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Theory, and zooming in

It was another afternoon in class today, which meant it was another night of doing slide deck prep and a morning of getting the final details in and then the afternoon in class. At least it was warm and sunny out, and so it didn’t feel like I should be somewhere else while sitting under florescent lights.

I’m kidding. There are giant windows in the classroom I’m in right now and the natural light is plenty. We don’t even turn on the lights some afternoons.

In my criticism class we talked about this episode of Bomani Jones’ podcast. If, for no other reason that everyone loves Deion Sanders and, Jones is right, Spencer Hall is one of the best writers going today. I’ve been reading him for decades. Had him on a podcast in 2006 or so. And look at him now.

So we’ve now heard two different styles of podcasts in the last week, a narrative-documentary hybrid and now an interview show. We’ll have another variation for their midterm next week. I will be asking them questions they should be used to by now. After that, it will be back to video products. We’re going to spend a day on short form packages. I’m waffling on what I want to use for that day.

In org comm I followed up the Tuesday conversation about social identity theory with a talk about Role Identity Theory. These two approaches complement one another, and they cover a lot of ground about

Social identity theory gives us the in-group and out-group concepts, and tries to explain how we define ourselves based on their group memberships, like religion, nationality, or, in our case, fandom. In SIT identities come from difference based on the activities in which we partake. Role identity theory concerns itself with the meanings and expectations associated with various roles we play in our lives. This is all shaped by social and contextual factors and, interestingly, acknowledges the conflict that comes within our many roles, because of those expectations. These two ideas, SIT and RIT, work nicely together, but it’s all about cognitiion; they don’t get to emotion.

Which allowed me to talk about identity fusion theory. It has become an important psychological theory in the last few decades, and tries to explain how we develop these profound senses of alignment and unity with a group. It’s an interesting area because it gets into the extreme pro-group behaviors, including self-sacrifice that people make. The theory goes through the deep emotional investments that motivate action, while allowing people to maintain their personal agency. The general idea, in a sports context, is that we see these personal connections and interactions in shared spaces.

It’s an interesting approach, because what is fandom but a huge expression of emotion?

Identity fusion is currently the leader for a class I’m teaching in the spring, too.

The view from our office. If you look closely enough, you’ll see my lovely bride, who is walking back from a class in another building.

And now the rest of the week will just be computer work. There will be plenty. I have a great deal of grading to do. I am already plotting out how the next three days will go, based on meetings and batches of grading. I think I can get it all in over the wekend, without going too crazy, and just in time to start the cycle over again next week.

Sometimes it is difficult to see how you can get all of your work done when so much of your time is spent on part of your work.

I took this photo of the honeysuckle last week and never got around to sharing it. Safe to say that the radical pruning we did on the thing in the spring has been overcome. It has grown a bunch over the summer and fall, and is still flowering a great deal.

This variety has no nectar in it, however, and that’s a shortcoming. It’s a disappointing under-performing, over-performing, bush vine. But it has covered much of the new garden trellis in just six months, so there’s that.

Are you all caught up on Catober? It always over-performs. Click the link, and see them all. And come back tomorrow for more.

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16
Oct 25

Catober, Day 16

adventures / cycling / Indiana / journalism / photo / Wednesday — No Comments
15
Oct 25

No one, absolutely no one, likes a censor

After a full day’s worth of working in the home office, we went out for a brief bike ride. I’m still taking it easy, so I did not push hard on the pedals, except when going uphill. And I stayed out of the drops, until the very end of the ride, when I decided to see what that’d feel like. I quickly decided to not do that. My back and I are in careful and close consultation throughout this recovery period.

We saw the sheep, though.

Then, just a few miles from home, we lost the sun.

A few farms later, we found it once again.

It was a 14-mile ride. And another easy one. It was just nice to be outside. Perfect gilet weather, too.

Last night a colleague in Texas shared with me a photo from a mutual colleague in Indiana, which I am assured is a real place, though I’ve never heard of it. The photo was a letter, an incredibly abrasive pink slip. The recipient of that letter had shared it himself, and this was part of a series of events that will be a national story by tomorrow, or Friday at the latest.

What happened, the student media adviser at Indiana University was fired. The incendiary letter framed the dismissal as a “lack of leadership and ability to work in alignment with the University’s direction for the Student Media Plan is unacceptable,” but this is a move toward censorship. My colleague was fired for doing his job: standing in defense against censorship.

Here’s the first story written in the professional Indy Star, fittingly written by First Amendment reporter Cate Charron, a former editor-in-chief of the IDS. And, most importantly, here are the current editors of the highly regarded, and directly impacted, Indiana Daily Student.

Media School Dean David Tolchinsky terminated Director of Student Media Jim Rodenbush on Tuesday afternoon after he refused to censor the Indiana Daily Student.

Ahead of our Oct. 16 newspaper, which was to include a Homecoming guide inside, the Media School directed us to print no news in the paper, an order blatantly in defiance of our editorial independence and the Student Media Charter.

“… nothing but information about homecoming — no other news at all, and particularly no traditional front page news coverage,” read Rodenbush’s Oct. 7 email to the IDS co-editors-in-chief, relaying the IU Media School’s directive.

Telling us what we can and cannot print is unlawful censorship, established by legal precedent surrounding speech law on public college campuses.

Administrators ignored Rodenbush, who said he would not tell us what to print or not print in our paper. In a meeting Sept. 25 with administrators, he said doing so would be censorship.

“How do we frame that, you know, in a way that’s not seen as censorship?” Ron McFall, assistant dean of strategy and administration at the Media School, asked in that meeting.

Read the whole thing; it’s quite the stinging letter aimed at the Media School and the university as a whole.

We’ve been gone from there for two-plus years, so I know the prologue, but not the details of what’s transpired recently. I know what I’ve read, how the faculty have no trust in the university president, how everyone on campus still has an acid taste in their mouths after being under a sniper rifle last year, how the university is desperately trying to make the president’s plagiarism problem go away, and how the university is intent on reshaping itself in modern social contexts. (Indiana is a long, long, long way from Herman B. Wells.) I know those things from following the work of the IU student media.

I also know those people. Rodenbush, the now fired adviser, I worked alongside for about five years. That dean? I gave him a tour of the Media School when he was applying for the job. The last quote from that other guy? That quote makes perfect sense coming from him. Go read that again.

There are others in the Media School apparently involved, who are, frankly, not worth the time to type about.

Much will be made of budget issues. In the last few years, for budget reasons, the paper has endured staff cuts and slashed production runs. But student newsrooms are first and foremost learning laboratories. You must allow the students the opportunity to learn to produce so that they are adequately, appropriately, prepared. The building that houses the IDS has a tremendous print newsroom, three television studios, a half-dozen or so podcast studios and even more editing suites. You teach people their craft in these spaces. And, at Indiana, they have always learned it well. I can’t tell you how many Hearst Awards have been won under the IDS masthead, or how many Pulitzer Prize careers the newspaper has launched in its 158 years.

I can tell you this. Now, for editorial reasons, they’re killing the newsprint altogether. Hours after they fired Rodenbush, the university canceled the paper’s print run.

This is a laughable demonstration of university censorship, by any measure. This was a letter the editors wrote today:

The Media School is more focused on censorship than real solutions for student media. Is this really the best use of the university’s resources? Or of ours? Editorial decisions, including the contents of our print product, firmly lie in the hands of the students.

This is not about print. This is about a breach of editorial independence. If IU decides certain types of content are “bad for business,” what stops them from prohibiting stories that hold them to account on our other platforms?

None of this surprises me. I worked in student media for 15 years, including at IU. I defended outlets against censorship, including at IU. I know the low regard that some in The Media School have for student media. There’s often a tension between student media and a university administration, particularly an administration of small caliber. All of this is sad and unfortunate and inappropriate and illegal, but it is not unpredictable.

Jim Rodenbush, who is a real pro, knew this was turning bad. His firing is unfortunate for him and his family, but he’s a great colleague and good at what he does; he won’t be down long.

The student-journalists at IU will suffer. In fact, they already are.

Think of them. They are college students. They have a full course load. Some of them work jobs. They also have lives and responsibilities and their own amusements and problems. They spend some (sometimes a lot) of their free time learning their craft in student-media. They do this in public. They learn in public. They make their mistakes in public. They are often very impressive. They deserve respect. Instead, these people, at 20- or 21-years old feel as if they have targets on their backs. placed there by university and school administrators, people that seemingly do not understand journalism, censorship, the First Amendment, or the true value of student-journalists.

The student body, indeed, the city itself will lose out. Bloomington is almost a newspaper desert at this point. Public media, devastated nationally, is under all sorts of transitions on that campus — who knows what becomes of that. Major media is an hour up the road.

And now, the famed Indiana Daily Student — the third largest employer on campus, winner of 25 Pacemaker Awards (the collegiate equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize) and previously an incredible recruiting tool — has been reduced to a website and an app.

Letters are being written. IDS alumni are distributing a joint protest letter for signatures. There’s a formal alumni association letter in the works. The journalism faculty will speak up soon, I assume. The name of the great Ernie Pyle, the most famous IDS alumnus, will be invoked. The Student Press Law Center is poised. The story has just begun.

Students will cover it.

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15
Oct 25

Catober, Day 15

adventures / football / history / photo / Rowan / Tuesday / video — Comments Off
14
Oct 25

Between Saturday and the Revolutionary War

This is how my back feels. I carefully squatted down to pick up my mostly empty backpack. I put my mostly empty backpack on my home office chair. I slipped my laptop and my notebook inside. I zipped it up and carried it downstairs. Because I was being helpful, I went back upstairs I did the same for my lovely bride’s backpack. Same procedure, squat, chair, laptop, two notebooks, zipped it. I carried it downstairs. And there near the end of that little trip the muscles around my shoulder where this little incision suggested they might not like me to do that anymore.

So I did not.

How it works this semester is that we drive to one building, where she has her classes, and I drop her off. Then I drive over to the building where our office is, and where my classes are. There’s a parking deck right behind it. (We have, probably, the best parking arrangement on campus.) I go to whatever floor, park, and then walk down the stairs, around the side of the building and about half a block to the door. Up the elevator to the office, and so on. And about the time I got off the elevator, I didn’t want to carry my bag for a while.

Again, this is basically an intense pulled muscle sort of sensation. A “hey, you really shouldn’t” kind of thing. And I am fortunate in that I can obliged that feeling, follow the doctor’s advice and still do the things I need to.

Which, today, was class. In Criticism in Social Media we talked about this story which was OK enough to make two or three small points on. And we also talked about this story, which was worth a bit more dissection. Back with Dodgers, emotional Freddie Freeman details son’s health scare:

Max woke on July 22 with a slight limp and went into full paralysis four days later, prompting Freeman to rush home from a series at the Houston Astros. By Wednesday, doctors removed Max from his ventilator.

Five days after that, Freeman was back in the Dodgers’ lineup for the start of a three-game series with the Philadelphia Phillies, playing first base and batting third. He finished 1-for-4 in the Dodgers’ 5-3 win and was greeted by a long standing ovation before his first at-bat. The Phillies joined the applause from their dugout. The pitch clock was stopped as he stepped out of the batter’s box, removed his helmet and waved to the crowd, before then touching his right hand to his chest.

“I was doing OK tipping my hat and then my dad was sitting first row with my stepmom, and he was — I don’t know if I could call it crying, but he was choked up and teary-eyed,” Freeman said. “That’s what really got me going.”

Max spent eight days in a pediatric intensive care unit before being discharged Saturday. The next day, he began physical therapy.

At my next opportunity, I’m going to have to pick a few stories that aren’t emotional stories, lest I give my class the wrong idea about this. And looking at some of the documentaries I’ve selected for later in the semester … I need to do that soon.

In Organizational Communication in Sports my normal slide deck theme gave away to egregious fandom. And since Auburn got ripped off Saturday — this was one of about four games I’ve watched in three years, and what a clown car the whole thing has become — I turned it into hating on fans. My hope was that it would make for a comedic, and memorable, conversation. So it started with this.

I rather like that shaker theme, though. So I put up all sorts of unflattering photos of Georgia fans — I won’t reproduce them here, but they’re out there — and talked through Social Identity Theory. There was one photo of a Georgia fan, in his best Georgia t-shirt (it only had three stains on it) proudly shaking hands with some klansmen. Then I said, “whereas my guys are good Christian boys.” And here’s a shot of a big chunk of the team praying in the end zone. “And patriotic?” Boy you’ve got no idea!” And then there’s a shot of them celebrating with some ROTC students. It just went on like this for a while, talking about the cognitive choices of Social Identity Theory, the purpose of it all, the In-Group / Out-Group nature of sports. Most of this we all inherently know, but some days you get to put a name and some scholastic explanation to things.

I pointed out that, of course this is unfair. I’m cherry picking these guys in outlandish ways to try to make a point. You can do this with any fan base if you want to. It’s just easier with some then others.

We talked about Presentation of Self, which let me show people dressed up all nice for something as silly as a football game. We talked about Goffman’s notions of front stage and back stage. We talked about social identity as our fandom extends beyond the venue. Look, I’m wearing this tie, and this tasteful lapel pin, and so on. And then we came around to highly identified fans, and I talked about the most highly identified fans I know. And that’s where I played clips of Bama fans.

I ended it with mascots. Here’s a shot of 11-time mascot of the year Aubie in a library. And here’s Rowan’s mascot, with the way the university describe’s Who R U on his own page: fierce, ready to attack, full of aspirations and expectations. I dug up a shot of Rowan’s next football opponent’s mascot, a big black bear that’s goofy in the appropriate sort of mascot ways. Pio is his name, and his site says this bear represents the values and attributes of their students: gritty, confident, persevering, fun-loving and the first in the family to attend college.

Because, ya know, he’s a bear, and not a lot of bears go on to higher education.

The Yankee came to see what that lecture turned into. She said it went well. Said she might steal some of that material the next time she teaches this class.

We left our building and went across the street for a special presentation. Some of the faculty here know the filmmaker Ken Burns, and he graciously allowed them to screen the first episode of his upcoming documentary.

Six episodes, starting next month. We were asked to not discuss it at length, and I’ll respect that. But I’ll say this. Episode one was quite good, I can’t wait for the rest. Also, the voiceover casting is just incredible.

One of the professors, who is a professional film critic, talked a bit. A history professor, a public historian who is a key figure in the ongoing work at a nearby Revolutionary War site also spoke. She’s the perfect kind of historian, in my view. She has such an enthusiasm for her work that it makes you want to be enthusiastic about it, too. Maybe all teachers should be that way. I try to be that way. Maybe it comes through. For Dr. Janofsky, though, it is obvious, and infectious.

She passed around this piece of shot that had recently been pulled from the ground. For 250 years this had been buried beneath the soil, and just before that, it was hurtling at an enemy with great urgency.

Janofsky did not say whose shot this was. I’m assuming they know. We also know a lot about the muzzle velocity of 18th century cannons, and we know there was a fair amount of variation between them having to do with a lot of different variables, the type of shot, the canon, the powder and so on. I’ll just go with a number that keeps popping up for British cannons of the era, 487 meters per second. That’s a bit over 1,000 miles an hour. No one wants to be standing downrange of that, in any century.

And then something controversial, that had nothing to do with work or the Revolutionary War happened. I’m running out of pixels today, so I’ll type about it tomorrow, when there will surely be more to know, anyway.