I didn’t have a chance to see yesterday’s Ann Arbor News until this morning, but this greeted me on the front page: PR pro sees tarnish at EMU; Poor image will linger, he predicts. And then, while looking for this story online, I came across today’s front page story, EMU planning to re-key over 500 faculty offices. Isn’t this kind of a case of “no real news” and “old news?” Why is this big front-page stuff? Are the Ann Arbor News folks that hard up for stories to fill its pages?
In any event, I thought the interview with Clarke Caywood about bad PR at EMU was interesting and all, but honestly, at this late stage of things, couldn’t a monkey say that the way the upper-administration handled the Dickinson murder was a bad thing? Is that really anything but common sense? Really, what I think he’s saying here is pretty easy for anyone to say, expert or not.
I did find this passage kind of interesting though:
Q: How do you think EMU’s public relations challenge will be compounded by electronic media and user-created media, things that weren’t in place five or 10 years ago?
A: I think all of the newer media can actually be used by the university to track how deep the (people’s) feelings are. Most professional organizations have the abilities to track blogs, to track podcasts and other communications by keyword systems, by closed-captioning kind of digital systems, to know what’s being said. And in fact, many organizations … can actually use the bloggers as a form of a focus group to find out what people are saying and thinking about the university through those channels.
So recognizing that those channels are even more important to the students than they are to the parents and to the university officials, it would be very important for them to set up a team … to track and respond to some of these newer media.
Hey, if anyone in Welch wants to join in the conversation here at EMUtalk.org– that is, ask write some posts or comments instead of just lurking in the shadows– feel free. I think that people would actually like to hear from you folks.
As for the Larcom piece on rekeying offices: that really is old news, a story I think he wrote a while back. I’m at a loss as to why this is in the paper again– other than the possibility that they didn’t have anything else to report.
I agree. It seems that whenever the Ann Arbor News has nothing better to report they turn to EMU for some negative article. You can count on one hand the number of positive articles appearing in the paper, let alone on the front page. I can’t believe there is nothing else going on in the world. One might think the bomb plot in London would have secured the headlines; but no, the Ann Arbor News can’t wait to “badmouth” EMU.
I wish I could say that this is an unusual situation, but it isn’t. A check of the paper for the last 8-10 years will reveal a distinct bias. For instance, recently it was noted in a sports column that the University of Michigan was reducing the number of speakers who could speak at the open comments portion of the Regents’ meeting. Moreover, one couldn’t speak on the same topic at two successive meetings. Incredibly, nary a word appeared as “news,” nor in any other section of the paper. Imagine the amount of space we would have gotten had this been EMU’s Regents. They would have interviewed students, staff, and faculty to obtain quotes and would have splashed it all over the paper.
Until the Ann Arbor News begins to recognize that it is also the “local” paper for Ypsilanti, EMU will continue to be the whipping boy/girl. Their coverage of EMU sports is pitiful. There are sometimes 4 reporters covering a Michigan football game away from home, but they will not spend any money to cover an EMU game in Toledo. Their claim is that no one is interested in EMU. One must wonder why we are now front page news.
I think aside from recognizing that media like blogs are important to students, it should be noted that the people who are talking about EMU in places like this are the people who are most passionate about issues surrounding EMU. We’re more than just a “focus group,” we’re showing what’s really important to the people who really care about what’s going on at this university. We’re taking the time and making the effort to find media coverage about the university (even if those news articles are distinctly not-new-news), discussing what may or may not be at the heart of some of the larger problems and occasionally even coming up with some real, substantive solutions (I’m thinking specifically of the post awhile back that listed a number of possible security fixes in a range of prices).
And I would definitely welcome any sort of comments from the people in Welch!
I don’t have much time/energy to write today—maybe I will add more later on. My guess as to why this is news again is that the administration was seeking positive publicity for catching the purse snatcher and for relocking two classroom buildings—that’s the newness of the news. (Note the positive title of the article that shows the positive impulse of the press release that inspired it.)
What the administration doesn’t seem to realize is that these positive press releases can’t be converted into neutral newspaper articles without honest reactions from those who have been affected by the lack of security, in this case faculty. I cannot in all honesty say things are all peachy at this university on the security front when a news reporter calls. The administration has yet to agree to resecure most of the spaces that need resecuring, including those in which PT staff work and students study. These spaces can’t be included in an AAUP faculty grievance, so publicity about them is important to pressure change.
A premature attempt at positive PR has thus turned into extremely negative publicity because the latest boasted ‘improvement’ is more surface than substance. And it isn’t just the AA News. This is an AP article mostly getting coverage in places where EMU students live (Ohio, other parts of Michigan). See the AP version, which is more troubling for the reputation of our university. People seemed not to have noticed, but I posted the PR article before, along with another which says that the administration “sucker-punched the reputation of a fine university� in its attempt to cover up the Dickinson rape/murder (“EMU paying price for silence�). That is a sad but true assessment of what is happening here. We are a great university already needlessly degraded in reputation by the scandal of the ‘university’ house, and now we have these added troubles on top of all of that.
After I spoke with Geoff Larcom, I immediately contacted Janice Stroh once more in hopes that we can work out this security problem more privately without generating these kinds of negative news articles. I still remain hopeful that we can work together on this issue.
We let our subscription lapse some time back and I’ve never regretted it. May I suggest that anyone who cares about EMU should also make sure they don’t subscribe? The mlive web site is free…
Dear Aginghippie & Sitdad,
I hate to disagree with you and Sitedad – but I think the AA NEWS coverage is fair, by the measures of journalism. The Hill Hall case has been national news, and EMU is a local institution, so it’s natural for the paper to do an article assessing the impact of the scandal on EMU’s reputation. ANd they wisely relied on an expert from out of state. Fair game: If your university lands in a pile of sh**, in a big, ugly way, the press will assess how bad the stink is and how long it may last. “Sucker punch” is about right. (Friends in southern California are still asking me about the “EMU murder case,” and I’d rather not have to explain that i work at a university that did…well, you know the story.)
Likewise, the decision to re-key faculty offices – it is a reversal of a whole of lot of decisions, and a reversal of efforts to conceal the truth about the theft of the master key ring. It is a reversal of decisions made as recently as April and May by VP Stroh. I give her credit for reversing course…but the turnabout has been ineptly executed. So it’s news, and this is a slow news week. (First week of July is usually the slowest week of the year, if i recall my Jour 101 correctly…)
The AA NEWS prefers to run LOCAL stories on page 1. Most of its readers no doubt like it that way. So yes, the EMU story is never going to be as important as lots of global developments…but it’s gonna be on the front page of the paper.
Lastly — the AA NEWS does a lot of features on EMU that are positive. In December or so, they did a feature on University House that was devoid of criticisim, and they have profiled the faculty in the Polymers & Coatings program not long ago, and I recall too other recent stories….
We can’t have it both ways. Either the AA NEWS ignores us, and we complain, or we’re on their radar screen for coverage, warts and all, and then we complain. Bottom line — EMU gets bad press when EMU deserves bad press. And no university gets press for all the routine good things going on on the campus (“student passes test!” or
“prof gives lecture, does research!” are not news). I’d rather be on the paper’s radar screen than not. EMU’s bad times also produces sympathy — and when we finally get new leaders, they will have a grand time on the local media honeymoon.
It’s not *just* their coverage of EMU. It’s their political endorsements. The wire service stories they choose (AP=Almost Propaganda). The “balance” on the editorial pages. If I wanted a right-wing newspaper in my house, I’d get the Detroit News.
And the funnies *page* (as opposed to the Freep’s *pages*) sucks.
The Chronicle of Higher Education also seems to find this newsworthy:
http://chronicle.com/news/index.php?id=2598
It is totally unusual, by the way, for a unversity to go as long as this university has without changing locks after the loss of master keys. Check out these other examples:
* “Mount Vernon Students Look for Key to Dorm Security: Lost Master Keys Anger Students,â€? The GW Hatchet. March 12, 1998;
* “Leverett Responds to Theft: Stolen Master Keys Prompt Overhaul of Lock System,â€? Harvard Crimson, March 19, 1992;
* “Theft of Master Keys in Dorms Results in Lock Changes,â€? State Hornet, March 8, 2006;
* “Ursinus Safety Concerns: Past, Present, And Future,� The Grizzly, September 2, 2004;
* “Crimes Remind: Keep Track of Keys: Police, Tenant Groups Want Tighter Checks,â€? Cincinnati Enquirer, January 13, 1999.
It seems to me that opinions on the AA News seem to change every month. Back during the strike the AA News was evil for portraying the faculty as greedy and only taking the administration’s side. In February and March, when the AA News was digging up uncomfortable facts about the administration (and thus making them look bad), the paper was well liked and all of the reports were taken at face value. Now they are apparently tarnishing our reputation again.
Now I haven’t read the AA News extensively; I’m one of those bratty kids who doesn’t subscribe to a physical newspaper or use a landline phone (my parents had to walk uphill both ways in snow, etc. etc.). Basically I only read their articles when I’m linked to them on here. But really they don’t seem any more or less biased than any other local paper I’ve stumbled across. They’re going to print the stories that get people’s attention, and talking about EMU is a sure way to do that (U of M may have a lot of national prestige attached to it, but I bet more area students attend EMU).
Angela, you’ll find that my attitudes toward the AA Snooze are fairly consistent. Sure, I might have some ups and downs (between loathing and disgust). I moved to Washtenaw county over 30 years ago; I have always felt the paper has been a mediocre weekly pretending to be a daily.
And as I practice my dotage and geezerness, the lovely but beautiful Ms. Aging Hippie and I have no physical newspaper nor landline. But we *do* have a bratty kid.
Some years back, she came to me. “It’s (event I can’t remember) and I need to buy you a present. What do you want?”
I put on my bestest EVAH smarmy look and said, “Oh, I don’t need anything–just a daughter who loves me and treats me with dignity and respect.”
She gave me a look that *other* people who don’t know her well think is a smile and said, with *her* bestest EVAH smarmy look, “That’s why I need to buy you something!”
Help me if I’ve got this incorrectly, but didn’t the insurance company who insured the vendor who lost the master keys pay EMU in excess of $450,000??? And the rekeying of two buildings costs $100,000?? I seem to remember that EMU disclosed that information a few months/weeks ago. Where has the rest of the money gone?
Hey, that’s a darn good question. There has been a general statement in articles once in a while that the video camera and keycard building entry installations came out of that pool of $, but no specific details. Perhaps that needs to be examined a little more closely.
The dollar amount seems about right though for changing out the lockset– when I was calling locksmiths about replacing the lockset for just one door, it was going to cost between $200 and $400 for the lock depending on things that I hadn’t looked into yet.
It is rather inexpensive for all the fuss and bother about it over the last 1.5 years. IMO.
The locks on the doors in PH and MJ are more expensive because they are institutional grade. The figure of $100,000 still seems too high to me, though. It is interesting to compare to the cost of rekeying the dorm rooms. Wise is the most expensive at 10,000, but other dorms are around 5000 if I remember right:
http://www.acoykenda.net/masterkeys.pdf
I worry a little that the administration is exaggerating the cost so everyone will be as mad as possible at faculty once the huge budget cuts come rolling through Academic Affairs. Apparently, all finances are being diverted from academics to athletics, and Academic Affairs is being stripped to the bone.
The university received $450,000 from the vender (ADT), matched that amount with another $450,000, spent that $900,000 on resecuring exteriors and dorm rooms, as well as on the hugely expensive security guards briefly but randomly placed around campus for a few weeks after the theft. As to why EMU didn’t recover the full cost from the security company responsible for losing the keys is unclear to me. That company must have been insured/bonded. I doubt that Stroh would have bungled the finances like this had she been here then, and I wish that she had been.
Well, I’m not saying that these things aren’t newsworthy. But seriously: a front-page 60 point double or triple-line headline on a story where a reporter interviews a PR expert who expertly tells us the obvious? Another headline in a size usually reserved for stories like “Space shuttle explodes” or “Killer tornado claims 100″ or something atop the re-keying story? C’mon.
If it weren’t a slow news day and/or if either of these stories were tied to U of M, these stories would have been below the fold or on the front of the “Local” section. And it actually makes some sense to me that outlets outside of this area are still reporting these stories as if they are news because, to them, they probably are still news.
I mean, I don’t think the AA News is that bad of a paper, and generally, I think that its treatment of EMU is more a result of bone-headed things administrators at EMU do. But I just think these stories are both kind of space fillers.
Honestly, the AA News article discussing PR was, IMO, stating the obvious facts… this coverage has hurt EMU’s image… which is unfortunate. Recently, I made a call out of state for hotel reservations, and when I mentioned that the rooms were for EMU students, the sales rep I was speaking to automatically replied “Oh isn’t that the school where the girl got murdered and the covered it up?” I guess it just disheartens me because that is not the EMU I go to. The EMU where we are taught by *real* professors who support us in and out of the classroom, where we hold multiple MAC championship teams, where students go on to grad school at places such as Yale, Princeton, and Cornell. But we never hear enough about these things, just the scandal, because folks, scandal = news, no matter how far they have to stretch it.
Sitedad, if *you* want to give money to a newspaper that thought re-electing the Boy King was a *super* idea, that’s certainly a decision. Spawn of sitedad is still a mite young to get thrown into the jaws of W’s Eternal War just yet, but kids grow up all too soon.
Remember, we *have* to send more children to die in vain so that we can pretend that the thousands who have already died in vain haven’t.
329 troops killed in the last quarter (bloodiest quarter since the invasion) and Geoff’s headlines are about old EMU news.
Yeah…
I bet you a night of beers at the Corner Brewery, aginghippie, that this story was prompted by a misguided EMU fluff press release and not by any evil demon inside Geoff Larcom’s head. As the PR guy said in the article, the administration is making its own bad press for this already much muckraked university.
Angela had remarked before how the perception of the AA News has seemed to change, and that is because the reporting of the paper has itself changed, becoming more responsive to the points of view obscured by the official university press releases. Larcom and Nash are responsible journalists, and very good journalists, the latter an EMU grad of whom we can be very proud for she is the one to give us the truth about what happened to Laura Dickinson.
The Student Government had wanted faculty to go along with administration press releases, and the Board of Regents had hinted the same, but it goes against the long training and very nature of professors to issue statements like “no foul play” in the face of rape and murder or “500 locks rekeyed,” rekeying all too late and much too little to boast of.
The AA News endorsed George Bush?! That would be news to me!
If anyone wants to see an excellent documentary on the corporatization of the media, I would recommend _Project Censored_, which I ordered a while back for Halle. Very, very good.
Agreed, Steve, that this didn’t need to be front page as if some kind of moon landing. I didn’t see the physical copy of the paper until last night.
One thing relating to the purse/laptop snatcher: does anyone have any idea how he could be said to “watch� faculty leave their offices unlocked? As I mentioned several times, and as Brian reminded us a few days ago, no one uses a key to look a faculty office—they are default locked and there would be no such thing as a door left unlocked to witness. There is something really fishy about this person in custody confessing to these crimes. Has he maybe been stealing from other employees and not faculty? Would they have a different set up for their offices?
I’ve noticed that lately the AA News front page articles have not been authored by Nash or Larcom but by an “Amanda Hamon” who happens to be the current editor in chief of the Echo…
http://www.annarborisoverrated.com/2004/10/
I will concede Nash, however, in the best traditions of the AA Snooze, here’s some hackneyed cliches:
“Even a broken clock is wrong twice a day.”
“Even a blind chicken picks up corn sometimes.”
I’m a firm believer in knowing who the opposition is, so I regularly gird my loins, hold my nose, and do some recon at mlive. But no way do I throw money at ‘em. Why, that would be the same as giving lots of money to lots of people to make bad/no decisions that end up giving EMU huge black eyes. Regularly.
Hmmm. Maybe not the best analogy…
I’m with aging hippie on this one. I gave the AA News three strikes, well four really:
They pulled an article (off the AP feed, I think) complete with charts and graphs and discussed some of the viruses that beset the world’s population these days. They published something like this:
HIV. Characteristics of the disease: Intravenous drug usage, promiscuous sexual behavior.
Strike 1.
Two incidents during football season when U of M plays that were minimally tacky and maximally cheating were portrayed as “brilliant”.
Strikes 2 and 3. (But perhaps my own fault. Wrong paper for me to be reading during Big 10 Football season.)
The consistent hawkish tone with respect to the invasion of Iraq. Perhaps even handed journalism but way out of step with my own personal beliefs.
Strike 4.
I pick one up occasionally but I have better things to do with the price of a subscription (it is way over priced at the best of times).
Well, I will say this, DNLF:
* I can’t blame the AA News too much on their War in Iraq tone since even papers like the NY Times thought it was a smashing idea in the early days.
* As an alumni of the University of Iowa, I find the coverage of football season in the AA News to be pretty amusing. It follows a pretty familiar pattern:
A few weeks before the season begins: Whispers amongst the sports staff that this could be the year again, they’ve got the team to go all the way….
The first couple games, wherein they beat teams like EMU at home: Ooo, this is the year! This is the year! Man, they looked good!
Some time early in the season, they lose a game to someone like Iowa or Wisconsin or Penn State: It’s all right, it’s all right– they could still win it all with one loss. No problem….
They lose again:Oh, woe is us…
Go Hawks… oh yeah, and Emus!
Reverse chronological order:
1. They lose again….to OHIO!!!
2. They lose again……Fire the Coach.
3. Note the word ‘consistent’ hawkishness (others manage to see the forest). Perhaps I should have said ‘persistent’ but since I no longer subscribe, I don’t really know.
4. I’d rather give my money to you!
Building consensus is pretty impossible once sports gets placed in the mix, so I will leave that topic well enough alone. But I must say all of this hostility towards the AA News surprises me. Not only were remarks eerily similar to these proven to be entirely wrong regarding Laura Dickinson, but I seriously doubt whether the administration would have consented to rekey MJ and PH if the master keys had not been in the news—we had been getting nowhere with that grievance and then, voila, some real security promised for at least some select parts of campus at last, including the offices of many emutalk contributors. There were a few other avenues of pressure that may have helped, but those news reports were really crucial in ensuring that that particular security measure went through and that the administration ignored our security needs no longer.
I don’t subscribe to any newspaper, preferring to read articles from a wide array of papers via internet, so I cannot really comment on the AA News as a whole. I still cannot believe that it would endorse any Bush (the link that aginghippie gave has expired); if so, the paper would be wildly out of sync with its readership. However, I can say with confidence that the reporting on security at EMU has been top notch. Amalie Nash did what our president, our vice president, our unvieristy counsel, and our police chief were legally obliged to do but utterly failed to do in confronting the complications of the Dickinson case and in warning us about the potential for violence on campus.
There has been much too much blaming of the messenger, blaming the people who report news rather than those who have the power to make it. The only group that has the capacity to give us good press is the administration, and the administration should have made steps to improve security and to shore up our reputation long ago. Hopefully, it won’t wait until it is too late.
It is a fact that the AA NEWS endorsed Bush.
But reporters don’t write the headlines for their stories, or decide what page they go on, or what size the headines on; and reporters don’t set the editorials of the paper, either. So while I may have criticisms of the publisher and editor in chief, that’s a different thing than the work of the reporters themselves. And the AA NEWS has a bunch of fine reporters, covering EMU and Ypsi far more than the paper did 10 years ago. So I gave them lots of credit.
More importantly — for all the AA NEWS bashing engaged in by Welch Hall gang members in the last 6 years, not once, to my knowledge, has a Welch Hall gang member been able to identify any actual Factual Error by the AA NEWS. The paper got statewide journalism awards for their probe of the University House scandal, and who knows, EMU’s newest scandal and the paper’s outstanding coverage of it might be material for awards this year….
but i certainly agree that the AA NEWS is terribly partial to UofM sports. So what? It’s neither surprising nor harmful, in my opinion. And the paper puts UofM sports on page 1 so much forthe same kind of reasons it puts EMU rather than Iraq on page 1: it is a LOCAL paper whose readers subscribe for the local coverage it provides. God knows it’s not the place to go for international or national news.
Interestingly, almost no Americans under 40 subscribe to a daily paper. It’s a huge change in the culture, indeed it’s one of the major generational divides.
Obviously, neither Abby or Mark went to a Big Ten school….
Pac Ten. Is that Big enough? Your jokes are very funny above, but I am all out of humor with sports. The regents have defunded the university part of the university–i.e. academics–and shifted all the funds to athletics. Lecturers, GAs, undergrad assistants are going to lose jobs, and nothing is going to be better for it but the brave new world of sports. DHs only had 48 hours to say how they are going to cut their departments to the bone and destroy their programs. We are going to have to conference in the bathroom amongst ourselves because travel funding is nil for next year. The library, already cut to the max, must cut $200,000 further. Alas and alack, these are very serious and scary cuts …
Deep sigh….
Abby, see the above conversation. Note that it isn’t about EMU athletics at all. I believe that DNLF and I, alumni from different big ten schools who still watch football games from schools we associate with our youths, were mocking the way that the AA News covers the U of Michigan, which is also a big 10 school and a rival of our schools. This might not be obvious to everyone, but I don’t take college sports too seriously, but I do take a certain amount of pleasure when Iowa beats Michigan. I am guessing that DNLF feels the same way about Penn State. Hence, the humor.
Frankly, EMU athletics– particularly its football team– are in an entirely different league, literally and metaphorically. I think they ought to be in a different NCAA division too, and/or EMU ought to realize that we can’t really afford a football team. But that’s a way different topic than where we’re at here….
In any event, it seems perfectly reasonable to me to see that the AA News both “got it right” about a variety of bad news things at EMU and they seem to have decided that they are going to run more or less old news stories no matter what. So I don’t disagree with the basic premise that the AA News and some other outlets have done some good reporting. But I do think though that now– especially with the two stories that prompted me to post this in the first place– suggest that they’re running on fumes.
I think we’ll see another round of regional, state, and possibly national press frenzy when the US Department of Ed report comes out. But that’s the future….
Mark said,
“But reporters don’t write the headlines for their stories, or decide what page they go on, or what size the headlines on; and reporters don’t set the editorials of the paper, either.�
That’s only partially true.
Before I went to grad school, I spent several years working as a reporter for a daily newspaper that was about the size of the AANews. I was the Higher Ed reporter and covered the University of Virginia.
First off, I have no idea how the AA newsroom functions and all newsrooms are different. Most newsrooms, though, especially at smaller and mid-sized papers, are more collaborative than Mark suggests, and reporters often have much more autonomy than is being suggested here. I often decided which stories I would write and often had input on headlines and even page layout. Only the most old-fashioned of newsrooms still have a top-down hierarchy, but even this is often subverted by, um, lively discussions between editors and reporters about such issues.
Also, something else to consider here is that—I can’t think of a more eloquent way to phrase this—reporters are people too, and this affects their p.o.v. As a Higher Ed reporter, 90 percent of my interactions were with PR folks, with higher-level administrators, and with members of the BoR—I rarely interacted with professors or students. Reporters develop relationships with their sources and come to trust them. If, hypothetically, reporters learn that they have been mislead by their sources, their feelings get hurt. Really. Just like all the rest of us, reporters don’t take well to being lied to and manipulated.
A good PR office would know all this.
I’m just saying . . .
Sorry for the link, Abby/Kitch (regarding the endorsement of The Commander Guy.) Try this one:
http://uspolitics.about.com/library/bl_endorsements.htm
Here’s a germane, and perhaps a bit more educational, link:
http://tinyurl.com/yqwcle
I wonder if there’s any mention of this inauspicious anniversary in the Snooze:
http://tinyurl.com/24bad2
The Ann Arbor News is to journalism as the full body cast is to ballet.
Must have been a slow news day for the A2 News. Several people in my neighborhood have, or are considering dropping delivery of the paper. Not only due to the continued reporting of every snap of the jock strap and trivial news item at U of M, but also because of the lack of “new” facts on several ongoing major news issues and the downsizing of the paper several months ago.