No. 06 for July 2002
Let me rise for a minute in defense, sort of, of Jill Geisler.
Geisler is the former Milwaukee television news director and now leadership expert at The Poynter Institute who recently wrote that the f-word and similarly raunchy language should not have a place in newsrooms. Geisler said such language hampers newsroom communication and, at the very least, provides the wrong message.
The response to her column was vituperative and vitriolic ¾ to use a few of the adjectives that can be printed. Apparently, a good chunk of the responses could not be printed, according to what I read on Poynter’s Web site and according to other comments on other sites. And even some of what is on the Poynter site would, I think, make the workers at my father’s old business among the Brooklyn docks give pause.
Not that Geisler needs me to defend her, but she is dead on when she says it is hurtful and harmful for newsroom leaders to aim such language at subordinates. The romanticized image of the crusty old editor who motivates his staff with an epithet-filled stream of commands, punctuated with cigar smoke, that covers a heart of gold is outdated and outmoded.
In the years I managed newsrooms, tensions sometimes rose to where self-restraint broke down, and the resulting “communication” was never productive. In an Indiana TV newsroom there might still be a hole in the wall where a producer particularly frustrated with equipment failures, late stories and such whizzed a telephone book past my ear. I, of course, instinctively responded with a string of nouns, verbs and adjectives suggesting what could be done with that phone book ¾ hey, I did grow up around the Brooklyn docks. But nothing got solved until the producer and I sat down later over drinks and talked about it in calmer terms. We still remain good friends.
I think Geisler was a bit naïve, however, to suggest that such language can be flushed from newsrooms. Yes, there probably should be less swearing. The danger is that some managers, with good intentions but only marginal understanding of newsroom culture, will attempt to do it by fiat, which will just heighten the already-present tensions.
As one person responding to Geisler’s comments wrote, “The newspaper world is bleeding talent, many of us don’t know where our readership and our jobs are going to be in 10 years, and we’re worrying about someone occasionally swearing?”
Thus, the true value of Gesler’s column is in giving voice ¾ through the responses ¾ to the deep unhappiness in many of today’s newsrooms.
Common Sense Journalism, July 2002
Page 2
Consider this description from a recent news magazine: A workplace where supervisors yell at workers, often criticizing their work as inferior; where the stress level is high as workers try to sort through a stream of competing ¾ and increasing ¾ demands with limited resources, partly the result of corporatization; where public expectations are high; and where many of those who entered the profession because of the chance to help others are growing older and ready to retire while younger students look at the conditions and pay and decide to pursue other careers.
It was about nursing as thousands of nurses prepare to leave that profession and hospitals struggle to recruit new ones.
Yet it sounds like many journalists who say they knowingly traded pay and benefits for the kick of the great story and the byline now say the fun is disappearing. (Don’t believe me? The evidence is on numerous Web sites beyond Poynter’s.)
We see the seeds of it in the classroom. It’s terribly disappointing to have great students get a taste of the business during our senior semester newsroom programs, and when they take stock of the potential working conditions and pay decide daily journalism isn’t for them. Yes, we could say, “These folks probably aren’t the ones we’d want in our newsrooms anyhow.” But many are the best and brightest we need in our newsrooms.
Convergence has brought out similar feelings ¾ and epithets ¾ among veteran journalists. The theme of many of these posts on the Web is, to generalize, “I trained to be a (pick one: top-notch TV producer/reporter, newspaper journalist, investigative reporter, narrative writer) and have developed great skill in those areas, and now you’re devaluing those skills, asking me to dilute that, to boil down that complicated investigative piece into some 200-word version for TV (or to hurry up and lessen my production values on that TV piece so I can struggle to give you a print version).”
Yes, it’s a shortsighted view, but news managers who ignore this roiling unhappiness and expect to produce convergence by fiat do so at their peril.
So, while Geisler is right ¾ gratuitous profanity isn’t the best option ¾ it’s all enough to make a newsroom manager find a broom closet, stuff some towels under the door, and let out a stream of epithets.
As another person responded to Geisler, “If we aren’t to be permitted a good, round oath when some quarter-century veteran uses ‘it’s’ for ‘its’ for the nine hundredth recorded time, what relief can we expect to find?”
Dang straight.
Doug Fisher teaches editing and reporting at the University of South Carolina and can be reached at dfisher@sc.edu or 803-777-3315.