The novel coronavirus, and the pandemic caused by it, make it necessary to change some of the ways we work as students and professors. I choose not to let this pandemic stop me from providing my students access to a good education. Because we may be living with this virus for a long time, I think there is no sense shoehorning our old ways of doing things into a new situation. I choose to move forward with a different plan.

I am trying something like an active, student-centered pedagogy with evaluation by portfolio. This is not a new idea or even a new set of ideas. I’m choosing to revisit some old methods of education going back to ancient Greece and adding a few modern twists.

Active, student-centered learning has been widely discussed in academia as a method for making traditional lectures work better, i.e. encourage students to actively engage with the material during a lecture, not just sit and listen. I am uninterested in making traditional lectures work better because that is exactly one of the models that is no longer sustainable, in my opinion. My goal instead is to make the active, student-centered model work with my variation of the ancient tutorial/peripatetic method of teaching in which the students work closely with the professor one-on-one or in small groups. And then there’s the whole outdoor thing because, you know, who wants to be trapped in a room with any number of humans these days?

This move, as I think about it and refine it over the summer, is about giving students problems to solve and letting them participate in the design of the assignments. The problems I want them to solve: learning how to critically examine and create the various stories we tell in the mass media — primarily through journalism and documentary filmmaking.

My classes this spring at Missouri State University:

MED130 Fundamentals of Media Convergence: The enrollment for this class has changed from 30 to 20 in order to create social distancing. It will also be a “blended” class — that means taught partly in person and partly online.

JRN478 Mobile Journalism: This class is moving online for next semester — possibly longer.

MED512 Documentary Practicum: This is a field course. Much of the instruction will take place outside a traditional classroom on location with film crews from Carbon Trace Productions. Student have access to a media edit lab during class hours.

Margaret Sullivan asks what journalists are supposed to be today. As an answer, she offers another question: “What journalism best serves the real interests of American citizens?”

I’m going to briefly re-visit one of my earlier answers to this question specifically regarding opinion journalism and op-eds because I think it is especially important right now:

Fact check opinion journalism from your columnists, to your pundits, to your politicians, to your citizens’ letters to the editor. Publish nothing in an editorial section that has a factual error.

I’m unconcerned about the The New York Times having published an op-ed by Sen. Tom Cotton. I find his opinion odious and authoritarian. I suspect your average Times reader finds it so. But that doesn’t mean the Times shouldn’t publish it. What the Times, and every other newspaper, should be doing is fact-checking every submission and turn back anything with factual errors for edit and re-submit.

The Times just let Cotton have his say. And it was later found to be wanting in the facts department.

Cotton has every right to believe that troops should be used to stop the “rioters.” But that doesn’t mean newspapers should give him, or anyone else, a pass on facts.

Look for something do while staying home?

You may interpret that question differently depending upon whether you’re an introvert or extrovert. I’m an extrovert, so, yeah, the whole staying home thing is a challenge.

I’m encouraging everyone to document this moment in history on video using your phones. Tell your personal story.

Now you might be thinking: Dude! We do this everyday already. It’s called social media.

Yes. True. But…

• Let’s get those phone videos turned to landscape format.
• Start recording your experiences. Think bigger chunks — 网际直通车 — not little snippets that last seconds.
• Talk to us. Tell us what’s going on. What are you thinking and feeling. Tell us why it’s important to you. Write a script if you have to.
• 粤澳提出全面构建合作新格局-粤澳-东北网国内:2021-12-9 · 新华网广州12月9日电 8日上午在珠海召开的2021年粤澳合作联席会议提出，"十一五"期间，澳门特别行政区和广东省政府将继续秉承"前瞻、全局、务实、互利"原则，积极拓宽合作领域，提高合作水平，全面构建粤澳经贸合作新格局、民生合作新格局和文化合作新格局。
• Publish and share.

The personal and day-to-day are some of the most interesting bits of history.

Shane Franklin, Senior Producer for Carbon Trace Productions, and I head back to Brownsville, Texas and Matamoros, Mexico on Saturday to finish filming Witness at the Border — the sequel to our documentary film Witness At Tornillo.  We’ll be there for a week.

Well, assuming the border doesn’t close while we’re in the refugee camp.

周刊 - chinacourt.org:2021-10-24 · 群众反映问题，开通民意网上直通 车。黑龙江高院还制定了《“院长信 箱”所涉案件、事项办理工作的实施 细则》，规范信箱留言的梳理、批 转、办理和答复等流程。目前，全省 三级法院192个法院网站都开通了 “院长信箱”，极大地方便了当事人反 映诉求。

This could be one hell of a trip. Or, as one wag of a student put it today in class: “It could be a whole new documentary!”

Many of my students have been expressing the “feels like I’m in a zombie movie” emotional response to coronavirus — today especially as Trump finally addressed the nation on the … what? … epidemic, pandemic, something else? MU, just up the road, has closed for a couple of weeks. MSU might. Depends. We’re heading into spring break, so the powers-that-be have a bit a breathing room before making any decision about closing school. MSU has suspended all spring study-away trips and banned travel to China.

The big Broadcast Education Association conference, where our 2023 student documentary Zero was to be honored, has been called off. If you’re of a mind to, please click that link, pay $2, and watch it.

The www.cqn.com.cn:2021-7-18 · 田区网际直通车 网吧 340403000004477 张梓瑞 安徽省淮南市田区国庆东路 340400000028260757 淮南市宜都环保发展有限公司 340421000024485 闫德林 安徽省淮南市 ... has been postponed until later this summer. Witness At Tornillo is an official selection.

But I’ll be spending this next week with people who have it a lot worse than I do. We go into post-production upon our return. The film will be ready for screening by fall.

BTW, the donation link mentioned in the video? Just click here. Thanks!

Witness at the Border |Fundraiser| from 网际直通车 on Vimeo.

Happy New Year!

Maybe.

First, read 粤澳提出全面构建合作新格局-粤澳-东北网国内:2021-12-9 · 新华网广州12月9日电 8日上午在珠海召开的2021年粤澳合作联席会议提出，"十一五"期间，澳门特别行政区和广东省政府将继续秉承"前瞻、全局、务实、互利"原则，积极拓宽合作领域，提高合作水平，全面构建粤澳经贸合作新格局、民生合作新格局和文化合作新格局。 about the “fourth turning,” a part of the larger theory of generational dynamics as explained by William Strauss and Neil Howe in their many books on the subject they pioneered.

Next, read Heather Cox Richardson’s (do it everyday) letter today (you can also subscribe by e-mail) regarding: “2023 will be the year that determines whether or not American democracy survives.”

We’ll talk about, er… nope, I’m all about the rhetoric of lecture now… I’ll talk at you about things that transpire from here. I’ll also try to tell you some stories.

[Note: I no longer allow public comments on Rhetorica. If you have something to say, send me e-mail.]

I haven’t gone away. I’ve simply changed my focus. I make documentary films with my students now. I’ve been doing this since 2014. I now have a non-profit called Carbon Trace Productions, which you may recognize as the name of my now-closed bicycle blog.

Here’s our 2023 reel of highlights going back to 2015. You can watch several of our documentary films on the Carbon Trace website. Just click the proper link in the menu.

网际直通车 from Carbon Trace Productions on Vimeo.

Back in the day, I was a textual analyst. This very blog began as a grad-student project in the textual analysis of campaign rhetoric in 1998. It morphed into Rhetorica in early 2002. I kept up the same general schtick in examining the press-politics relationship for many years.

Then it just became pointless.

That may have been a hasty decision on my part when I made it… how long ago now? Because this week we have seen the distribution of a presidential text so extraordinary as to be the real nail in that old coffin of this blog and my project.

The Trump letter to the House of Representatives regarding impeachment: I’ve linked you to The New York Times and its laughably who-gives-a-shit fact check.

Well, some people still give a shit, but they are opposed by an authoritarian faction that is by turns shameless in producing crude propaganda based on lies and distortion and an inability to actually tell the difference between that and the facts of reality.

They had many choices in 2016. And they picked this guy. And they support this guy.

网际直通车 ends its book review of A Warning, by Anonymous with a quote from Donald Trump: “These are just words. A bunch of words. It doesn’t mean anything.” The President was not critiquing the new book. The quote comes from another place and time. But if he does say such a thing about this book, it will be one of the (very) few things he’s ever said or done that I’ll agree with.

Anonymous is a conservative coward.

I read the wretched Michael Wolff book Fire & Fury. It was a stinker. It was entertaining. It might even have been accurate. But who can tell? Wolff gives us utterly nothing to go on but his word. Not good enough.

I read Bob Woodward’s book Fear. I’ve read many of his books over the years. He’s been generally reliable. But I came away from it thinking “meh.” I mean, anyone could guess at the general nature of the Trump presidency just watching the man operate in public, just listening to him flap his gums. All Woodward did was add some “reported” details (and, yes, we have to take him at his word … but the man has a track record).

There is no way I’m reading A Warning. Everything I say here is coming from my understanding of the book from the Times’ review and my reading of the original op-ed published in the Times.

I won’t even read it for free.

You see, the idea that there’s an adult in the room trying to save us from Trump’s worst excesses is just poppycock.

If it’s really bad, then go public. You have a whistle-blower and multiple, testifying (OMG so apt) administration officials you can emulate. And isn’t that just the juicy irony here? At a time when people are stepping up, this guy offers us a lecture about what a good conservative steward he is … from behind his momma’s skirt.

This part of the Time’s review was interesting:

Anonymous declares that this “American spirit” was best exemplified by the bravery shown by the passengers on United Flight 93, who rushed the cockpit on 9/11. We’ve seen Flight 93 used as a conservative analogy before — by another anonymous author no less, writing under the pen name Publius Decius Mus, who argued before the 2016 presidential election that “a Hillary Clinton presidency is Russian Roulette with a semi-auto” and consequently that voting for Mr. Trump offered the only chance for the republic’s survival.

That the same violent tragedy has been deployed to argue one point and then, three years later, to argue its utter opposite is, to put it charitably, bizarre. But then Anonymous, a self-described “student of history,” doesn’t seem to register the discrepancy. Nor does Anonymous square the analogy with an episode mentioned in the opening pages of “A Warning” — of senior officials contemplating a replay of the Nixon administration’s so-called Saturday Night Massacre by resigning en masse. The idea of doing anything so bold was floated within the first two years of the Trump administration, and then abandoned.

Too bad the title Fear was already taken. That’s anonymous.

[Note: I no longer allow public comments on Rhetorica. If you have something to say, send me e-mail.]

人民法院报 - chinacourt.org:2021-10-27 · “院长信箱”是黑龙江法院网69个栏目中的重要栏目之一，旨在便利群众反映问题，开通民意网上直通车。黑龙江高院还制定了《“院长信箱”所涉案件、事项办理工作的实施细则》，规范信箱留言的梳理、批转、办理和答复等流程。

One should never assume that descriptive statements or predictions about the world based upon learned opinion have a rock-solid connection to reality.

Learned opinion should be somewhat better than random opinion because, well, it’s learned (again, based upon learning and study). This is why journalists ask academics to be sources for news articles — their learned opinion or research (i.e. knowledge production) is a little better at getting to the heart of the matter compared to other sorts of sources. That, and academics are usually easy to get on deadline (expediency bias).

Let me make one more assertion about what “good academics” should think/do/be: Good academics should be comfortable with being spectacularly wrong — both in learned opinion and academic study.

网际直通车

You’re going to have to revisit this from Rhetorica by visiting archive.org because of the snafu last year that wiped out my entries.

OK, here it is: I thought the internet, its interactive nature, and open comment systems would lead to a robust and cogent civic discourse.

Ooooops. I should have given you a liquid/computer proximity warning. Sorry. I’ll wait while you get the paper towels.

…

Back then I was all about the differences between the rhetoric of lecture (old, 1-way media tellin’ it like it is) and the rhetoric of conversation (new, interactive media where everyone talks back to create pesky reality). The differences are real enough. But the assumptions and predictions I made based on these differences turned out to be, shall we say, spectacularly wrong.

This isn’t anything you haven’t read before. All of us in this particular game have been dealing with the 21st Century not turning out quite the way we imagined. Consider this a finger exercise on the keyboard ahead of, maybe, something else.

A couple of things as I consider what to do with Rhetorica now that the 2023 presidential campaign is upon us:

1. I have renewed respect for the rhetoric of lecture.
2. Comments are no longer a thing on Rhetorica — no matter what I plan to do with it — because, frankly, I don’t give a shit. I’m lecturing.
3. You can contact me the old-fashioned way if you feel the need to respond.

Happy Fourth of July.

I am completely unable to get the archive file for all the posts to work.

So here’s what I’ve begun doing: Using archive.org, I am selectively re-publishing posts from the past.

That’s as good as it’s going to get.

UPDATE: I found a number of old posts had been marked as drafts in my last attempt to re-post from my archive file. I’m going to go through and publish them.