’s unacceptable.”

Football reporters in recent years have embraced a good but less drastic action: Including stories about the sport’s dangers as part of their overall coverage. It is common to see reports about injury protocol compliance, or the latest neurology research, or the deteriorating life of a former player. Some advocate for new safety measures, too.

As excellent as that is, there’s not much time or space in the media for the viewpoint – a minority viewpoint, for sure – that the game needs fundamental change. Every sport carries risks, of course, but only a few – football and boxing, for instance – build dangerous physical contact into their essence.

Calls for less tackle football and more flag football are understandably focused on levels before high school. I don’t think participants, fans or the sports media would entertain anything more radical, because that would mess with a whole lot of golden geese.

I and many others will watch the games as usual this weekend and next Monday, and reporters will cover them. In the wake of this Monday’s harrowing events, none of that will be as easy as it once was.

Students discover hating on journalists has no age minimum

unesco via wikimedia commons

Smart college journalism students enhance their classroom work by doing internships or joining a campus outlet. They get to experience the real thing: Published stories seen by an audience, with all the potential good and bad consequences that professionals face. Because, really, student journalists are journalists who just happen to be students.

This is a great philosophy. Until it isn’t.

The Washington Post recently published an alarming story with this headline: “Online mobs are now coming for student journalists”. It details severe online harassment of college journalists around the U.S., leaving some spooked and reconsidering their planned career. Primarily using social media channels, attackers hurl physical threats, obscenities, and insults about personal appearance. They also doxx (publicly revealing private contact information). Not surprisingly, women, racial minorities and gender identity minorities get it the worst.

Slamming the content of a piece of journalism is fine, even if not always justified. So is criticizing a journalist’s professional standards. Personal attacks on journalists are not fine. Veteran professionals may reach a point where they can shrug it off. Not as easy for someone who is still in college and whose social media profile is a huge part of their life.

Ainsley Platt, one of my students, is news editor of The Crimson White. She’s seen some mean stuff directed at her or some of her 25 reporters. Maybe not like the stuff depicted in the Post story, but harsh. Much of it occurs on Instagram, one of the main platforms where the CW posts its stories.

“Especially at first it did screw with me and it was difficult,” she said. “Now, I just accept it as part of my job.”

A couple of CW articles that prompted online vitriol: One about a student/faculty campaign to drop “Dixie” from the UA fight song and another about racist text messages by a leader of a sorority. For about 10 days after the latter article, which she wrote, Platt heard from some anonymous Instagram accounts. “I got a lot of messages that said ‘you’re going to regret what you wrote.’ … That was extremely scary to me.”

Her worst experience, though, came in person. One day at lunch at a restaurant bar, she told a middle-age man sitting next to her that she was a news media major and student journalist. He launched into a 30-minute tirade against the media, telling Platt that she was “everything that’s wrong with America.” Even more alarming, he followed her to her car.  “I’ve never been that scared in my life,” she recalled.

As a result, “I don’t feel comfortable telling people that I am a journalist. … There are people out there that genuinely think that journalists are the enemy of the people.”

But she won’t give up on a journalism career. “If you really love what you do, you aren’t going to let (the harassers) get in your way.” 

Platt believes, though, that some student journalists need to be honest about whether they can ignore the ugliness, because they’ll continue to face it as professionals. She said, “If you are facing it and you think ‘God, this makes me want to quit,’ then I’m not sure you are in the right job.”

Journalism educators can help by doing a better job of teaching how to cope with hostility against the press. A 2022 survey of 400 U.S. college journalism instructors by Dr. Kaitlin C. Miller of UA and Dr. Kelsey Mesmer of Saint Louis University found that one-third do not discuss or assign reading on hostility in journalism. Mesmer told me by email that some, distressingly, frame hostility “as a badge of honor that was to be expected if (journalists) were doing their jobs correctly.”

So what can campus journalists do? It is wise to use platform tools such as muting, blocking and reporting comments. It is unwise to respond to the bomb throwers.

It is wise to take breaks from social media (perhaps an impossible ask of college students!). It is unwise to take the digital hate personally.

 It is wise to remember the value of one’s work and use it for mental fortitude. It is unwise – a victory for the trolls, in fact – to stop reporting on controversial topics. Platt says she won’t.

“I feel a deep, intense desire to do my job … The job of journalists has never been more important.”

Searching for accountability in the Auburn football coaching hire

An immediate acknowledgment: This is easy for me to say because I wasn’t there and I don’t have to take the in-person or online flak afterward. But that was some soft journalism we saw at Tuesday’s introductory press conference for new Auburn University head football coach Hugh Freeze.

I don’t put all the fault on the reporters. I also blame the general nature of press conferences.

The hire of a coach with a history of varied misconduct has severely split Auburn alumni and fans. Many believe in second chances and welcome a coach with a record of on-field success. Others are dismayed their university could place a man of such flawed character in charge of impressionable young men.

Freeze’s misconduct while at Ole Miss included NCAA violations, public lying and misuse of a university cellphone to call a female escort service on multiple occasions. Of even more concern, his past also includes allegations that he invaded the privacy of a few female students when he was a high school coach (he denies this), and he sent social media direct messages as recently as July to a sexual assault victim who was part of a Title IX lawsuit against Liberty University, where he worked at the time. Many colleges that prioritize achievement in football have failed to respect the rights of women on campus. In such a climate, the hiring of Freeze seems especially heinous.

In light of this background, and as Auburn asks its “family” to accept this new face of the university, Freeze and the people who hired him are obligated to answer questions. The press is obligated to ask them.

Didn’t see that on Tuesday.

Auburn didn’t even let Athletics Director John Cohen take questions, which tells you all you need to know about what Auburn knows it did. (He offered prepared remarks that cited a thorough vetting of Freeze, but an AL.com story pointed out that wasn’t necessarily so.)

A few reporters – Joseph Goodman of AL.com and Jeff Speegle of ABC 33/40, for instance – asked questions that sought some accountability. But there were no questions that asked about specific transgressions. Sure, such questions have been asked of Freeze in the past in other communities. This is a new community, a new audience. I see nothing wrong with a question such as “What was your reason for sending online direct messages to a sexual assault victim at Liberty University, and in hindsight do you have any regrets?”

But the nature of press conferences — whether sports related or not — can work against questions like that. Often, the events are televised or streamed, so there’s no anonymity, and they take place in a room full of fans or supporters. Not easy. And the folks at the lectern usually are skilled at evasion. (This includes, for instance, Nick Saban.)

There’s also limited time and a lot of legitimate angles to cover, including non-sensitive ones. I didn’t hear any questions Tuesday that I thought were a total waste.

Sports writers may commendably try to get better answers from Freeze and Cohen in one-on-one, less public settings. Alas, most major-college sports information departments don’t let a lot of those happen, either. Auburn did grant one later Tuesday to ESPN’s Chris Low, who did, indeed, get an answer from Freeze about the direct messages.

It will be interesting to see what happens at next year’s SEC Media Days. The place will be packed with media that couldn’t care less what decision makers or fan bases they hack off with their questions, because they don’t have to deal with them every day. What answers might they get? Dunno. Probably: “The hire was eight months ago. We’ve moved on.”

It’s a very slick spin move.

At UA, questions about a different kind of liberalness

(UPDATE: 60% of faculty endorsed the proposal, which will take effect in fall 2025. Not surprisingly, the least amount of support came from the College of Arts and Sciences.)

As you know, my professor colleagues around the nation and I are indoctrinating our students with corruptive liberal views. I can’t even get them to format their assignments correctly but yeah, sure, we’re doing that.

A different sort of liberal is under scrutiny at UA right now – liberal arts courses.

Faculty are voting now on whether to support a task force proposal to reduce the number of liberal arts courses that students must take. Under the proposal, which would go into effect in fall 2025 if adopted, the general education requirements that include such courses would shrink from 53 credit hours to 37. Students would make up the difference by taking more courses in their major or by double majoring.

The specifics show a de-emphasis in liberal arts. STEM courses (science, technology, engineering and math) are left mostly as is. Among the changes, students would have to take:

• Three instead of four courses in humanities, literature and fine arts

• Three instead of four courses in history and social/behavioral sciences

• Zero instead of two courses in foreign languages if the student had sufficient foreign language education in high school

• One instead of two courses that are writing intensive

Students would also have greater freedom of choice among classes in humanities, literature, fine arts, history and social science. Currently, a student must take at least one history course and one literature course. As proposed, students could cluster their six required courses within two or three of these subject areas and graduate without taking a history or literature class.

The underlying theme here is to better prepare graduates for jobs. A student’s choice of major presumably reflects their anticipated career path so more courses within the major would help.

The most alarmed faculty have derided the new plan as starting to turn UA into a “technical school.” (“UAT” — University of Alabama Tech. Ha.)

Based on conversations with two of my classes (sample size = 50), most students support the proposed change. Many of them dislike being forced to take courses they have no interest in and for which they see no future usefulness. Required general education courses delay their major courses, they said, and because of low motivation, some gen ed classes pull down their GPA.

Economics justifies the proposal, too. With the ridiculous escalating cost of college – current annual cost of tuition, room and board at UA is $26,326 for in-state students and $46,686 for those from out of state – graduates and families have every right to expect that they’re paying for skills and knowledge that will translate into easier job placement and long-term economic gain in the real world. “Return on investment” is a thing in higher education.

Having said all that, I asked my students if they had ever taken a mandatory core curriculum class and discovered that they loved it. I got hands from about 33 percent. Yeah, that’s a minority, but it’s way more than zero.

In our discussions, several students argued the merits of exploring new subjects and a broad-based education.  They found applicability that they never expected, they said. They developed transferable thinking skills. They learned cool stuff (shoutouts for Oceanography and others).

I suggested that even with a reduced core curriculum, students could use their elective courses to try change-of-pace subjects. But my students were adamant that their cohorts aren’t going to do that on a significant scale unless forced to.

Several skeptics of a switch to more credit hours within majors noted that freshmen and sophomores may need several semesters to identify their most suitable major, and a significant number will eventually wish to change it. In a blog post in August 2019, I wrote this about discovering new areas of interest: “If college doesn’t ever cause at least a moment of doubt about your chosen major or career, you’re doing it wrong.” I still believe that.

My background colors my view on this. I attended a liberal arts college. Majored in political science. Took exactly two journalism courses. Career time spent in politics: 0 minutes. Career time spent in journalism: 35 years.

The large newswriting course I teach has lots of public relations majors in it because it’s required for them. Some of them don’t want to be there. A few, though, discover an interest and an aptitude they never knew they had. Will they switch majors or careers because of it? Highly unlikely. But they suddenly have a new post-graduation option if they want it. That’s a good thing.

Getting well-rounded makes particular sense for students in fields of media. The content they will someday produce professionally could be about anything and everything. So use one of life’s rare opportunities for exploration to learn something about anything and everything.

Crime stories are everywhere, but you really don't have to stay home

The news media love crime stories, which, of course, is the fault of the audience for giving them clicks and ratings.

But some commentators on the press offer unreservedly brutal words for how journalists do crime coverage:

• Tauhid Chappell and Mike Rispoli of Free Press wrote for Nieman Lab in 2020: “Crime coverage is terrible. It’s racist, classist, fear-based clickbait masking as journalism. It creates lasting harm for the communities that newsrooms are supposed to serve.”

• Kelly McBride of Poynter told an online seminar in 2021 that years from now, “newsrooms will issue apologies for the harm they caused” with their crime reporting. For good measure, she called it “journalistic malpractice.”

Yikes.

The failures begin with too much trust in the crime accounts offered by law enforcement. I’ve written about this previously.

But it’s more than that. Fair questions surround the news media’s pattern of reporting on crime primarily in the form of individual, perhaps sensationalized breaking news reports, and whether the emphasis on crime causes news consumers to become more fearful about their communities than they need to be.

I have previously defended so-called “episodic” coverage of violent crime because it often focuses on the human toll, and the public having its guts wrenched by that is the first step toward action and resolution. Still, those news organizations that decided they needed to revamp their police reporting almost universally have decided that means more big-picture stories on causes, effects and solutions.

A good example of such deep-dive crime reporting is under way in Birmingham. The Birmingham Times and AL.com have partnered to produce a periodic “Beyond the Violence” series exploring a dramatic rise in Birmingham homicides so far this year. The city is on pace to surpass its record high of 141 in 1991, according to AL.com.

The partnership allows each organization to benefit from the reporter specialties and connections of the other, and produce more “expansive and comprehensive information than if either publisher went alone,” said Birmingham Times Executive Editor Barnett Wright*, whose organization focuses heavily on Birmingham’s predominantly Black neighborhoods. It also means a wider audience than either could reach alone.

In-depth reporting like this offers a chance to perform the vital public service of putting crime frequency into accurate perspective. Substantial research shows that the frequent presentation of crime by the media – not just the news media but also by the entertainment media, especially TV shows – causes the audience to think their community is more dangerous than the numbers say it really is. Academics have a name for this: “Mean World Syndrome.”

 “Mean World” effect has significant bad consequences: minority communities get unfairly associated with rampant crime; residents flee those communities; residents elsewhere won’t go there, thus diminishing social and economic gain in those areas. Politicians use fear to win votes. Gun companies do the same to sell more weapons. Citizens feel the need to buy.  Anxiety abounds.

Social media also play a role. AL.com’s John Archibald* researched this during his year as a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. “(Social media) algorithms that keep popular crime news in news feeds for long and recurring periods of time contribute to the culture of fear and polarization,” he said. “…The viral nature of crime news and the fact that algorithms often re-post old crime stories in feeds gives an outsized perception of the amount of crime that occurs nationally.”

That amount is going down. Violent crime per person in the U.S. has declined almost 50% since its peak in 1991. In Birmingham, the homicide trend is alarming but other violent crime (rape, robbery, aggravated assault) is down 21% from mid-October 2021 to the same point of 2022, according to online statistics from the Birmingham Police Department. Property crime is down 1%.

“Americans believe violent crime is rising, despite its decline over the years,” Akintude Ahmad wrote in Columbia Journalism Review in 2019. “Crime is now at its lowest rate in four decades. Yet it remains the No. 1 topic on local news.”

The veteran Wright, whose newsroom generally does not publish breaking crime news, knows the challenges of keeping crime rates in perspective. “What gets more clicks: A story about an alarming homicide trend or a story about overall crime being down? The question is will the media convey the downward trend? This is why I believe the BT/AL.com project is so important. We're going beyond just the daily reports of homicides.”

Amen to that.

Still, I’d never suggest that local news media across the country should stop treating major violent crimes as news. I would suggest, though, a de-emphasis on smaller crimes and greater emphasis on trends, causes, solutions and stories that protect the public. Add in accountability stories about law enforcement performance, and constant numerical perspective on the prevalence of crime.

In other words, it’s not crime reporting. It’s public safety reporting.

*(Disclosure: Former colleague of mine)

Why you're (probably) wrong about Paul Finebaum

PAUL FINEBAUM ON STAGE WITH UA PROFESSOR DR. ANDREW C. BILLINGS IN AUGUST 2021.

I fear this post will infuriate everyone who ever worked with me in The Birmingham News sports department.

Paul Finebaum will be inducted Thursday into the Hall of Fame of the University of Alabama College of Communication (where I work) and I think it’s deserved.

I offer this perspective as a competitor when Finebaum worked for The Birmingham Post-Herald, and as a guest on his show – the local radio version, not the current national TV/radio version – a half-dozen times or so. Over the years he said good and bad things about The News. I think my former colleagues mostly remember the bad.

Like him or not, you can respect the prominence he has achieved as a commentator for ESPN and the SEC Network. Beyond that, what word do you associate with him? Outrageous? Brash? Loudmouth? Well, if so, that’s part and parcel of sports talk radio and TV. Compared to some others, he’s almost restrained.

I listened occasionally when I was in the business. Certainly, I’m aware of some moments – either said by Finebaum or allowed to be said by a caller – that dropped my jaw for being beyond the pale. Some of his callers are indeed nuts.

“We’ve cornered the market on insanity,” he told an unsurprisingly large group of UA students during an August 2021 event of the Alabama Program in Sports Communication. (Finebaum gives generously of his time for guest speaking at UA. He has also invited two of my students to appear on his show.)

But the show has also produced some powerfully affecting moments, real news and even public service. A sense of community created by the show emerges when, for instance, a longtime regular caller passes away.

With any media commentator, the actual words matter more than the intent. But I’ve always given Finebaum credit for acknowledging, usually in academic settings, that he’s an “actor” playing a role. And over time he has changed how he plays it, he says. These days, according to him, you’ll hear less of his own opinion, fewer rants, fewer hot takes.

““We are in the entertainment business,” he said at APSC. “(But) we try to do things right.”

Even as he acts and entertains, he still flashes journalistic chops, and I think that’s what many people overlook. He’s a very good interviewer (first hand knowledge here). His blunt questioning of Nick Saban on live TV about the non-suspension of a star player in 2016 was a massively impressive moment of accountability journalism that not every reporter would have had the gumption to try. Going back 40 years, Finebaum earned awards for sports investigative reporting at the Post-Herald. He broke stories in his columns.

In grad school I wrote a research paper about the history of sports writing in Alabama (one grad research paper = instant expert). An interviewee, a sports writer who has been on the scene in Alabama longer than me or Finebaum, offered that the 1980 arrival of this new Post-Herald reporter recently out of the University of Tennessee marked the start of a sea change in state sports writing from non-critical, blind-eye reporting in the ‘60s and ‘70s to more aggressive questioning of powerful sports figures that continues today.

That’s an essential mindset for sports journalism in Alabama and everywhere. Igniting that transformation seems Hall of Fame worthy to me.

A journalist who doesn’t want you to buy his book

When the best journalists put their work in book form, they invest exhaustive effort to portray the subject as completely and truthfully as possible. Often, they nail it.

Sometimes, in hindsight, they miss.

Sportswriter Jeff Pearlman, a New York Times bestselling author whose work includes books on Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, the Los Angeles Lakers and the Dallas Cowboys, believes he missed with his 2016 book “Gunslinger: The remarkable, improbable, iconic life of Brett Favre.”

Remarkably and improbably, Pearlman went on Twitter on Sept. 13 and told his followers not to buy or read Gunslinger. He did so in the immediate wake of news reports that Favre, the retired Green Bay Packers and Southern Mississippi quarterback, knowingly participated in steering $5 million in government money intended for impoverished Mississippi families to building at new volleyball stadium at Southern Miss, where his daughter played on the team.

Pearlman posted: “I wrote a biography of the man that was largely glowing. Football heroics, overcoming obstacles, practical joker, etc. Yes, it included his grossness, addictions, treatment of women. But it was fairly positive. … And, looking at it now, if I'm being brutally honest — I'd advise people not to read it. He's a bad guy. He doesn't deserve the icon treatment.”

Keep in mind that Favre’s depraved scheme occurred after Pearlman published the book. And nothing the author wrote was factually wrong. But that didn’t matter to Pearlman, who feels a strong commitment to ethics. (I say this based on reading his online posts and listening to him during a Zoom appearance with some UA journalism students.)

My department colleague, Lars Anderson, knows Pearlman from 15 years of working together at Sports Illustrated magazine and wasn’t surprised by Pearlman’s post.

jeff pearlman

Anderson has written a dozen sports books of his own, including ones on Nick Saban, Dabo Swinney and the Mannings. He says the key to portraying truth is “reporting, reporting, reporting.” Reflecting on his books, “I feel good about full portraits I've painted.”

Pearlman knows the value of deep reporting, too. For his latest book coming out in October – “The Last Folk Hero: The Life and Myth of Bo Jackson” – he interviewed more than 700 people.

Of course, an author has to want to show reality. With authorized biographies in which the main subject cooperates, there’s a danger that the portrayal gets whitewashed or at least softened. The most prominent example I can think of: The paid ghostwriter of “The Art of the Deal,” the 1987 bestseller about Donald Trump, has spent years disavowing the book and trashing Trump.

“I've found that it's almost liberating when the subject doesn't participate,” Anderson says. “It’s the job of the biographer, in my view, to reveal truths about your subject that your subject cannot see.”

In the case of Gunslinger, Favre didn’t participate. And Pearlman doesn’t do whitewashes (see the books on Bonds and Clemens and his famous 1999 Sports Illustrated article on Atlanta Braves pitcher John Rocker).

Sure, it’s easier for a successful author to swear off a book. But in the world of publishing, it’s an unnatural act. And worthy of applause.

It also serves as a reminder and a warning for journalists. Whether writing a book or a feature article, you may think you know a person. But in some cases, you really don’t.

A missing voice in big-time college sports: The athletes

Whenever big-time college sports unveil their latest idea for making more money – conference explanation, playoff expansion, whatever – the voices in the news coverage belong mostly to coaches, league commissioners, university presidents and TV executives.

 There’s a viewpoint usually missing: that of the athletes. Anyone remember them? They’re the ones who have to travel the additional miles, play the additional games and, oh by the way, pass their courses.

 I have seen firsthand the difficulties that students who are athletes have in juggling commitments. Sure, playing an NCAA sport has all kinds of benefits, possibly including being the reason a student can get an education in the first place. But athletic obligations affect what majors athletes can choose, the time of day they can take courses, and how often they miss class because of travel, to name just a few effects.

Whether athletes get accommodations such as excused absences and deadline extensions depends on the professor, the course and the circumstances. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. If you happen to think that no one cares whether athletes fulfill their coursework or not, news flash: You don’t know what you’re talking about.

So, when the latest money grab comes along, my first thought goes to educational impact, not TV ratings or whether my team now has a better chance to win a championship. Crazy, I know.

Educational impact doesn’t get much consideration in boardrooms and executive offices, or if it does, it eventually loses out to the lure of really big dollar signs. That tends to be the focus of media stories too.

One reason the athletes’ viewpoint is so scant* is that almost 90 percent of state universities that compete in NCAA Division I prohibit reporters from interviewing athletes without permission from the athletics department. I hold the view that public universities should be able to restrict athletes’ free expression only as it relates to game competition and internal team matters, and not to athletes’ opinions on issues in the world, including sports and education. But that’s not the way it is in reality.

In light of the Southeastern Conference adding Texas and Oklahoma by 2025, and the Big 10 adding USC and UCLA in 2024, I asked some UA athletes (three former, one current) who were students of mine to assess the good or bad effects on athletes when a league adds increasingly distant schools as members.

Former soccer player Taylor Morgan dislikes the move. She points out that travel isn’t only on weekends.  “Traveling to away games is taxing. At times it’s fun but at times it’s stressful. Knowing you’re missing a test that everyone else is taking or having to take it early or having to get notes from a friend is something that adds up.” Athletes already face a tremendous time commitment to their sport that extends to before and after the regular season, she said. “At what point is money less important than our players’ physical and mental wellness?”

Riley Mattingly Parker, a current soccer player, also cites possible physical consequences.  “Traveling already takes a toll on collegiate players; adding even farther distance could potentially cause an increase in injuries if the fatigue becomes too much.” The positive side, as she sees it, is a chance to see other parts of the country. And in her case, the SEC’s addition of Texas and Oklahoma “will allow for my family and friends to see me play more” because she’s from Dallas.

Former football player Giles Amos thinks athletes benefit from improved competition and more national exposure. “Being in a bigger and better conference allows them a better opportunity to play in these widely televised games being seen by fans all over the nation, especially if you're from somewhere on the other side of the country and your family can't make it to the game.”

Arielle Schafer rowed for UA. Expanded conferences bring more money from TV deals, primarily for football broadcasts, which means more money for Title IX sports such as hers, she said. “I was able to have opportunities due to the athletic department thriving and was never slighted. Non-football athletes in the Big Ten and SEC could see the same thing now.” On the other hand, she said, “conference schedules will be a nightmare” that affects class schedules.

It’s not a great surprise that these individuals cited positives and negatives. But it’s also not the uniform chorus of rah-rahs usually heard in the media as college athletics continues its journey deeper into mega commercialism.

 * Some athlete voices got plenty of media attention for a time in 2020 regarding pandemic safety and racial justice. That was because athletes at certain schools organized campaigns intended to go public.

“At what point is money less important than our players’ physical and mental wellness?”

— Former UA athlete Taylor Morgan