On The Mark: Dr. John Kirch and Jenny Atwater

President Mark Ginsberg hosts journalism professors John Kirch, Ph.D., and Jenny Atwater to discuss the evolution of news media and how TU educates the next generation of journalists.

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You're listening to a Towson University podcast. Welcome to on the Mark, where we have candid conversations about meaningful and consequential work happening here at Towson University. I'm Mark Ginsburg, president of T u, located in Towson, Maryland. And on this podcast, we're introducing you to members of our university community who are engaged in high impact teaching, research and student success practices. I'm excited to be joined by two distinguished journalism professors and to use Mass Communications Program, a program of our College of Fine Arts and Communications. I'm joined by Professor John Kirch and Professor Jenny Atwater. Both have enjoyed prolific careers as reporters, as journalists prior to joining academia and our Towson University faculty, John spent 16 years as a newspaper reporter and magazine editor, covering a myriad of topics including political campaigns, business profiles, education, and national industrial security issues. His works at the intersection of journalism and politics. John received his doctoral degree in journalism and public affairs from the University of Maryland College Park. Jenny has worked as an on air general assignment reporter at various TV stations across the country, including her role as a reporter at Fox 45 here in Baltimore, where she earned two Capital Region Emmys for breaking news and feature coverage. Jenny holds a master's degree in broadcast journalism from the prestigious University of Missouri School of Journalism. Both John and Jenny are tasked here at Towson with critical responsibility for educating the next generation generation of journalists, a job I think that may be more important now than ever. John and Jenny, thank you for joining me today. I should say that I know that you both are involved. And, John, I think you created the Baltimore Watchdog, which is a, news website here at Towson University that our journalism students are involved with. And again, great honor to have you here. As I mentioned, there's probably no greater time and no more important time to talk about the importance of journalism and also what's happening into the profession of journalism, into journalists around the country that now so maybe we can start a little bit with how it is that you define journalism. What is it from your perspective? How do you think about it? would call journalism storytelling about your community. So telling the important stories happening around you, whether it's on the local level, national level, a statewide level or campus level. So telling the stories, painting a picture, if you will, for what's happening in society. John, you've been doing this a long time as well. I know I would agree with that. I think journalism is also trying to educate people, about their government and things happening in their communities. So if they want to get involved, they can be involved. know, I was thinking about the the label that some of the most well-known newspapers in the country use when they talk about their mission. I think The New York Times talks about all the news that's fit to print. The Washington Post now talks about democracy dies in darkness, the role of of printing what's fit, and also knowing that democracies are built on understanding facts. What about that both of those mission kind of capture, capturing mission statements seem to be kind of emblematic to me of the whole field. Well, I was just going to say that, that's an important distinction for our students to when they come to our program. To give them a good idea of what being a journalist is all about and the mission of being a journalist. And on a really high level, it is to educate the masses, right, to let them know what's happening in the world. And it's a huge responsibility, for journalists and the darkness part too, as well as, you know, you don't know if you don't know what's happening in the world. If the journalists aren't informing you, how are you going to make informed decisions? Yeah, yeah. And I think that, the journalism I mean, the main goal here is to get as close to the truth as humanly possible. And that was the mantra that I used to say to myself every day when I was a newspaper reporter. I used to give me a sense of comfort. You know, I would go into the newsroom every day and I would just say to myself, you know, today I'm going to get as close to this truth as is humanly possible, given my, you know, talent level, the deadline pressure, the ability, you know, the people I'm going to be able to get in touch with. And that's what I tried to stay focused on. And, yeah, that's I think the truth is, and trying to get as close to that is the main mission of a journalist So you both are teachers of journalism? Two, you're journalists by career, but now you're journalist educators. Talk a little bit about the evolution of how it is you teach journalism. And what are some of the the core things that you do is you're you're working to educate aspiring journalists. I would say in the 20 years, being here at Towson, journalism has changed immensely, from going to distinct print, to basically being all online, right, with people mostly consuming and to being online to being on your phone, mobile first is what journalism journalists think about now. And, you know, one of the neat things I think about teaching journalism is getting to stay on top of the trends in journalism, because we have to teach it. So, you know, we learn how to, we I just remember first starting talking about Twitter and thinking, what the heck is Twitter? And in fact, I'm one of my, classes. I remember a student saying to me, Professor Atwater, are you on Facebook? And I was like, What is Facebook? And I wish they'd never told me because I've spent too much time on it. But, teaching these students keeps us current, and then we are really important. It's really important for us to stay current so we're able to, evolve with how journalism is in the real world and what they're expected to know. Yeah, right. Exactly. To stay current. And I think that, for me, the whole thing about journalism education is that it really should be experiential, that the only way that, students are going to learn how to be a journalist is by doing journalism, every single day. And that was the reason for the Baltimore watchdog. I wanted to get them into the community. I wanted them interviewing people. I wanted to get them off campus and, and to see what it was like every single day. And this the technology has changed. The platforms have changed. But I still think that the core of journalism, is the same, you know, the, the need to create relationships, develop relationships in the community, learning how to find primary source documents, learning how to interview and talk to people, learning how to write, how to take video and photographs. Yeah, all of that. Those fundamentals, I think, have stayed the same. It just that the the platforms have have Well, that's really interesting to hear. So essentially what you're teaching now is kind of the same things you've always taught. But teaching to apply that perhaps, as you say, with different platforms or different different outlets. Yeah, that's exactly right. And I think that a lot of these students, especially students who go into broadcasting. Don't realize that writing is still a very important skill that they need to have people who go into print, they just assume that. But I think a lot of students are going to broadcasting before they actually do it. I'm not sure what they're thinking, but I think they think that they just stand up there and they just ad lib, and they don't realize that there is a writing process that goes on and that, you know, they can't ignore that, that the that the writing and the critical thinking skills that writing develops is a skill that they absolutely need to have, regardless of what platform they're going on. was interesting to the John, you come from a newspaper or a print background, and generally you come over from a broadcast background, both of those media seems to me, have changed dramatically over the last two decades. Hardly a newspaper exists in some communities anymore and, and, broadcast journalism, not just the advent of cable, but the whole technology of it has shifted. How have you seen those shifts and how has it affected, not just the process of journalism, but the, the, the impact of journalism is what I'm asking. Have you seen that? I think one of the challenges for journalists now is attention spans. With, social media, especially TikTok and Reels on Instagram, I think it's, what, three seconds? People will argue about how much time Oh, my three seconds. No kidding. So, So the challenge is producing or writing stories that people will hang out for to the whole but, you know, read the whole story or at least read past the first sentence or watch past the first three seconds. Capturing attention spans a big challenge. Yes, yes it is. But that said, as John said, it's still I talked to my friends who are working in television now, and I'll say to them, what do I need to do? What do these students need? It's still the basic skills. Say they need to know how to write, or they need to know how to shoot video that tells the story, or, you know, edit the video. And it's the same thing that I learned all those years ago. So it's just like John said, it's a matter of presenting it in a way. And, you know, they'll still do the the big story, but then they need to be able to cut it down. So what's your social media version of this? What's your short blurb that you can put on the website? And then hopefully people will go to the main story. And the French side John. Similarly. Well I guess I'll start with on the print side, I think one of the problems is well, is the trust in journalism in general is this lack of trust in the public on the job that journalists do and a lot of belief that there's, that journalists, they don't really care about getting to the truth, that it's just getting a good story, that it's making a name for themselves. It's about ambition, personal ambition. And I think that maybe in some ways, social media has contributed to that because of the pressure that the bosses put on reporters to constantly put things out there as quickly as possible. Perhaps before you get a chance to verify. And so the number of mistakes increases. And I think back to when I was a reporter before social media. And I'll just give you one example, I there was a rumor or we heard something over the police scanner. This is in Worcester, Massachusetts, about a small plane that crashed in a field, rural area north of the city. So I got sent out there and there was me, a bunch of reporters. And whenever you go out to something like that, it's a lot of waiting around. And then the police come and they give you a press conference and everything. So during that time that I'm out there and this is like the mid 90s, I'm hearing all kinds of rumors. There were two people on the plane. One of them was killed. There was only one guy in the plane. He's okay. He crashed into a barn. All of this stuff. The public never heard any of that. I was able to sift through all those rumors. And by the time my deadline came around and the story came out the following morning, it was pretty much just the facts. But today, when you've got to and you're under so much pressure to tweet, get stuff out on social media, there can be times when perhaps you hear one of those rumors and it gets out there and the public hears it, and then it turns out not to be true. And that just it's another chink in the armor. You brought up an interesting point, John. I wanted to get back to you. And that's the trust of the public in the media. And I've been reading some things suggesting that, for whatever reason, the trust in the media has waned through the years. I guess two questions about that. One. How have you experienced that? And and what's been the impact, on, on journalists, on on hearing that that the trust in those who report the news for whatever reason. And we can talk about what some of those reasons are. It has been challenging. You know, when I was a reporter and I would go into the field, I did feel a sense of you said you were a journalist. That was a bit of a shield that you had, a protest or in any event, people generally saw you as a good faith neutral actor, that you were there just to report the news. That was my experience. But now I think when reporters go into the field and, depending on where they're going or they're or they are going to come up against eight cases where they could conceivably experience violence or at least verbal abuse, and that saying you're a journalist or having something on this as press or media is not a shield anymore. And journalists could say this, they will say that they sometimes they have to really watch their social media, usage because they will get death threats. Some of them reported being stalked. You know, this is these are things that I didn't have to face, right? Reporter. So, yeah. Yeah. And we could talk about why the trust in the before, but I think that's an example. Think reporters. You know, when I teach about going to a rally, I have to talk about things like you need to look around for escape routes or, you know, don't park near the rally, park far away and walk so that you don't get caught in traffic. If something happens, you know, you got to start talking about these issues to make people aware that you got to be more self-aware, more aware of your surroundings. Then perhaps you before just because of you, you know. Yeah. So, so wearing a vest that said media and press on it, it may have at one time been an an honor, a badge of of honor, if you will. And now it sounds like it potentially is, a target. Yeah. That's a scary thought and a scary thought. Yeah, yeah, yeah. On the broadcast side, Jenna, you've probably been involved in the field of taking photographs or even reporting on the evening news about a story and then having had some impact, perhaps, on you personally as a result of that as well. Sure. I mean, what John was just saying, I was thinking, well, when you're in television, there's no hiding it. Can you have a camera right there? You have a microphone. So, you know, I've been used to people knowing exactly why I'm there. You can't you can't, kind of blend in that way. But as far as our students go, we talk a lot about trust in the media all the time. And one of the things I say to them is you just have to really hold yourself to a higher standard. So journalists have always held themselves to a high standard. Right. But people are watching you even more. So be thinking ethically. Be thinking making sure you're not making factual errors. Make sure you're not making silly errors. The top error that journalists make is spelling the names. So, you know, those little things are so easy to fix, but also so easy when you're in a rush to to mess up. So just really trying to get them to be thinking in terms of, you know, people are going to be looking for flaws. Before they weren't looking for flaws, but now they're really looking for those flaws. So, you know, the media, I want to be careful not to become political in our conversation, but the media has become politicized. And that's just a fact. When we hear people talk about fake news, The media sometimes being called the enemy of the people, really do stress, being objective. In, in the, in the reporting, I think one of the problems with the media, that it has been this concerted attack to undermine the credibility of the media and reporters do not feel comfortable defending themselves in the media. So if somebody was to say, well, you know, you're biased against this political party or that political party or, you report fake news, the reporter will not include a sentence that says, that's just not true. I reported this as best I could, and there's very few people that defend it. So the arguments against the media, the arguments that undermine trust in the media often go unchallenged. And that's a problem. And I, I also think, you know, perhaps reporters need to explain to the public more how journalism works and what they do to verify facts, because one of the things that I remember when I was a reporter and and it's reinforced every time I talk to a working journalist today, is that most journalists are really doing that. They are sincerely working, giving their best effort to verify whether or not something is true and not to put something out there that that turns out to be wrong. And of course it happens. But but they're really making a, concerted effort. And they don't the public doesn't see that. The public doesn't realize that. Just how much care goes into this stuff. To have time to be a journalist, in some ways, knowing that there are these countervailing forces that that are questioning, it seems like, all the things that you do, the and those questions become pervasive. And we talked earlier the, the, the faith that the general public has in the media has probably been impacted by some of that rhetoric. I would think. Let me share a quote with you that I thought was was interesting from an interesting person, particularly in the times that we live in. It's a quote from a George Orwell. Of course, these are times that have been compared in some ways to Orwellian thinking. George Orwell many years said journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed. Everything else is just public relations. Yeah, yeah, I saw that quote. Oh you do okay I thought I was brilliant fine here. So I realized it was no quote. That's great. It's good to know. It's funny. It's really when I read that I thought that's I wanted to share that with you. I'm glad you've seen it before because it it just had such meaning for me that there are. And I let me kind of take that in a little different direction because of the students you teach, many of them will probably go into public relations. They'll be journalists for a society or journalists and journalists for an organization. We have that here at Towson. We have media specialists who write for us. But that's somehow different than the work of a journalist working for an independent publication. How is it different and how is it different how you train students? I teach intro to Media Writing, which is a class that covers, journalistic writing, PR, writing, advertising. And when we move into public relations, this is I say to them, okay, well, the big difference, because the writing is the same in the sense that you need to be concise and you need to be factually correct, and you need to be conversational and brief. I guess concise is the same thing, but you this is where you can put a little bit of persuasion in there, right? This is where you are putting your, your organization in the best light in journalism. You are being objective and letting people make their own decision. In public relations writing, you are saying, okay, I'm not going to shove it down your throat, but here's some really great things about Towson University It's promotion. More than reporting in some ways. Yeah. absolutely. And I do think that journalism students will go into public relations, often because there maybe sometimes are more jobs there. Or, you know, the state of journalism is such that you have to really want to do it, because sometimes when you start out, the hours aren't great. You know, I used to work weekends, Nightside. Some people do morning shifts, you know, and if you don't love it, that's really hard to do. But if you love it, your newsroom becomes your family. It's a hard career. Yeah. I'm glad you raised that. Because some journalists I know are up at a TV station

at 330 and 4: 20:06

00 in the morning. We probably had that experience. Some are there till 12, 1:00 in the evening. I worked with a police reporter, early in my career who would sleep with the police scanner on in her bedroom.

No kidding went off at 3: 20:18

00 in the morning, Oh, she went off she went. journalism also is a public service. That is a service to the public. And I wanted to show you another quote that maybe, you know, to John, from from someone I have great respect for the great CBS journalist Bob Schieffer, who, who I've gotten a chance to know a little bit through the years, actually. He's a wonderful person. I think journalism is a great way to do public service, to have an impact on your community. Bob Schieffer, someone I think is really had an impact on the community. So talk a little bit from your perspective about that part of journalism, about being, a citizen of a community and having an impact on the community in which you live? Yeah, we I remember when Bob Schieffer, retired, that was a really do you remember when he I do? I do, yeah, Sunday Morning Show is a great show. Yeah, yeah. So that's when we talk about how journalism gives people the, the news they need to know to be informed citizens. So that's our job, to be watchdogs, to be slightly cynical, looking into things. I like to tell students, when you see something and you think, what's up with that? That means you should probably be looking into it and doing a story about it. So it absolutely is a public service. And I think that John can talk about the watchdog. Yeah, it's Talking about the watchdog, the red touch with the watchdog is talk a little bit more about that as well John. Yeah. the Baltimore watchdog is a, news website that I started, I think it was in 2014. And been a while. Yeah. And it's been a way to just get, news reporting that started with my news reporting class. And the idea was to have them do relevant stories about the community. They would see this stuff published. It would motivate them to want to do a good job. It would also give them something they could put on their resume that they had worked at, at a professionally edited news website. And, since then it's grown so that now it's not just the news reporting students, but it's the feature writing students and the multimedia reporting students. The podcasts students and so on. So that if you work, if you take at least one skill class for, say, four semesters, by the time you've graduated, you've built a portfolio of things that have been put up on that website and on your resume. You could say that I worked at the Baltimore watchdog for two years. Fabulous. Coming out of the university with real world experience. Yeah. Tell them And, you know, I try to stress with them what I say about serving the community is that it is important to cover the mayor's office. It is important to go to the city council meetings and to do the police reporting and all that. And as journalism professors, we tell them, you got to turn to the experts. But the other the other thing that I tell them is we also need to get into some of the communities and find out specifically what's going on in those communities, and that people who are who live in a neighborhood are experts on that neighborhood. They know what's going on, they know the issues that affect them. And so we have to talk to them, too. It can't just be about what the city government is doing or the county government is doing. Right, right. We need to talk to people, find out what they're concerned about. And, you know, some students get really into that and they find people, others get a little nervous, you know, and I try to encourage them to go outside their comfort zone and say, you know, I know it's going to feel uncomfortable, but get out there because when you're done, you're going to be really proud of yourself. You're going to have learned something and you're going to know, wow, I can do that. And you know, so, you know, that I think was the whole strategy behind the It's a. Great idea. to, to, to to serve the community and, and serve our students all at the same time. yeah, it's sort of relate to that public good notion of, of to you being a university for the public good. But journalist having a, a public service responsibility. But what a great experience for our students to work in a, in not just a real life news organization, but really reporting on things of, of substance and interest. Yeah. yeah. when we get into the, know, the new Smith Hall, the new Yes, yes. And to have a newsroom and we will have a, TV studio. And so I think we'll be able to really take that game to the next level. Yeah. We should say too, as part of today's conversation, that we have a new building that's in flight, as they say, it's in construction. It'll be a state of the art facility for, electronic mail and film and media program or journalism program or broadcast journalism programs. And it's going to be just a terrific, terrific catalytic environment for our students. Very much like. You. Yeah, we are too. And it's going to be a beautiful building, beautiful building for sure. So as we have just a couple of more minutes, I'm curious to ask a little bit about some of the roles that journalists play. You're talking a lot about telling the story of a community, But there's also a wing of reporting that seems to me that is very important that I don't want to ignore. And there's the investigative journalist and and journalists have also not just told the story they've uncovered stories they've brought to light things that have been hidden in darkness. I'm just curious about your perspective on on the different roles journalists play, and in particular, the importance of those who who dig deep and deeper than maybe any of us have had a chance to to dig on some, some stories and issues. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think the investigative journalist is, is vital to society because they're the ones who are, you know, bringing to light things that we might not otherwise know. We're we're entering a period of time, it seems to me like again, without being political, but just stating facts that that there's a push that the media be if not silence, then censored that journalism as a profession and journalists and journalists as professionals, should only report on certain things or or be sanctioned for things that reporting on that may not fit someone's narrative. From an investigative reporter standpoint, I imagine that's really a big issue. But generally, how is that zeitgeisty? How is that evolving your evolving narrative about the media? How is that affecting the interest of students now? Is it affecting your work? Is teaching journalists? Well, I, I think I do get a lot of students who say they want to be investigative reporters. I think reporters, journalists need to. They really need to keep their eye on what their job is. And their job is to hold powerful institute to account. And when when those powerful institutions start coming after them, it can get very intimidating. I think one way journalists can respond to that is by banding banning together. and sticking up for one another. So if, for example, an organization is, say, kicked out of the white House Yes. maybe the other reporters should leave, or maybe the other reporters should be constantly asking about that. That's not something that reporters are very good because of the whole competitive thing, It is a very competitive business. That's right. Yeah. I think that they and I've seen cases where a reporter has asked a question, they've been shot down and another reporter is called on and they'll say, well, I would like to follow up on what that reporter just asked, you know, but but too often than not, reporters don't stick up for each other. And I think that's a problem, for our students, I think a lot of them come in and I think there's I want to I guess I want to echo something that what Jenny said before, you really have to want it. You really have to want to do this. Interesting. It's not a hobby. But I also think I work with freshmen a lot. I'm an FYI advisor, and I think that for the students that come in thinking they want to do one, I have many conversations with students saying, I thought I was going to do this, but now I want to do this, or my parents want me to do this. That's the beauty of college is to figure it out. So you come in thinking you're going to graduate with this one degree and you realize that's not for you there. So many other things. Right? And if you do major in journalism and you think, I'm not going to do this, it's, you know, I don't want to do it. When I get into the real world. There's so many skills that you're learning that are transferable to so many different things. Yeah. well, that's a really good point that the training to be a journalist, whether you become a journalist or whether you use the skills in other ways, it's a critical set of skills critical thinking, critical writing, communicating, engaging. John, let me come back to one thing you said, and I wanted to read one more quote to you to, maybe we can conclude on this. It's it's an old quote by Thomas Jefferson. Maybe it's one, you know, two that are liberty depends on the freedom of press. And that cannot be limited without our freedom being lost. When you talk about the challenges that the press has and you talk also about the, the, the, the importance of the skills that journalists develop, it seems to me there's something powerful about that quote. Yeah, there is. And I teach a journalism history course and I show them that quote as well. When we talk about the emergence of the First Amendment and, yeah, I know I'm a big believer that without journalism you don't have democracy. And it's one thing that I do try to stress on the students that that there's a bigger calling here, you know, that, in order for people to, you know, be able to participate in a democracy, they need to know what's going on and that that's your job and you're supposed to question things. And so, yeah, I mean, there's a reason that journalism is the only profession that's mentioned and in and receives protection from the United States Constitution. Interesting. And something, something we have to preserve, something we have to preserve. Well, journalists play an important role in our society. And and teaching journalists to become proficient in their craft, I think, is one of the great things that happened to that Towson University. And I'm really appreciative for the two of you joining us, very appreciative for the work that you do. And I know our students are very appreciative for having you and having the opportunity to learn and grow and and become journalists with your true religion mentoring. So thank you both for joining us. It's been a pleasure to have you on on the Mark and to talk about one of the most important professions in our society, one of the most important functions of society to tell accurately and with the real facts, the stories of our day. Yeah. Well, thank you for having us. Thanks very much. Great to be with you. Thank you for listening to on the Mark. If you like what you've heard, please give us a follow or leave a review. It helps ensure that we can keep bringing you more candid conversations about the consequential impact of higher education. And if you have feedback about our podcast, Feel free to send me a message at on the mark@towson.edu. 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