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And now, this editon of Off the Record with Tim Skubick.

Thank you very much.

Welcome to Studio C a very unique program with four people who want to go int journalism, goodness gracious.

The question is why do you want to do this?

And why do I want to do this?

Yeah.

You know, I think it's one of those things that you never there's never a moment where you figure out, oh, I'm going to do journalism.

I think I just realized one day I kept doing it and then I woke up one morning and said, I actually could see myself doing this for the rest of my life.

It's sort of like falling in love in that way.

Well, what led up to that point, though?

You know I've always been interested in sort of lik the political realm of things, but I think at some poin I realized that I'd much rather put sort of that energy into something really kind of like nonpartisan and writing focused rather than working in Lansing or working at some sort of nonprofit.

So your dream job is?

some sort of political reporter.

I think we do here in Lansing is pretty sweet.

And you realize you're in a minority in your age group, right?

On your political enthusiasm, am I correct or not?

I think you're fairly correct, but- fairly correct.

Fairly correct.

I just think it's, you know people are engaged politically, but how they engage with that politics is so interesting.

You know, maybe I'm in the minority of people, and I think we're all part of a minority here of peopl that really engage with the news and traditional print media.

But a lot of young people are engaged with the new just through really odd means.

So, Alex, when was your magic moment?

Did you have one?

I don't know, I think I'm just nosy, I think I just grew up curious about everything and being told I ask too many questions and so I don't know, I never thought about it.

But then I realized, if there' a career where you're rewarded.

I mean, the pay's not perfect, but it's like you're paid to go around and ask questions about thing and be curious about everything.

And like it feels like a good fit.

Where do you get your nosiness from?

I don't know, I thin I just like, why did you smile?

Why do I smile?

Yeah, I don't know.

I think nos is kind of a dirty word, right?

But it's like, no, it's not, it's an inquisitive word.

It's inquisitive.

Inquisitive is better.

I should say.

I'm inquisitive, not nosy.

No charge.

So what kin of journalism do you want to do?

I mean, I'd love to do investigativ reporting, magazine reporting.

I think it's fun to, like, take a topic and a story and, like, sit with it for a very long time and, like, really explore every facet of it and then get to, like, be very deliberate and carefu about the way that you tell it.

Yeah.

All right.

Claire.

Well, simila to what Alex was saying about, the curiosity in the field you get to ask so many questions and learn so muc about so many different things, and that's something that drew me to it.

I've also always loved writing, and in high school, I did watch the movie All the President's Men, which did put the professio in a very positive light for me.

Yeah And did that trigger it for you?

The movie?

In part.

I mean, I was a part of my high school's newspaper.

I wasn't super, super serious with it, but then when I got to university, I actually thought I wanted to be like an environmental scientist.

But then I soon realized that scientific issues need to be better communicated to the public, and that made me want to become an environmental journalist or a scientific journalist.

And so I made that switch.

So do you have a passion for it?

Oh, yeah.

Definitely.

Are you willing to sleep and live this 24-7 ?

Sure.

Yeah.

I mean, I'm going to need to get my eight hours if I'm to call people and actually get good information.

So maybe not 24-7 but I don't know.

However long I'm conscious for sure.

Owen, magic moment?

Yeah.

I mean, I would say one of my earliest epiphanies as a kid was that I needed to do something in my life that I liked.

And, you know, I had this sort of dread that if I'm not intentional about my life and like my schooling, I'll end up rotting away in some job I don't like.

So I knew I needed to do somethi I think I probably started having those sort of angsty thoughts and talking to my parents about that around like sixth grade.

You're kidding me.

Yeah, I was like, you know what most sixth graders are doing at that age, I don't know.

I mean, I did sixth grader things, too.

You know, I really liked Eminem.

I just would sit on the bus and listen to Eminem.

And then around then I think I. Yeah, I would star to have sort of my angsty rants at my parents about that kind of thing.

But then in high school, I sort of stumbled on to the, school newspaper and it was it was just sort of an extra thing to do.

And I did like writing, and I, I liked the English classes.

Right.

But, there was this thing goin on at the school at that time.

And across the country there was a trend called the “devious lick” tren on TikTok and Instagram Reels, where kids would vandaliz public school bathrooms and rip, paper towel dispensers off the wall and make these huge messes i bathrooms and post it, online.

And it was right after the pandemic.

So I think people had this sort of residual stir craziness.

But but it was a big thing.

And the kids at my school were really bad with it.

And they, they really had a field day sort of terrorizing the lunch staff and the janitors.

And so I wrote like a satir piece in the school newspaper.

About tha was making fun of them, frankly.

And the whole premise of it was that they were seeking attention at school because they weren't getting it at home.

And it was this kind of scathing satire piece.

But by the end of the day, like, people actually read the newspaper that day, which never happened at my school.

Some people were mad at me, some people thought it was funny.

But in any case, I was like, okay, well, I wrote something and it like, got people to to think and challenge their assumptions about the way things are going.

Bingo.

Yeah.

And now obviously I do that in a way that' just like being a news reporter.

And I don't try to mimi the onion or anything anymore.

But, that that was kind of a moment of how did you feel about getting criticism for what you wrote?

I don't know, it's sort of lit a fire under me, you know, a little bit I was- you were intimidated?

No, it made me want to.

It made me realize, like, this is fun.

This is cool.

You know?

Wait a minute.

People criticizing you is cool.

You know I want to be careful about that because you also, as a reporter, you want to be very, like, reflective and self-aware of these things too.

But but then I was a kid and it was a satire piece, and I guess I would be comfortable saying like, yeah, to me it was like, well, I must have struck some sort of chord, right?

I might have gotten that must have gotten that something true.

If it was going to make you feel challenged in that way, if you're going to do investigative reporting, that's kind of long term, though.

Is it your generation into let's do this quickl and move on to something else?

You know, that's unfair, isn't it?

I don't know if it's unfair.

I get on people about the TikTok and like the short form video and all that, and like, no one has an attention span anymore.

I mean I dont know how much of an attention span I have, but it's also like a lot of what people consume online is not necessarily like short form video, like it's like every podcast now has to be this, like I find kind of gradin like three hour like video thing that's closer to like a talk show like thi than like a TikTok or whatever.

I don't know, I was just listening to Ken Burns talking about his new thing, you know, like another on of these 12 part documentaries.

Each part is like an hour or two long.

Yeah.

And, you know, people are watching that.

People been watching that.

And he had an interesting kind of read on.

Like he says, his whole career, he's been hearing that no one has.

The attention spans been getting shorter and it hasn't really come to fruition.

So I don't know, maybe he's wrong, but like it's encouraging to hear dissent on that.

What do you make of that?

I mean, do people have I think people's yeah, I think our short, our short term memorie definitely shot at this point.

You know, I think you can you can blame social media.

You can blame short term video.

But at the same time, I still think there's, like people want to be people that want to be entertained, you know, and whether that's through some sort of like super short, snappy content or through like a really inquisitive, like 2000 word piece in a magazine, you know, I think people are still looking to be entertained.

It's just I think that just makes a job of like us reporters and us writers in general, we just have to do a much better job of actually getting them to sit down and engage with our work.

When people talk about like binge watching TV or whatever, instead of like, I guess you used to go and like once a week, there's some show on at a certain time and you watch it and you come back the next week, and now it's like you talk about like, oh, I binge this or whatever on Netflix this weekend.

And like, that's having a long attention span.

It's like spending a long time with something.

I think people just hav different demands for what it is that they mayb want to spend a long time with.

Yeah, I think it's possible to have, but like, I don't know about you guys, but like, I watched my fair share of Instagram Reels, you know, guilty pleasure.

Like, sometimes you need a minute to kind of just rot away and scroll on some Instagram Reels and, and we're wired that way because we've been doing that since we were young.

Like, I don't know, when did you guys get, like, Instagram or TikTok for the first time?

Probably when I was like 12.

Yeah, yeah, a little young.

Yeah.

I mean, I feel like maybe I was like 13, 14, but right in there.

And so what did your parents say about that?

They were a little older.

They are older.

And so they didn' really know what that entailed.

But they soon caught on and they were like, maybe you should limit your time on that.

And, you know, it turned out fine.

I turned out fine.

Okay.

So you know, you're sitting here that that's true.

Positive.

And the look at the journalism business ain't what it used to be, as they say in the biz.

Does this scare you going into the you you could be on a career path that in ten years doesn't exist anymore.

I think people are always going to want to know what's going on.

So I think that journalism will always- Do you really think so?

I think so, I mean, maybe I'm an outlier but I'm always checking my phone or looking at even print, media or watching the news.

I want to know what's going on around me.

I want to know what's going on in communities near me.

I want to know what's going on federally, as well.

And I thin I'll always want to be informed and I think I have peers that are the same way.

It's probably comforting to think of this as like rock bottom, right.

Like you know, people are always going to wan to know about what's going on, the ways that we've monetized, that don't necessarily work anymore.

But it's like, as long as that's a desire, maybe this is naive and maybe like or quixotic, like I have faith that like, people are going to find a way to like, pay for the news.

The people that I when I do gigs and talk to audiences, people will tell me they get their news from Facebook.

When you hear that, what do you think?

Does that scare you?

You know, I think it's really easy to get scared of that idea, right?

I think over the past couple of years we've really toyed around with this idea of disinformation, misinformation.

But I don't think I'm as skeptical as a lot of people when it comes to people going to social media for their news.

I think the job of journalist has evolved a lot, right?

20 years ago, this kind of very solidified idea, you work at a paper, you work at an institution and you kind of represent that.

And that's where people go to get their news.

And the truth is, that's a lot more decentralized now.

I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.

I think that there's still a space for really good journalism that's hard pressing.

It just simply doesn't show up on the first page.

It just shows up in your feed.

But are your peers going to the newspaper?

Do they read newspapers?

No.

And and this is, you know, we, myself and Emilio and Alex wor at the student newspaper here.

And a big way that we promote our content, our news coverage is through Instagram.

But the way that we do it is you do how all news outlets do it these days, which is the dominant image from the story.

And then the headline, and sometimes it's a headlin that's a big news event, and it kind of blows up on Instagram.

And there's all sorts of arguments in the comments, and it gets a bunch of likes.

But we sit there and we realize we painstakingly pored over every single line in the story.

And the whole way we went about reporting it was so intentional because it was a sensitive issue.

And when the people you know, it's good that they get their news through Instagram and they saw the headline an they know that the news exists.

But, you know, there's you can't always distill the whole entire story from just a headline.

That's why you read the story and that's why we wrote the story.

It's frustrating.

Like, I remember when I was at, at an internship somewhere that had a lot like fancier tools for, like, monitoring, like readershi than we do at the student paper.

And I always had this idea that, like the people on Facebook and Instagram who were like commentin and engaging with what you post are the same people who are reading what you do.

And when I saw, like that, actuall like looked at with these like very sophisticated tools for tracking readership, it's not really a Venn diagram like there's a group of people that look at headlines on social media and make crazy comments about them and engage in that sort of like fighting online.

There's a group of peopl that actually read your paper, but it's hard to like, I think, reconcile with those being like very much two separate groups.

But once in a while it works.

remember that story, we wrote a story about fraternities on campus going like uninvestigated by campus police, 2000 word story drawing on like a bunch of public records and stuff.

And I wasn't sure if anybody was really going to read it.

And I remember hearin from a lot of people who I know, and all of them were talking to me about the kicker of the story, like the very bottom of this 2000 word story, which is like a little bit superficial because it was just kind of like it's a fun little twist at the end.

But I remember being shocked because eventually I realized I was like that means they actually read it all the way.

They didn't like look at social media.

They read the whole story What was the hook on the story?

It was about fraternities on campus being reported to campus police, including by administrators here at Michigan State who said to the police, like we heard about this, you should look at it.

And then the police not doing anything with those reports.

They ignored it.

They ignored it.

And they say that it's a jurisdictional issue and that they referred it to East Lansing Police.

And Lansing Police says that they never heard from MSU about that.

They also say that one of the issues I guess this is a tangent or whatever but they als say one of the issues is that, they won't investigate because there's a lack of, you know, claimants that are named and known and that are willing to participate.

Well you have to have something to investigate.

You can't go into the curious and say what are you guys doing wrong?

Sure.

Please confess to u so we could do a story?

Right?

But a story like that resonated.

I mean it got a good readership and I feel like students actually read it because it was a topic they cared about.

So I don't know, my hope is not all lost for peopl reading long newspaper stories.

I know I read the state news because it's relevan to what's going on in my life, and thats why I think that people in communities actually care about local journalism.

Like I work at WKAR and I know that people like I've interviewed people that live in this community.

I love that I get to talk to sources that actually read what I write, what my coworkers write.

And I don't know, I thin there's there's meaning to that.

And I think that people do care.

They want to know what's going on.

What's one story that stands out in your mind that you really liked?

Oh, that's a good question.

Thank you.

Well, there are a couple that I'm proud of, but, one of them that I especially enjoyed was, a kind of a deep dive on the number of smoky days in Michigan.

I don't kno if anyone was paying attention to what it was like this past summer.

Smoky summer.

So just kind of getting to work with that data and talk to, a meteorologist at Eagle an kind of just compare it to 2023, because I don't kno if you guys remember that year, but I worked at the zoo at the time.

This was many, many years ago for me, but I worked at the zoo and they had to put, masks on some of the animals and keep them inside.

So just kind of, I was kind of worried, is it going to be something similar to that again, where, people with compromised immune systems or people with preexisting, health issues, are they going to be negatively impacted?

The answer was yes.

I feel stories like stories like that when I'm writing somethin that focuses on public health.

And I'm getting that information out, that's very meaningful to me.

So I would say that's one of the stories that I'm the most proud of.

You were trying to make a difference.

In a way, yeah.

At least make people aware of what was going on.

So if somebody had asthma, they knew I shouldn't go outside today or this summer has is kind of rough for somebody who's dealing with what I'm dealing with.

I think it's important that people are aware of of, situations like that.

Emilio what's your big story?

My favorite story I've done you know, it was actually earlier this year, it was when there were a lot of petitioning people on campus, people gathering signatures for all sorts of different causes.

And this is a fairly recurring issue, but, you know, there's no law in Michigan saying that the petitioner has to be honest to you about what they're asking you to sign.

And so we had students complaining about like, hey, you know, I signed this thing.

And then a couple days later, I realized I did not want to sign that actually.

But I got duped.

And so I got to take on this fun story that involved me, you know, going down there and maybe giving the petition people a bit of a hard time, you know just trying to figure out, like, what exactly their telling people if they feel a little bit ba about being dishonest to them, and also just trying to, like, figure out, you know, these students, like, why did they sign and what made it so fun for me was just that after we published it, I was one I was happy with the story, but two, there were actual students who reached out and said, hey, I signed this, and I didnt mean to.

Or even better hey, I was going to sign this, I read your story and realized they weren't being honest.

What did the people say that were circulating this false information?

What did they tell you?

Well, they had told me it's really interesting case because.

So petition people in Michigan get paid by the signature oftentimes anyways.

And that's also an issue.

And there's there's been bills proposed trying to do more of that by the way.

Exactly.

Yeah.

And so what the petitioners tell me is, you know, there will be people that, for example, will sign a petitio simply because they know that, you know, the the measure itself probably won't end up on the ballot, but it's three extra bucks going to that person and simply is almost like a form of solidarity.

Good old, we got to make money.

Yeah, exactly.

The democracy be damned, right?

Right.

Yeah.

That's true.

Did you point that out to them?

Yeah, I mean, I raised it, but ultimately for them, it's like it's a job for me.

And it's really interesting the way that, like, you know, these petitions, signature gatherers, theyll move across the country and they'll, you know, there's Facebook groups dedicated to, like, hey, you know, when is there going to be a petition open in California?

Yeah.

It's just it' a really interesting industry.

What do you make of in the newsrooms?

They have, I'm told I've not been in to see this, but I've been told from reliable sources, okay, that they have up on the wall a listing of all the storie that are getting the most hits.

Is that going on in newsrooms around our state?

Yeah, I, I can't speak for every newsroom across the state, but I know at WKAR I've seen analytics, but it's never like a print it out.

No, no, it's just but it's okay.

You know, beating on campus, 300 hits.

President speaks to students, too.

Yeah.

You can see which storie are getting the most engagement.

What's getting the most clicks?

Does that scare you?

Yes.

Why?

We thought.

I mean, pretty much every newsroom I've been in or heard about has, like, transparency with analytics for reporters.

And we even have had i at State News in recent years.

And it's something that I, I try not to do.

They have the lights up on the board.

We don't have the lights up on the board.

We don't have that yet with a how do they get this information to you?

I mean within I think most like CMS is you can see analytics for stories published on the site.

I think it's a scary thing because it's like I try not to look at it, but it's like every so often, you know, I want to see and sometimes you spend a really long time and you work hard on something and it's just like numerically, it's not being consumed by maybe the number of people you want to see.

And I think it'd be easy for that to twist your thinking a bit and get down and think, I should write stories a certain way, but it's like I always try and reconcile, like the, I don't know, different stories of different audiences.

Sometimes we write a story and the audience is like, we publish it, and 10,000 people read it that day.

But other times you publish a story and it's like there are 50 people that need to read it, and as long as they read it like, I'm happy with that.

It's corny, but maybe there's like one person that needs to read it.

And I think we as journalists need to do a better job of making sure that there's not an incentive structure around impact.

And how many people read it, and I'm guilty of it.

I've written on resumes, this story that I did was one of the most read of the month at wherever, and I realized I need to get away from that.

But but at the same time, I'm writing that on a resume because I know that employers that is a thing that they want to hear about.

That is exactly the point!

Right?

And I just think that, you know, it leads to this.

I think we need to do a better job when I'm finished that, since it leads to, well, it leads to having an outsize consideration for how is this information going to be interpreted and what are people going to do about it, rather than am I just giving people good information right now?

Well, how about this?

We're going to end up doing the stories that gets the most hits.

And the stuff that maybe being important are not getting the hits.

So we're not going to do it exactly.

Now.

We're not doing our job right.

It's dangerous.

And it's like there was a time where, you know, you put out the paper every day and you, you know, you put the biggest news on the front page.

But beyond that, you're like, this is the news, and this is what people need today.

And you had no way to track the analytics when people were reading their print newspaper.

And I, I don't know, I lament, frankly that I'm just not a part of that era in journalism, but it's also a different place to place.

Like it's like maybe ten years ago, the whole like, BuzzFeed model of, like, you're going to put this stuff out there, it's not going to necessarily be behind a paywall.

And the goal is like, let's get as many peopl as possible to read this thing, and we're going to get you know, pennies on the dollar of like ad traffic from Google and whatnot.

But I think increasingl like places that are succeeding are publications that have cultivated, like maybe not the biggest audience, but like a loyal audience will actually pay them to do their work.

And it's like the incentives are changing in a way that, like, makes me feel optimistic about, like places you're going to find audiences and serve them rather than trying to find the bigges audience possible to get, like, you know, fractions of a penny on every single page view.

But doesn't that lead to a segregation of the haves and have nots when it comes to knowledge?

And that's what's scary, is that, like, you can I can Google any topic.

Yeah.

And there's a lot of stuff ou there for free that I can read, but the stuff that's more expensive is obviously a lot better.

Well, what is the danger, if any, to the democracy of having a division of knowledge or lack of same?

I think that you're kin of getting at the real cracks, like when you have a group of people that simply has access to better information, compared to someone that doesn't.

But you know what?

I think that there's also a lot of new technologies that are sort of reshaping.

I mean, I think we've all been kind of, dealing with the consequences of AI proliferating how it has in the past ten years.

All of you people are out of work.

Right?

Exactly.

Or maybe less than that.

Go ahead.

But I still think that it's just I think that as scary as it is, it might also provide some sort of avenue to sort of equalize the idea that if this technology is drawing from all sorts of sources maybe it will provide some sort of equal playing field.

That's like a nonprofit newsroom.

And they're doing things like they raise money.

But I mean, all the great work you did this summer, anybody can read for free online.

Like, yeah, that's why I thin nonprofit news is so important.

That's why I think public media is important.

Outlets like Bridge and I mean the State News as wel that's accessible for students.

I think information needs to be accessible.

And I think that as the industry progresses, we need to find a way to make sure that it stays accessibl to as many people as possible.

Is it part of our job to inform the publi so they can vote intelligently?

I think that's a component of the job.

Sure.

I think that it's not necessarily like guiding somebody how to make a decision or how to vote, but just giving them this is what's going on.

Take with this what you will.

Now you can, I guess, process the information and go forth and cast your ballot and I guess whatever way you want.

But but all you journalist are liberals and you're biased.

I don't think that's necessarily true.

I mean, reporting you you aim to, stay objective and you aim to provide what's going on.

You aim to be objective, then how do you be objective?

It is difficult to be objective as a person.

I myself, as a person, I'm not objective.

There's no such thing as being an objective person.

But when you're going out and you're gathering, dat or you're speaking to sources, you're trying to ask questions, to get their perspective.

And maybe you put multiple perspectives in a story, not just one one slant.

And with data, you make sure that you're getting it from a reliable source, like a government agency, a state agency.

And so that's how you kee your work in my mind, objective.

But as an individual, you can never truly be objective.

And that's something that I've been taught.

How do you control for that?

I mean, yeah, I think similarly I think you realize, like, I have a job right now and I'm wearing my job journalist hat and you pu the other considerations aside.

Yes, we're all people.

We feel things.

We believe things.

But but when I'm out doing my job, it's, you know, to be corny.

I'm working for everyone.

I'm working for the whole public that could possibly, you know, see this information.

And so I'm distilling it in a wa that's not trying to tell people what to think, but it's giving them valuable good information so that they can then decide what to think.

But how does it how does it feel to be in a business where people don't trust what you're doing?

Bad.

Not great.

Yeah.

It makes me pretty sad.

And how do we overcome that?

Maybe it'd be nic if there were more of us, right.

Because it's like, I don't know what it was like when you started doing this, but pretty much any person that you talk to who's not like a public figure that you talk to a lot, you're probably the first journalist they've ever talked to.

And so they know you from like stereotypes on TV and stuff.

And you can hope people watch All the President's Men, but it's like, you know, most people know kind of like a different caricature of a journalist.

And so it's a scary thing like everyone that you talk to maybe has like a perception of your business, but it's they've never really come in contact with that just cause there's so few of us.

Let me just share one nugget with you, because we often get accused of being biased.

And what I always sa to audiences, I use John Engler as an example.

Former governo of the state, conservative guy.

And he had there were two, two groups of people, those that loved him, those who hate him.

And we'd have him on the show.

Okay.

And after the show, the people that hated John Engler came to me and say, Skubick, why were you so easy on him?

Why didn't you ask him all those snotty questions that you ask governors?

Okay why do you let him off the hook?

And then the people that like John Engler say, Skubick you were just awful asking him all those questions.

And then I turn to the audience and say you know what?

If there's a bias out there, I'm looking at it.

You are bias, not Mwah.

Does that make sense to you?

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But I'm not sure that the people believe it.

I just think they're convinced that we have a point of view and that we're, you know, we've got something to promote but we do not correct.

This is true.

You guys were good.

The show is over.

Can you believe it?

Wow.

Did that go by fast?

There.

That is a sign of a good TV program.

That was excellent.

And our profession is in ver good hands with the four of you.

Thank you for your insightful analysis.

I appreciate you showing up.

This is great.

Yeah, I like to mugs and stuff.

Yeah.

Three mugs that you clearly like.

Like, can we have have thirty more minutes?

Thank you.

Yeah that was fun!

I appreciate your time.

See you next week for more off the record.

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Production of Off th Record is made possible in part by Bellwether Public Relations, a full servic strategic communications agency partnering with clients through public relations, digital marketing and issue advocacy.

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For more off the record, visit wkar.org Michigan public television stations have contributed to the production costs of Off the Record.