Not impressed

Jeez, maybe the student actually just asked someone, or was told by someone, who didn’t know you’d moved. Why jump on her for presumably using non-internet means to get your contact info?

Jeez, maybe the student actually just asked someone, or was told by someone, who didn’t know you’d moved. Why jump on her for presumably using non-internet means to get your contact info?

Could it be that this poor student went to a bad school? It’s not like all the schools in our country are benefiting from NCLB………

Yes, a bit snippy.

In the spirit of the post, perhaps we can all pile on poor Derplau above for his four multiple posts.

Sorry. The post-posting page kept failing to load; I should’ve known to check to see if the comments had appeared before trying again.

FYI, I sent the person a polite email and said I was unavailable for the interview but wished her luck.

No one in this thread has said anything yet to convince me that my reaction was too drastic. If you are a journalist about to interview someone I think the least you can do is a bit of background info gathering about them. Maybe this was harder in earlier times, but nowadays this is so incredibly easy that I find it unacceptable that she did not put at least that much effort into this. It is disrespectful toward the interviewee.

Interviews take time. If I am going to talk to her, I would rather spend the time discussing her substantive questions than clarifying information she could have easily gotten off of my Web site.

This person might also have thought that you have forwarded your Princeton e-mail to your current address.

Perhaps this person got your address and affiliation from an academic article you had published. You know, the part that says something like “For more information, contact this person at …” Sheesh, give the student a break, inform him/her of your proper info or web site, maybe even (horrors) ask the person where s/he got the info and give a two minute lesson on proper etiquette if necessary. You are in the education field, right?

I agree that “firm, but corrective” is the way to go, rather than “polite, but false” followed by quasi-public humiliation, particularly given that it was a student. Unless your intention is to scare the young and careless away from the field, in which case, this probably works.

I’m sure every student who’s passed through your classes in the last year could track down an interesting scholar on a topic, find their correct address, and actually get in touch with them, right? And wouldn’t be the least bit fazed by public ridicule when they failed.

What, not every student learned what you taught them? I’m shocked. What are they teaching in communications studies programs these days.

I posted a snippy response that seems to have been eaten by your comments page.

Then I received an email from a colleague’s student. I had just mentioned a great edited volume, and the colleague sent a student looking for it. It’s not in our library, but we have a statewide university system for getting books. One search by the editor’s name turned the book right up. And this student clearly hadn’t bothered to search the alternative catalog.

It made me feel like publicly rebuking the student. I could relate to Eszter’s post a bit better. Though I still think she’ll be less surprised when she’s taught more.

The biggest problem with journalism students isn’t that they won’t use the internet. It’s that they think they can find everything there, and won’t get off their keyboard and check a phone book or make a telephone call.

I’m wondering whether the people who are being critical of Eszter here think that she had an obligation to give the person an interview. If so, what entails that obligation? If not, what’s the problem?

Ezster’s logic here seems impeccable. She is (I assume) a busy person who has to decide how best to use her time. The student who contacted her does not have good research skills or is careless; in either case this does not inspire confidence that the student would do a good job with the article she’s writing. So Eszter made the decision that an interview probably wouldn’t be worth the time she would invest in it, indeed might even result in misunderstandings that she would have to clear up. I just don’t see a problem with her making this judgment.

In response to h., the journalist who doesn’t do much research on people before he or she interviews them, I would say that that doesn’t inspire much confidence either. I get called several times a year by journalists wanting my views on one subject or another, and if they show that they know who I am and what my expertise is, I am much more likely to open up and give them something substantial. But those who call out of the blue, only knowing that someone suggested my name, and are just looking for a “good quote” whatever the source, don’t get much from me, nor should they.

It seems to me that a journalist, of all people, should be expected to get this kind of thing right. Of course, maybe she spammed a dozen experts and didn’t have time to do all that checking.

bq. She could hardly have been ruder if she’d rung up this kids parents and told their kid was an idiot!

Such a model of politeness yourself, of course, giles.

She has failed even to identify the kid’s school, let alone her name. Don’t be silly.

Any defense of Eszter’s reaction has to assume that the student’s use of the Princeton contact information is definitive evidence of laziness, or sloppiness. But, as derplau and schwa have suggested, it’s not. There are other possible explanations for her use of the Princeton information, and some of them suggest more, not less, research.

bq. But, putting a snarky post on the web with the real reason for declining the interview – tells me something interesting about Eszter’s character.

Like what? That she is occasionally irritable and knows how to use the internet? The first distinguishes her from precisely one person that I know, the second froma few more. Not, in my view, interesting.

bq. I’m sure that most journalism students in florida would be able to trace the culprit with that infomation.

Apparently not, if Eszter’s experience is anything to go by.

Let me see if I have this right:

— A student contacts you via a valid e-mail address that you continue to maintain.

— Said student lets you know that she also left a message on a voice mail account that you still have.

— This is all of the information that you have.

— You feel free to make generalizations not only about what the student did not do to get in touch with you, but about the training journalism students get, all based on a sample size of one and a complete lack of data.

— You’re so offended by the notion that you weren’t googled prior to this successful attempt to contact you that you not only lied to the student, but feel some need to post the incident in public.

— You are willing to brush off students training to be journalists, and then in your next post wonder why the mainstream media is so poor, and you “found it difficult to locate concrete things one may be able to do” to help reform the media.

Did I miss anything here? The only question I’m left with (beyond the obvious one of why you bother maintaining an e-mail account if you’re so disdainful of those who use it to contact you) is where you learned such e-mail elitism and snobbery, Princeton or Northwestern? Of course, you did give all of us a wonderful unintended demonstration of the “Cultural implications of the internet” so maybe all wasn’t lost.

“…if you needed to relate, at length, this indescribably trivial incident…”

Seriously, folks, there are plenty of examples of other ‘blogs out there. Go look ’em up! Relating trivial incidents in great detail now and then is a key component of any blog.

More importantly, the critics in this thread are missing the point. Success in an occupation is affected by the relevant expertise (or lack thereof) you present to the people whose opinion of you helps determine your sucess:

• A caterer with chronically dirty fingernails is unlikely to get much work following personal interviews.
• A gardener whose own yard is full of dead flowers is unlikely to be hired to care for another’s garden.
• A candidate for a position as English teacher will not get the job if egregious grammatical errors pepper the candidate’s speech during the job interview.
• A Presidential candidate who…

…okay, maybe it’s not true in all situations, but generally speaking, if your occupation requires certain key skills, the lack of those skills (or even the perception of the lack of those skills) is likely to have a negative effect your success. Is it better for this student to experience that negative effect now (which includes possibly public humiliation, though I doubt it), or when she is in a mainstream media job, possibly reporting for a national news outlet?

I read a very matter-of-fact account of what happened ending in a mock-outraged rhetorical question (note the excess of the double question marks), followed by a one-sentence, tongue-in-cheek statement. I come away with no perception of “small-mindedness” or “self-adoration.” (Is she not the #1 hit on Google? Should she not be disappointed in a journalist who fails to demonstrate basic research skills?)

I doubt this student will be humiliated: she didn’t find the author’s current place of work. What are the chances she’ll come across this blog?

Again, the point is not that Prof. Hargittai was horrified by the student leaving messages on old accounts (or that she was horrified at all; the post is clearly not written in anger). The point is that someone whose credibility relies upon solid research skills failed to demonstrate those skills. Leaving messages on old accounts is not inherently offensive; it’s merely evidence of the lack of those skills.

If a high school friend left a message on an old account, if a plumber asking about some work he did last year left a message on an old account, if the dry cleaner left a reminder about unclaimed clothes on an old account… none of those things would have the same impact as a journalist leaving a message on an old account.

This post has exigence right now because there have recently been a number of high profile cases of journalists not engaging in due diligence when researching their stories. And many who study the media think that journalists need to exhibit more curiosity and more critical thinking, rather than just reporting what they’re told by others. What is described in the post above is not really a “trivial incident,” when you consider the current context.

And with that, I think I’ve officially exceeded the number of words that anyone wants to hear from me on this subject!

I don’t understand several things in these comments – esp. the hostile ones.

1. Eszter researches the internet. If someone wants to interview her it is not only logical but necessary to look on the (gasp!) internet for background info on her. And contact info.

2. Eszter has lots going on in her life, which is why it is not her job to take time out and teach an inexperienced journalism student, how to do an interview – or even give advice on how to be a better journalist.

3. She’s completely on target with her high-minded outrage about the sorry state of journalism (and journalism education) today. What’s wrong with scaring off people who don’t know to do due diligence before requesting an interview – and becoming a journalist without ever learning how?

4. As George said above:

“The point is that someone whose credibility relies upon solid research skills failed to demonstrate those skills. Leaving messages on old accounts is not inherently offensive; it’s merely evidence of the lack of those skills.”

I mean, don’t you wish the so-called news professionals on, say, television displayed some of those skills, just every now and then?

I remember that one of Eszter’s first posts here was about how Google was not the end all and be all of internet searching as well as that there are a great many more or less sophisticated internet users who do not regularly use Google?

Seems a bit silly then to complain about somebody not googling you…

Furthermore, I’m with earlier commenters who found this all a bit obnoxious and who were annoyed at this being passed off as high minded outrage.

The whole incidents strikes me as petty, childish and snotty. I understand the impulse to blow somebody off who is that clueless not to use google (even if it’s not clear how she got Eszter’s old voicemail and e-mail address and Eszter is still using those…), but to follow through on that impulse and worse, post about it on Crooked Timber?

Sjeesh.