Medill Dean John Lavine Steps Down

Medill Dean John Lavine is leaving behind some unfinished business.

Medill Dean John Lavine sent an email today to the Medill alumni listserv announcing he's stepping down from his post next August.

He doesn't really offer a reason other than focusing on other initiatives and spending more time with his wife. That's certainly possible, though of course it's curious that he's leaving the program at this point in the transition from pre-Lavine to a realization of his magnum opus, the "Medill 2020" plan (of which I'm admittedly not always a fan).

In fact, Dean Lavine mentions in the letter that "we've accomplished far more than was envisioned in our Medill 2020 plan." I'm not really sure what that means, but I would point out that it's only 2011, so maybe an itemized list of what we've actually accomplished (besides RenameGate) might shed some light on the depth of water we've been treading the last few years. And of course, this amplifies the question of where we'll go from here. A lot depends, I suppose, on who is chosen to succeed him.

We wait with bated breath. The letter is pasted below.

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from John Lavine
to MEDILLALUMS@listserv.it.northwestern.edu
date Wed, Sep 21, 2011 at 9:05 AM
subject Future Plans -- A Note to the Medill Community


Dear Colleagues and Members of the Medill Community,

Six years ago, President Bienen and Provost Dumas asked if I would lead the implementation of a new strategy for Medill. In the years that followed, we have joined together to deepen the quality of our curricula, provide our students with the best educational opportunities in the country and strengthen and diversify our offerings and resources.

Now, I’m writing to tell you that I have shared with President Schapiro and Provost Linzer my decision to step down as Medill's Dean on August 31, 2012. I do so knowing we have a faculty, staff and curricula no other school can match.

When I became dean, journalism and marketing communications were being roiled by a digital tsunami, and soon thereafter, by one of the worst economic downturns in a century. In the midst of these difficult circumstances, we adopted unprecedented curricular change. Northwestern supported our plan with the addition of more faculty and staff with new skills, knowledge, and experience than at any time in Medill’s history.

It has been quite an odyssey. Together we’ve accomplished far more than was envisioned in our Medill 2020 plan. Along the way, we’ve faced and overcome major challenges, as well as some controversies; when you undertake seismic change, both are inevitable.

What counts is the progress we’ve made, the foundation for the future that we’ve built, and the validation of what we’ve done from external sources -- including leaders of the industries we serve and the unprecedented evaluation last spring from the Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communications. Our faculty and curricula lead the country. Despite the tough economy, employers here and abroad seek out our graduates, and Northwestern University Qatar, our undergraduate school in Doha, is about to graduate its first class.

You are terrific colleagues. I treasure the opportunity to have worked with you, and I’m excited about completing the big projects we have before us this coming year.

When I step down, I will focus on an initiative that is also close to my heart -- examining how the media can determine if people are truly informed by the content they provide, and seeking out new ways for the news media to remain viable. I’ll have more to share about this work in the future.

I will also spend more time with my wonderful wife, Meryl. As busy as we’ve both been in our careers – and as much as she has been central to all that I’ve done in my professional life – now, more than ever, we cherish having more personal time together.

Warm regards,

John

Medill: The Last J-School Standing

This word cloud was created by running Medill's 2008 online course descriptions through Wordle.
See more here.

If you're at all familiar with this blog or the melodramatic happenings at my alma mater, Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism et al, then you've likely formed some opinion of whether a marketing program belongs under the same roof as a journalism program. (Hint: It doesn't.) This week, The Nation's Michael Tracey wrote a 2,000-word piece of despair that places Medill in the center of the downfall of the journalism school (referred to by the affected as "j-school"). He covers a lot of ground, but he makes a few key points: 1) marketing and journalism are "profoundly antithetical enterprises," and their blending in education is not good for the reputation or credibility of journalism; 2) as a leading j-school, Medill's seismic shift spells trouble for the future of all j-schools; and 3) j-schools aren't necessary and we should just do away with them altogether.

(I highly suggest that you read the original article in order to fully appreciate my rage. Look, I'll even give you the link again! Click here!)

Okay, so from the outset, I'll reiterate Tracey's first point, the discomfort with combining marketing and journalism education. Medill has been shoving the two together under the direction of Dean John Lavine, who hit the ground running in 2006 with proposal after proposal that seemed destined to turn Medill into an arm of the Kellogg School of Management. In a symbolic birthing ritual, this spring faculty voted 38-5 to approve a name change from "Medill School of Journalism" to "Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications." (Ugh, it hurts to type.) It's simply a bad idea; just because both journalism and PR/marketing deal with language doesn't mean that they should be lumped together. Tracey quotes director of the Yale Journalism Initiative, Mark Oppenheimer: “We should all be a little concerned that the same schools that teach people to see through bogus claims are also the same schools teaching students how to perpetuate bogus claims.” Right on, totally agreed, no argument here.

The thing that makes me so queasy is that journalism is supposed to be about truth. It's free, it's honorable, it's necessary to functioning society. It is a check on power, a protector of our right to free speech. I loved calling myself a journalist because it made me feel like part of something exciting and cutting-edge and noble. But marketing is about sales. It's about tricking people. It's about convincing consumers they need the newest iPhone, or that a company is socially conscious, or even that this charity is more worthy of your money than another charity. It's about manipulation and persuasion -- a version of the truth, maybe, but not truth. Given, not all journalism is going to clear that bar (hi Bill), but it's at least supposed to try. So that's why everyone (who isn't John Lavine or the 37 other faculty members who voted for the name change) thinks this unholy marriage is a terrible move.

Tracey actually goes off a bit on Dean Lavine, and I felt myself turning into a member of the choir. "Amen," I thought when he recounted the bit of drama a few years ago when an undergrad caught Dean Lavine using unattributed (and very likely false) quotations from students in praise of a Lavine-esque course titled "Advertising: Building Brand Image." It was embarrassing for all involved, and it made Medill look stupid, and I still haven't really forgiven Dean Lavine for that. It was inexcusable.

But I get what he's trying to do. I appreciate that Dean Lavine wants to make sure our $200,000 education is worth it, so he's trying to teach the business aspects of journalism too. How to market your story and yourself to a particular audience. How to manipulate people into reading. It's misguided, but I can see why he thinks that marketing and journalism go hand in hand. But that sort of thing just feels so slimy to a crowd that's being taught to be fiercely objective. We should be talking about paragraph structure and contextual analysis, not branding and pull-quotes.

After fleshing out all the reasons why j-school shouldn't house a marketing program and inflicting some violence on Dean Lavine's reputation, Tracey goes on the offensive against the entire concept of j-school. It's true: you don't need a license to be a journalist. A lot of people who work in the field didn't study journalism, and a lot of people who did study journalism found jobs in other industries. So what's the point? Tracey asks. Anyone can be a journalist, so take that time you're spending "learning" journalism and use it to study other things -- arts, science, whatever you're passionate about. Your proficiency in those passions -- not your knowledge of the inverted pyramid and search-engine optimization -- will make you a good journalist.

I agree that journalists should not be hollow shells resembling people, but active and contributing members of society. Of course we should study other things and become experts in other areas; that's why most people go to j-school, to learn how to tell the stories that interested them in the first place. Some grew up in squalor and dedicate their career to social change journalism; others love numbers and have read the Wall Street Journal cover to cover every day since the age of 11. To each their own. And yes, anyone can be a journalist in the sense that anyone can write words and publish them, usually on the Internet. (Hi mom!)

But Tracey takes an ill-advised leap in suggesting we get rid of j-school altogether. His argument: "Think about the social function of the journalism major. Overtly or not, it creates an implicit regulatory structure, endowing journalism students with the right to manage the university’s newspaper by virtue of their participation in important seminars on media ethics and interview techniques. Conversely, non-journalism students are left with the impression that reporting is best reserved for those who've been formally trained to do it."

To me this is so clear-cut: People who are trained to do something are generally better at it than people who aren't trained to do that thing. You become a better musician by learning about music, you become a better racecar driver by learning about racing, and you become a better journalist by learning about journalism. You don't need a license to practice, but throwing out the entire discipline would be absurd. It suggests that the entire corpus of knowledge -- the history, the ethics of reporting, the art of interviewing and dealing with sensitive subjects, the methods of research, the resources available -- is useless and can be replicated easily without formal training. This would be devolution, a step backward for a discipline that is already so desperately fractured and bleeding. Not to mention it's a slap in the face to me and everyone who majored in journalism, at Medill or elsewhere. I understand that journalism need not be regulated with a gateway fee of a specialized degree, but let's not forget that the specialized degree still has value.

Okay, look. I went to journalism school to learn how to write like a journalist. As luck would have it, the Medill wind shifted as soon as I arrived. Dean Lavine took over at the end of my freshman year from Loren Ghiglione (whose name I had JUST learned how to pronounce, goddammit), and we launched into three years of identity confusion as Dean Lavine tried to basically merge Medill with the Kellogg School of Management. Or at least that's what it felt like. My History and Issues of Journalism course -- a cornerstone of the program -- was reimagined and tag-teamed by three professors in a huge auditorium. We had assigned seats and they actually took attendance -- in a classroom of 150+ students, the entire Medill freshman class. It was a ridiculous exercise and I remember nothing except watching a movie about Edward Murrow.

But Medill does do some things right. The liberal arts education I received at Northwestern was top-notch; most of my peers had a second major (mine was in political science) and we all took courses in art, philosophy, math, science, economics, literature, and so forth. My journalism classes that actually focused on journalism -- literary journalism, magazine writing, law and ethics, and so forth -- blew my mind and forced me to think about the world in a whole new way. I completed two journalism internships, one at an extra-small investigate reporting operation and another at a large consumer technology publication. I got both the breadth and the depth of education that Tracey pines for, and I got it at Medill. You can teach journalism. I know because I was taught journalism. What's much harder to teach is writing, but that's a whole 'nother blog post.

I'm hoping against hope that Medill is going through some sort of teenage phase, but I can't help but feel glum about the future of my alma mater. Like many of my peers, I am not on the journalism track -- but it did directly funnel me in the direction I'm going now as I pursue creative writing. I have friends who work for newspapers and TV stations and magazines, and we still carry on ridiculously nerdy conversations about headlines and AP Style and industry gossip. A piece of me is a journalist, will always be a journalist, and that piece will inform every encounter I have with culture and society and language. For that I thank Medill, and I can do nothing but lament Dean Lavine's agenda and hope it doesn't turn my school into a disgrace.

Putting the fucksaw to bed

The most entertaining (and irrelevant) image to come up when Googling "fucksaw."

The best piece to come out of this fucksaw ordeal was published today in The Awl, written by a former student of Professor Bailey's. Beyond putting this whole stupid thing in perspective, author Joseph Bernstein illustrates why Professor Bailey is to be commended instead of punished.

In fact, my gut reaction to this controversy was to support the professor's decision -- in the name of openness and honesty, in the pursuit of learning -- and now I've pinpointed why: Professor Bailey engages with both his students and the material. He seems to value discovery, no matter the auxiliary (and less important) costs. I loved my time at Northwestern but I realized after I graduated that I spent a lot of time only half-listening, and therefore half-learning. I don't blame anyone -- myself, my professors -- but it's sad to realize that I may have lost opportunities to really transform myself. Graduate school has been a wake-up call in that regard, as I'm sure my increasingly impassioned posts on education in this forum have indicated.

Also, President Schapiro (that's Morty to you) released a nice statement today that happened to mention NUMBALUM President Samir Mayekar. And so this strange circuit, an unholy alliance of Human Sexuality and NUMB, comes full circle, and with a happy ending. (Guffaw.)

Now let's see how long it takes for "fucksaw" to get old. I'm putting my money on retirement around the same time as #tigerblood. At least, let's hope.

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UPDATE, March 8, 9:16 a.m. - Can't resist one final word from a sex journalist who interviewed the guest speakers at the center of the controversy.

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UPDATE, March 8, 1:52 p.m. - I mean. I just. I don't know.

Band camp jokes never anticipated this

What a lovely, wholesome photo!

This blog is called Context, and I chose that name deliberately. I think the key to writing, and therefore learning, is understanding the context of a situation. Often misjudgments, misunderstandings and mistakes can be attributed to a lack of contextual consideration.

This week's Northwestern "fucksaw" story is about as good an example as I can conjure.

The background: A much-loved but incredibly controversial large lecture class, Human Sexuality, draws students from all areas of Northwestern because of its promise of titillation mixed with education. It's one of the most candid forums on campus, and the class is intended to provide an environment for discussing even the most taboo sexual topics, from fetishes to the mechanics of an orgasm. I had friends that would discuss the material outside of class, and there was valid educational benefit in the many shocking in-class experiences. (And a lot of snickering.)

On Tuesday the Daily Northwestern reported that a few people were taken aback at a recent live demonstration of a female orgasm in an optional, after-class session. In the process of a Q&A, a guest speaker asked the professor if she might demonstrate, live and in full view, female ejaculation. The professor gave permission, the students were treated to an eyeful, and a woman got off. Other such sessions have featured Q&A's with sex workers and convicted sex offenders, and minutes prior the class watched a graphic video taken of the inside of a woman's vagina. So in context, the spectacle wasn't exactly out of left field.

The Daily's story was picked up by the national press -- notably Gawker (complete with follow-up) -- and the story spread like wildfire, quickly distorting into a story about how "a college professor in Chicago* brought in a woman to masturbate in front of his class." People are up in arms, and the story has made every major news outlet -- MSNBC, Fox News, HuffPo, even the AFP wires.

Hang on. Did you click that last one? Go ahead, I'll wait.

Riddle me this: What the fuck is a picture of the marching band doing next to a story about a sexually charged psychology class?

I can only guess that someone in the AFP wire office was looking for a file photo, and instead of going with a saw of some sort (as favored by Fox & HuffPo, among others) or, I don't know, a headshot of Professor Bailey, they chose a symbol of the university -- the Northwestern University Marching Band, to be precise -- and made a lame attempt at relevancy by citing a "live show" experience. The story with the associated NUMB picture has made it into a few nationwide stories, even reaching across the pond. (Note: It made me really, really happy to not find mention of this story on either CNN or the BBC.)

Now, this probably doesn't bother most people, but as both a journalist and the VP-Publicity for the NUMBALUMS (the alumni club for the marching band), I can't help but feel frustrated. It's twofold: Not only does this represent shoddy, slap-it-together visual reporting, but the story itself has been treated as sensation instead of opening up a genuine dialogue about acceptability in classrooms and the value of experiential education. Maybe I'm being snobby or idealistic, but it'd be nice if my coworkers and even my doctor didn't greet me with a "What the hell is going on at Northwestern??" this morning. People see "sex in a classroom" and immediately (and it's to be expected, I suppose) don't bother to get much further into the story. They don't bother with the context because sex and vilification are more fun. I thought Professor Bailey's letter to the Daily was eloquent and stated his position well. That's the debate I'd like to have.

But all anyone can talk about is the fucksaw.

(By the way, did you know that there's a grindcore band called Fucksaw? Their song titles are delightfully themed. Thanks a million, Google search.)

* And despite our campaign to become "Chicago's Big Ten team," this is still incorrect.

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UPDATE, 4:58 p.m. - Not so much of an update as an "I should have mentioned" that Professor Bailey received "uniformly positive" feedback from the 100 students (out of the 600-person class) present for the demonstration. Morty, on the other hand, seems to be retracting yesterday's statement that the university stands firmly behind Professor Bailey's actions. It doesn't take a conspiracy theorist to guess he's getting pressure from donors. Stay strong, Morty! Also welcome to the party, WSJ.

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UPDATE, March 4, 1:51 p.m. - We made it on the BBC. Best write-up I've seen, actually.

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UPDATE, March 7, 11:30 a.m. - Read it here.

Caving to the Twitterverse

Narcissism incarnate.

I was working as an intern at PC Magazine when Twitter really took hold of the media in 2007. Almost everyone around me that was hip and technologically savvy -- so, you know, pretty much everyone at Ziff Davis -- jumped on the bandwagon. I did not.

I was a naysayer, a non-believer. Everything was moving too fast for me to keep up. It was a trend, a fad, a way for narcissists to project more of themselves into the world, regardless of whether we want to read about their every thought or breakfast decision. It'd go away once people realized that it was basically useless, a haven for the self-obsessed. Does this sound familiar?

Well, I underestimated American society. And, also, I was wrong.

Twitter is a great tool, particularly for a journalist. Writers spend the time we aren't writing wondering whether anyone is reading what we're writing, and scheming new ways to catch new and more eyes, to create some reverberation in the massive expanse of the media void. It operates on the same premise as Facebook in that it's completely composed of what people put into it of themselves. And what we've put into it -- breaking news, pop culture, cupcake trucks -- is astounding. Twitter may have started as an overshare device, but it's becoming a cultural necessity.

As I embark on a concerted effort to get published more regularly as a freelance writer, my plan is to use Twitter as a professional resource, an RSS feed of links and (hopefully coherent, relevant and engaging) thoughts. I will forever be overshadowed by Kanye West, but hey, follow me @britpetersen. I could use the company.

It burns the soul

The provided embed link is broken, but if you've ever wanted to be a journalist, or if you've ever loved someone who thought they wanted to be a journalist, click here and prepare to weep tears of recognition.

via the actual, real-life working journalist (a rarity!) Erin Dostal.

The Medill School of...oh, whatever

I went to college to study journalism. I chose Northwestern because it is home to the Medill School of Journalism. It's a fantastic school and as a result the name "Medill" carries weight in the industry, and I wanted to be a part of that.

So I've watched with waning interest and waxing exasperation as the Medill administration has been dicking around with the name of the school. At first they announced that it would just be "The Medill School," dropping the "of Journalism," as reflected in the current logo (above). This was done, they said, in consideration of the Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) program, which is also housed in Medill (and which, in my opinion and that of others, really belongs in the Kellogg School of Management or perhaps the School of Communication).

We wouldn't want the IMCers feeling left out by having the name of a journalism school include the word "journalism" in it. I know, we're so thoughtful. But whatever, I can swallow that. It's not like the value of a Medill degree isn't understood.

But that solution was too simple, and someone* changed their mind, so earlier this month the faculty voted (38-5) to change the name to "The Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing."

Let's just let that soak in for a minute.

The Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing**

Seriously? At what point did we decide that verbose and gawky is better than clean and simple? And also that conjunctions are unnecessary? It just feels like we're trying too hard. It's inelegant. By attempting to list everything that Medill is, we limit ourselves to that list.

As a way to soothe our collective indignation, I did some brainstorming with my unofficial panel of fellow Medill alums for alternative title ideas. (Warning: They get progressively angrier.)

My suggestion: The Medill School of Muckraking, Pandering, Asyndeton
E.D.'s suggestion: The Medill School of Journalism and Not Journalism
T.H.'s suggestion: The Medill School of Whatever D.L.* Wants to Name It, Apparently
B.M.'s suggestion: Medill: Who Gives a Fuck So Long as It Sounds Pretentious

I'm proud to have studied journalism and to have graduated from Medill. But I don't have confidence in what this shift means for the program. I just hope that the word craft doesn't get lost amongst the verbiage.

* That'd be Medill's dean, John Lavine.

**UPDATE, 11:06 p.m. - So the Daily Northwestern messed up the name -- it should actually be the Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications. That's...so much better.

Journalistic Ownership & Rock Band 3

Hardcore, I'm sure.

A somewhat unexpected side effect of working as a journalist is that you come to feel ownership over certain issues, especially those which you spend a lot of time researching and reporting on.

So I felt when I saw this news development, posted on Gizmodo this afternoon: a week from today Rock Band 3 drops, and it's made a huge advance in controller options: one controller features buttons that you play just like a regular guitar, and another is actually a guitar, with pressure sensors under the fingers so the game knows whether you hit the note. What this means is that Rock Band can actually market the idea that the game will teach you how to play a guitar (or at least how to follow along with certain songs).

Of course, being a former PC Mag intern, I was familiar with the idea, to the point where I immediately went and found this story, which I wrote in the spring of 2008. (Because of a PCMag.com redesign, the publish date says January 2009.) I wrote about how games like Guitar Hero have roused interest in rock music, but aren't doing anything to actually teach kids (or somewhat reclusive adults) how to play guitar. My theory was proven when I gave my stepdad with 20 years of experience playing guitar the game for Christmas: He could barely keep up with strumming along at the beginner level at first.

I mentioned in that article a product called Guitar Rising, which had won an award in 2007 and was being developed to be released as just what Rock Band has now: a game into which you can plug in an actual guitar. The Guitar Rising website doesn't seem to have been updated recently, so one can only wonder what happened to the "licensing talks" that were underway when I wrote the article more than two years ago.

This is a super cool development -- using video games to actually teach people a musical instrument is a whole new frontier -- but of course, there's always a flipside, though a minor one. The Gizmodo writer notes, "Harmonix, do you realize that you've got in your powers the ability to make kids learn the songs you want them to? Which is basically shaping the future of music? Use it well, my friends." Everyone will know the Billboard Top 100, but no one may know [insert obscure, largely unknown song that is actually a brilliant piece of music]. But that just may be my wannabe music snobishness talking.

Fun fact: Rock Band 3 will also add a keyboardist to the band. Now people get the chance to butcher those musical lines as well! Wonder if it'll be as effective as teaching drums and guitar now will be?

A cliché saved is a cliché earned

"Not all midterm elections are created equal."

That's the lede from a CNN.com story published last month.*

Did anyone else throw up in their mouth a little?

Stepping away from the fact that clichés in journalistic writing make me want to punch an entire bus of Girl Scouts (and steal their cookies), the overuse of these pearls of wisdom does a disservice to overbearing advice-givers everywhere. After all, clichés are based on truth, and they're usually right. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, two wrongs don't make a right, and yes, CNN, not all [fill in the blank] are created equal.

The problem is that we're so desensitized to clichéd phrases that we've ceased to pay attention to what they actually mean. We've been hearing these things for so long and in so many contexts that we start to tune them out and not take the advice to heart. If Mom says, "Don't worry sweetie, there are plenty of fish in the sea"...well, we roll our eyes and go back to our tub of chocolate fudge brownie ice cream.

But Mom's right. Both literally and figuratively, there are a lot of fish in the sea. (Which, according to this guy, is great for the guys but not for the gals. Though he's kind of an asshole.) Point being, while you were indulging in Ben & Jerry fantasies, Mom's advice sat there, stagnant, useless on the living room floor. We give advice and comfort each other using clichés that guarantee we won't really appreciate the wisdom until after we needed it.

Clichés in journalism are a whole 'nother animal. That's just blasphemously lazy writing.

* It took me exactly six seconds on Google, skimming news stories, to find one that lead with a cliché. This is not an uncommon problem, people.