Student gets mad at StudLife for writing, like, exactly what she said

Three weeks ago, StudLife ran an interview with two juniors studying abroad in Israel. They reside “about 10 miles north of Tel Aviv.” Needless to say, this semester has been a rather unique time to study in the region. The two chronicled their experiences enduring the week-long outbreak of violence between Israel and Hamas in an interview with StudLife Editor-in-Chief Michael Tabb. It was a good interview and I enjoyed reading it.

So imagine my surprise when I saw that one of the interviewees penned a sour letter to the editor last week. Apparently, she was under the impression that Tabb intended to use their Skype interview as a means to “get a feel of our situation and from there create an original piece using specific quotes.” Instead, to her surprise, the paper ran a “verbatim Q&A.”

This semester, I enrolled in a UCollege reporting class that required me to interview students around campus. From my experience, and with the student’s account in mind, it seems to me that Wash U students do not have the best grasp of the journalism process. Moreover, when students harangue StudLife — a favorite Wash U pastime — they are often inexact (which is unfortunate because StudLife certainly warrants informed criticism). It’s not that surprising. They don’t teach you how to be a good media consumer in school (they should). But I feel compelled to write about the letter, not as a personal take down, but because I think we very rarely have substantive discussions about campus media at Wash U. Next semester, I hope to use this space for that purpose, in addition to my regular Perlbloggings.

Here is the letter — in full — with my thoughts embedded in bold:

I think it’s safe to say I would not have been accepted into Washington University in St. Louis in March of 2010 had my personal essay contained as many “likes” as my interview in StudLife has. [Simplifying the lede, the writer believes StudLife made her sound silly by including her “likes” and “literallys” — colloquialisms she doesn’t deny using, but ones she had hoped would be omitted before press time.]

What’s my point? Well, I’ll tell you.

Amanda Packer and I were asked by StudLife to do a Skype interview in the aftermath of the most recent Israel-Hamas conflict since we are studying abroad in Israel. Little did we know, we were being recorded for a verbatim Q&A. [How shocking that when StudLife asked you for an interview, they intended to use your verbatim quotations all along. The nerve!]

I am incredibly disappointed that StudLife chose not to inform its interview subjects of the style of the interview and the formatting of the article. [While I understand her frustration, StudLife has no journalistic responsibility to tell its sources the “formatting of the article.” If she was curious about that, she should have asked. And it’s really not a common journalistic practice to send an interviewee her own quotes. That’s a controversy unto itself — The New York Times banned quote approval in September after political beat-sweetening got out of hand.] Amanda and I were under the impression that our Skype meeting with editor-in-chief Michael Tabb was a conversation in which he would get a feel of our situation and from there create an original piece using specific quotes. [Again, if that’s your impression, there’s really no harm in asking. The student agreed to an interview with a newspaper, so she arguably understood that her “specific quotes” were on the record. What difference does it make if Tabb decided to weave them into a narrative feature or just leave it as a Q&A? Your words are your words.] We were never informed that our conversation with Michael was being recorded word-for-word for a transcript that would be visible to the entire WUSTL community and beyond. [Missouri law did not require Tabb to tell his subjects he recorded the interview. Then again, the two were in Israel during all of this, leading us down a rabbit hole of international media law that your humble Perlblogger won’t endeavor to explain. Though, recording a source during an interview isn’t only about what’s legal. We’re just college kids, and this is more a question of personal ethics than a question of legality. Tabb could have informed his sources of the tape recorder’s presence, and he could have asked them if it was cool to use it. He didn’t have to, but he could have. If he had, she still wouldn’t have known that the interview was a “verbatim Q&A” (because she didn’t ask) so I highly doubt it would have changed her “likey” lilt at all.]  Had we been informed of his intentions, we would have asked for some time to format our answers and slowly share our thoughts, enabling us to sound more professional and cohesive. [Shouldn’t you already want to sound professional and cohesive for an on the record interview?]

In particular, my recount of hearing the rocket in Tel Aviv and Amanda’s anecdote about her Shabbat dinner were two of many instances that were poorly captured because of the verbatim recording. [Read: By word for word reproducing what we said, Tabb poorly captured what we said. (For what it’s worth, I thought the anecdotes were perfectly informative.)]

We agreed to do the interview to be helpful to StudLife and the Wash. U. community. We would have appreciated it if StudLife had given us the courtesy of informing us of its intentions. [Back to media ethics, which, I think, is the most salient point here. Tabb wasn’t morally derelict, but he could (and perhaps should) have painted a better picture of the formatting of his piece pre-interview. At the time of the interview, Tabb had not yet made an editorial formatting decision, as is his right. I learned that when I emailed Tabb a few minutes ago. The source never asked.]

The Q&A published by StudLife did not accurately capture the essence of our thoughts and anecdotes. [I’m lost again. How could publishing your exact words not accurately capture your essence? On the contrary, the interview is strikingly accurate. Far more accurate than using your quotes in a narrative piece (where Tabb would have been tasked with representing your thoughts within that contextual paradigm).] Rather, the style and structure of “Voices from the Middle East” took attention away from what we wanted to share. [No, it shared ONLY what you wanted to share, and nothing more. The attention was all yours.]

I look forward to my return to Wash. U. when Amanda and I can report in person about our experiences abroad in Israel. [In all seriousness, that sounds like it would make a great piece for the next issue of WUPR.]

I just want to, like, be able to share and, like, tell everything! Like, what do you all think?

Kidding. [That’s a pretty nice ending.]

Around campus, StudLife gets lampooned for shirking accuracy. But the source never claims that StudLife misquoted her, which would be a real, reprehensible indictment. Her charge — that Tabb was, I guess, too accurate — is a new one.

For his part, Tabb says the decision to use the Q&A format was meant to mirror the other “Voices from the Middle East” article (conducted with a student who joined a humanitarian convoy to Gaza). “When I interviewed [the student], I told her that we were looking to do some wider coverage on the Israel/Gaza situation, relating it to Wash. U. by covering the collaborative vigil but also bringing in the perspectives of students seeing the conflict firsthand,” Tabb told WUPR in an email.

Tabb also said StudLife selected the strongest quotes. “The piece we printed was hardly a full transcript of the nearly 40 minute interview, which I think is something to be aware of,” he said.

It seems to me that the tension really stems from the student’s embarrassment about the direct quotation of her use of the word “like.” Some of her excerpts do kind of read like the script of Clueless: Israel. I can understand her dismay — I’m guilty of saying “like” too much also, and I wouldn’t want to seem inarticulate in StudLife. So should Tabb have cleaned up her words? Don’t most reporters just change the tense if you’re grammatically incorrect? It’s complex. Journalists disagree on the sacredness of the quote. From the AJR:

“There is a big difference between changing quotes and cleaning them up,” says Sue O’Brien, a media ethics professor and newly named editorial page editor of the Denver Post. “I think cleaning them up is very common. Changing quotes means actually changing the words people use, whether it is for clarity or emphasis. Cleaning them up is leaving out words, substituting a contraction for a bulky phrase. The one place you change a word and call it cleaning it up is changing a tense. But do it with the words they used. It’s wrong to change the thrust or context of what someone is saying.”

Other professionals say the rules vary.

“I’ve changed quotes and I’ve been accused of changing quotes, but I have never been accused of changing a quote I actually changed,” says Jon Franklin, a two-time Pulitzer winner who now teaches journalism and creative writing at the University of Oregon. “People don’t say what they mean, and they expect you to quote what they mean, not what they say. That is slippery, but it’s the reality.”

“Each story goes through about seven rounds of editing, so a particular editor’s wariness in cutting out verbal static isn’t necessarily significant,” Tabb said. “The word ‘like’ is obviously a lot trickier than ‘um,’ as it can be used to introduce quotes and also qualify statements that aren’t necessarily factually accurate.”

My feeling is that, yes, Tabb should have ditched all the “likes,” but kind of like the tape recorder issue, he didn’t have to. “It is worth noting that our copy chief says he removed many unnecessary uses of the word ‘like,'” Tabb told WUPR.

But then there are moments in the interview such as this: “…and one of my cousins who is our age—he literally is like two minutes older than me—he just turned 21.”

Make no mistake, nobody would hold Tabb in journalism jail for cleaning that up. In fact, cutting the parenthetical phrase would be standard operating procedure.

Nevertheless, writing a letter to the editor decrying StudLife’s choice to quote their sources word for word in Q&A format — well within its journalistic reaches — is unfair too. Do you just mean to say it’s ridiculous that StudLife doesn’t really clean up “likes” from their quotes? Because that’s something worth arguing. Maybe you can accuse Tabb of lax editing, but not of inaccuracy.

What can we learn from all of this? Well, when a reporter interviews you, you can (and should) expect that all of your words are fair game.

Editor’s Note Apr. 30, 2016: Article edited by discretion to remove names of interviewed students.