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Dear student journos: You gotta stay tough

“It takes a great deal of courage to stand up to your enemies, but a great deal more to stand up to your friends.”

–Professor Dumbledore, “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone”

In 14 years in this business, I’ve been yelled at, shoved, subpoenaed, and threatened with everything from lawsuits to arrest to great bodily harm.

I wish I could say all of it was undeserved.

There was the time, early in my career, when a man who’d just interviewed for a township police chief post cornered me in the hallway outside the township boardroom and yelled at me for 10 straight minutes. He was peeved because my story that day had led with the fact that he’d been fired from the police chief post in a neighboring town over an inappropriate relationship with another city employee.

I deserved to be yelled at. I’d led him to believe the story would be straightforward profiles of all the applicants. My editor and I had decided to change the story’s direction afterward, and I had neglected to call the police chief and let him know. I apologized — for not calling, not for the story — and he and I ended up having a good relationship after he got the job.

But the overwhelming majority of the harassment I’ve faced has been for no other reason than I told my readers something my harassers didn’t want folks to know. Secrets tend to be dragged out of the darkness kicking and screaming.

In those times when I knew I was right and fair, I never lost a wink of sleep over the abuse I took.

Nor have I lost any sleep when I’ve had to write stories critical of people I’ve liked. The head of the community college in Battle Creek was one of my best sources. But I put him on the front page when he was suspended and investigated by his board for allegedly having sex with a subordinate in his college office (he was ultimately cleared and returned to work, and I wrote that story, too).

My former editor was good friends with the head of a Battle Creek nonprofit who was brought up on serious fraud charges. But the Battle Creek Enquirer still ran story after story covering the man’s trial and ultimate conviction, and the community fallout.

That’s just how journalism works. The only things that matter are the truth and what the public needs to know.

So I was dismayed to learn that the students who run the independent campus paper at Northwestern University issued a public apology for covering student protests of a campus visit by former U.S. attorney general Jeff Sessions.

The paper’s editor apologized for “traumatizing” fellow students by photographing them publicly engaged in sometimes violent protests and for “retraumatizing” them by using a publicly available student directory to reach out to others for additional comment.

“While our goal is to document history and spread information, nothing is more important than ensuring that our fellow students feel safe,” editor-in-chief Troy Closson wrote. “We failed to do that last week, and we could not be more sorry.”

The criticism from journalists was swift and harsh. Robert Feder, a Chicago media blogger, for example, called the apology “sniveling,” “bizarre,” and “embarrassing.”

Charles Whitaker, the dean of Northwestern’s journalism school, penned an eloquent public statement that said the apology was a “well-intentioned gesture” that nonetheless “sends a chilling message about journalism and its role in society.”

Let’s start here: The journalists at the Daily Northwestern have a first-amendment right to run their paper however they choose.

And, yes, they are kids who are still learning (I was 22 or 23 when that police chief cornered me the in the hallway).

But apologizing because you’re yelled at for doing nothing more than Journalism 101 is not good training for those Daily staffers who want to someday work at a major news outlet. You will be yelled at, cursed, threatened. As long as you’re right and you work with integrity, you shrug it off.

In this business, every day is hanging tough.

And, what’s worse, their actions have given comfort to journalism’s enemies who accuse us all of being commie con artists. To our critics, the Daily’s apology was nothing more than one more newspaper kowtowing to leftists.

The lede of the Daily’s story essentially accused Sessions of hypocrisy, noting that the former attorney general defended free speech while criticizing the protestors’ “stupidity.” Sessions didn’t get an apology from Closson (he didn’t deserve one, either).

Journalism is supposed to be done without fear or favor, and the Northwestern reporters seemed to have hearty helpings of both.

Justin A. Hinkley can be reached at 989-358-5686 or jhinkley@thealpenanews.com. Follow him on Twitter @JustinHinkley.

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