On this episode Gus speaks to Professor Barney McCoy. Barney is a Professor of Broadcasting Journalism at the College of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Barney was a full-time journalist for 27 years, during which time he won six Emmy awards for his journalistic excellence. Barney is also an expert on teaching methods and as an educator he also wrestled with the difficulties of teaching during a pandemic. He joined us to talk about his research in classroom distractions and teaching in the era of Covid.
On this episode Gus speaks to Professor Barney McCoy. Barney is a Professor of Broadcasting Journalism at the College of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Barney was a full-time journalist for 27 years, during which time he won six Emmy awards for his journalistic excellence. Barney is also an expert on teaching methods and as an educator he also wrestled with the difficulties of teaching during a pandemic. He joined us to talk about his research in classroom distractions and teaching in the era of Covid.
Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and has not been thoroughly reviewed for completeness or accuracy.
[00:00:00] Gus Herwitz: This is Tech Refactored. I'm your host, Gus Herwitz, the Menard Director of the Nebraska Governance and Technology Center at the University of Nebraska. Today we're joined by Mark Barney McCoy. Barney is a professor of broadcasting journalism at the College of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Nebraska Lincoln.
Before arriving at UNL Barney was a full-time journalist for 27 years, during which time he won six Emmy awards and numerous other citations for journalistic excellence. Barney is also an expert on teaching methods. His research on digital distractions in the classroom has been downloaded more than 52,000 times by some 3,600 institutions in a hundred twen- seventy two countries.
As an educator, he has also wrestled [00:01:00] with the difficulties of teaching during a pandemic, as have we all Barney, And that's the topic that he's here to discuss with us today, teaching in the era of Covid and what he has learned in his research on digital distractions about teaching in the era of Covid.
[00:01:15] Barney McCoy: Hey guests, thanks for inviting me to be here today. And you, you talked about, I mean, the pandemic changed everyone's lives, you know, regardless of what they were doing, where they were at in their lives, whatever age they were at their occupation. You know, for, for educators though, it really was truly-
I'll use this term, and I coined this term, uh, from another researcher: it was a black swan moment. It changed the paradigm of higher education in ways that it hadn't been changed in perhaps hundreds of years. And so we, it really forced us, It actually forced us. To do things differently than we had ever done before and the way that we approach teaching our classes and the way we prepare for those classes and deliver those classes.
So, um, [00:02:00] to me it was just such a fundamental shift. And now, I mean, stop and think about it for a second, March of 2020. The pandemic hits and colleges, thousands of colleges across the United States, suddenly within a matter of weeks, are forced to go into teaching remotely, asynchronously, hybrid, whatever you want to call it.
All these various forms of remote teaching were taking place, and most of us were unprepared for that change. And so we knew for the sake of survival that we had to adapt, and if we didn't adapt, We were gonna die . Mm-hmm. not, not literally, but, but just figuratively in terms of what we were doing as far as instructors.
So, um, you know, but I mean, I don't know how you feel about it, but most of the people I've spoken with feel like the changes that have taken place over the past year and a half now. It feels like it's been a decade. Mm-hmm. , because so much has happened in [00:03:00] such a short period of time, and it's been frightening, It's been exhilarating, it's been exhausting.
It's been a every emotion that you can think about along the way, and we're still experiencing those emotions today. But the result is, is that most college students today and. College instructors today have now had the experience of spending a lot of time teaching remotely that they never had before, the pandemic here, and so that has fundamentally changed the behavior and the expectations about the way that we teach in the way that we learn in America.
[00:03:34] Gus Herwitz: So, so much in there. And I, I love what you said there. It feels like it's been a decade because that captures two very distinct ideas. First, it feels like it's been a long time, a, a whole lot of work, a whole lot of urgency. I, I mean, it's just been a long, tough slog for educators and students alike, but also it's been a technological revolution.
Ordinarily we don't see a decade's worth of change [00:04:00] in a two year period. And I, I'd go further and probably say it's been two or three decades worth of change, uh, really in, uh, a year and a half period. So I, I love what that captures right there. Um, and we're, we're going to come to what you've learned about the pandemic, uh, in particular, but you're, you've been doing research, uh, over the last several years on kind of the, the opposite.
Trend in education, digital distractions in, uh, the classroom. And I, I love that as a segue to thinking about the pandemic, because we're all now reliant on digital distracting things, uh, for the classroom. Um, so can you, uh, start by backing us into this? Um, can you tell us a bit about what the research that you've been doing over these periods of years, uh, has been.
[00:04:47] Barney McCoy: Sure. Yeah. I think, you know, uh, I began teaching, uh, in, in college here at the university in 2006. And, um, and at that point, you know, most of what we were teaching, we were in classroom [00:05:00] environments. It was your classical lecture and Q&A with students and various types of discussions and, and increasingly what we saw.
It was more and more students had smartphones and, uh, they began with cell phones and then they became smartphones. So you could, you know, multitask on them. You could text message, you could talk on those phones, you could play games on them. You could surf the web. You could be infinitely distracted if you chose to be.
So in 2013, I decided let's try and get some measurements, um, and ask student how distracted they are when they're using digital devices in a classroom environment for things other than what's taking place in the classroom. And uh, and I don't think anyone was necessarily surprised by some of the results that we, we found and have found out ever since, but I think at least it gave us a-
A more concrete framework in which we could try and think about what's causing these distractions, what are the motivations for them? [00:06:00] What are the admissions that students make about their own distractions? It's like, yeah, I know I'm distracted, but I guess I can live with that. Because I wanted to stay in contact with people on the outside.
So, um, lots of things were taking place. Um, and we, we, we interviewed. Did survey work with thousands and thousands of students, um, across the country. Uh, we've done three iterations of that in 2013. We came back in 16 and again, uh, we actually got into Generation Z, which was a different generation. We found some changes there as well.
So, um, so there have been some, some changes, but what we found from the get go, Is about 20% of the time students admitted that when they were in a classroom that they were being distracted by a digital device. Most of the time it was a, a smartphone, but it could have been their laptop, computer, anything that they could surf the web with basically.
And so you think about that one fifth of their time in a classroom environment is being [00:07:00] spent in distraction by something other than what they're supposedly learning and discussing in a classroom, which I thought. Pretty interesting.
[00:07:11] Gus Herwitz: So how, how did you, uh, go about fielding these surveys? You mentioned both surveys and interviews. I, I guess I should ask, did you have the students complete them during class on their devices?
[00:07:22] Barney McCoy: What we did is, is again, we made it digital. Uh, so we got the I IRB approvals and then what we wanted to do, and we felt probably the most effective way of doing this was to ask. Instructors of various majors across the country, if they would be willing to invite their students to voluntarily take these surveys.
And, and so that's really how these surveys were disseminated. And, uh, and a lot of the institutions we had to go through IRB approvals as well and, and get all that stuff taken care of too. So, um, so a lot of those things are unfolding. Uh, and as we began to get data sets and even comparing them to [00:08:00] other similar types of survey work that was being done independently, we found that there was, the results consistently seemed to be about the same in terms of levels of distractions, the reason students were distracted, you know, the advantages they felt, uh, that came with being able to be distracted and also understanding what the disadvantages of those distractions were going to be.
[00:08:21] Gus Herwitz: And- and when you say they were the same, I can think of multiple dimensions. You did this longitudinally, you've done this across, uh, multiple years. So multiple age cohorts, but also within any, uh, snapshot of that you have, uh, uh, at least potentially everything from freshmen up through grad students. Um, so what, what were the cohorts?
What were the different bends? And, uh, along which dimensions were you seeing, uh, that consist? Oh, sure. Yeah.
[00:08:48] Barney McCoy: I mean, uh, we found in, in terms of demographics is that, um, uh, oftentimes, uh, the females, the women, uh, cohorts were spending more time, [00:09:00] uh, on email and more personal responses back and forth, where as the guys tended to wanna be playing games more often, uh, you know, those kinds of things.
So we thought that was interesting. The other thing that we saw is that, If you are a freshman or a sophomore, you are probably gonna spend more time being distracted in a classroom. But as, as students got older, uh, juniors, seniors in particular, and certainly graduate students, the distraction levels were lower.
So it would at least seem to suggest that it was much more of a focus. Maybe it was the reality. The job world approaching and graduation, and they finally coming to the conclusion that, okay, I really need to start buckling down and paying attention. Or maybe they just decided that, you know, I've really finally figured out where I want to go in my life and what I wanna do with my college degree.
And so I can really enjoy being a lot more focused in my learning now than I could when I was a freshman or a sophomore, maybe still trying to figure it out. But those are some of the things that we thought were. Or [00:10:00] interesting and consistently have come through, um, as we've done these things. Um, I mentioned the other thing too is that when we did our last pre pandemic survey, And now we're in a generation Z Uh, we found that they were slightly less distracted than, uh, than the, than the generation that preceded them.
And, uh, and some of their, some of the things that they were doing and the times that they were using their phones throughout the day were also different too, as well. Uh, they seem to be a little bit more, um, Disciplined and being able to put the phones down and focus on certain kinds of things. And, uh, so I, I think that that's a, another area.
Two things that really have come forth in my surveys over the past couple of years. The, the pandemic one and then the Gen Z one is, I think it's really given us a new era of research to take a look at. And, uh, and there, there certainly are generational changes we saw between Gen [00:11:00] Z. Uh, and, and the, and generation.
Acts that preceded them and so forth and so on. I also think though there are gonna be some dramatic differences in the way that people behave now after their experiences with remote learning during the
[00:11:14] Gus Herwitz: pandemic. Yes, there's a, uh, uh, there are lots of ways that we can think about this data, and one thing that immediately comes to mind is, How much of what you're seeing is a learning effect that the, uh, earlier students, as they go through college, they're learning to live with these distractions, um, and manage their time better.
And Gen Z, they grew up with them. So perhaps Gen Z students, when they're freshmen, they're in the same place as the, the millennial, the previous generation, uh, was when they were, uh, getting to be, uh, uh, juniors, seniors, graduate students. So, uh, and coming from that perspective, There's an argument that as educators, we shouldn't be resisting or angry about students being distracted in our, uh, classrooms.
[00:12:00] We should instead recognize, Hey, these students are learning to be adults and manage these distractions, and this is part of what they're here at the university to be doing. Um, I, I don't know if that's an optimistic or a defeatist perspective, but, uh, uh, could certainly be one lesson that we could, uh, take from the work.
[00:12:18] Barney McCoy: Here's what I would say Gus, is I think, you know, when we ask students across the, the spectrum, you know, what are the advantages, uh, and disadvantages of being distracted by your digital device, they all really felt very strongly that there, there was a need for them if need be. They wanted to have the ability to decide for themselves that they wanted to, to be in touch with somebody outside the classroom, whether it was texting back and forth, or just knowing that I've got a phone with me, so if someone needs to get in touch with me, they can do that, or vice versa.
Um, we thought that that was kind of an interesting thing and they, they certainly weighed that, you know, they consciously knew that they were being distracted. Uh, the other thing that, you know, eventually we [00:13:00] got around to, was trying to determine again, Not just the, uh, the frequency, but also, you know, the frequency levels were, you know, probably we're talking about 15, 16, 17 times a day in the course of a typical classroom day.
You know, they were being distracted by a digital device. And then we found out we're gonna try and measure the duration of this. You know, it's been up around 20%, drop back into the 19% range with, uh, generation, uh, Z versus the millennials. Um, but again, those are some of the breakouts, but they have made conscious choices.
It's not strictly a reactionary unconscious behavior, although many of us are trained that way, but, Now what we're trying to figure out is what conversations can we have as instructors or how can we re-engineer the classes that we teach and maybe use those digital devices that are distracting students mm-hmm.
to engage them and, and, you know, and, and we've learned a lot more. Ways I think of being effective as teachers and doing things like that [00:14:00] by, you know, telling a classroom, Okay guys, get your smartphones out. Look this up. Let's Google this. Now, let's see if we can find some statistics, some statistics to back that up.
Let's see if we can do some projections on what's, what's happening here, and is there some supporting research for that? Which is kind of fun because then. They're applying research in real time and they're really engaged in that process and they like the fact that they get to hunt it down on the internet, which used to be what distracted them in the classroom sometimes.
So, um, so that's a pretty cool thing we
[00:14:30] Gus Herwitz: think. Yeah, I, I love it. There's the, uh, joke that, uh, we've developed the technology to have super computers in our pocket that are interconnected with the largest network mankind could have ever imagined. And we use it to post pictures of our cats well in the classroom.
We, we can use them in instead to, Let, let's do incredibly powerful things in real time, taking advantage of this incredible technology that, that's, um, uh, a really powerful pivot and change in perspective. Um, and [00:15:00] speaking of change in perspectives, uh, how did the pandemic change, uh, the perspectives of the research and what, uh, you were learning, uh, from the students and the.
[00:15:13] Barney McCoy: Well, um, you know, as I mentioned earlier, the pandemic just flipped everything on its ear. And, um, and so, you know, when students talked about remote learning, um, The disadvantages of remote learning, number one was the isolation. Uh, and not just the isolation, but they really valued the interpersonal, uh, relationships that they had with fellow students in the classroom environment too.
It wasn't just being on campus and hanging out with friends, but they really, I mean, there were social interaction taking place within the context of the classroom itself that they really missed, that they didn't have when they were sitting. At home, you know, learning remotely or someplace, you know, by themselves for the most part.
Uh, so that was a big, you know, that was something that I think was pretty profound to [00:16:00] them. Um, that sense of isolation, uh, and also just the enormous distractions. They, at that point, You know, there was no teacher to say, Hey, you know, pay attention or, or what are you doing over there, Gus? You know, that kind of thing.
It was, uh, and, and they were oftentimes, they were in a home environment. They were in their, they might have been in their bedroom or some room in the, in the house, and they had to compete with all the other surrounding activity that was taking place within that household. So they were, they were much more distracted, I think we came up with, Let me see if I can find the number in terms of that distraction level here.
Um, Yeah, I mean, we were probably talking about, you know, close to 90% of those people in the survey said that there was some level either, uh, some or a great deal of distraction taking place as they were trying to learn remotely. Uh, which was a, that was huge. So, but simultaneously, and they also said they learn less, You know, I, I think something like [00:17:00] 67% said that they, they absolutely learned, uh, less because of, of remote learning.
During the pandemic. Some of it was technological, maybe they didn't have a good connection with the internet. You know, lots, There were just a lot more impediments to learning that were taking place in the context of, of the remote learning that we went through during the pandemic. Um, which again, I thought was really interesting too.
Um, but simultaneously they also realized that there were some advantages over the course of time, and I kind of broke it out into three eras within the pandemic in. Their experiences or our experiences as instructors. Got better as we, we learned some of the workarounds, our technology improved. The federal government put $35 billion into improving, you know, technology support and infrastructure so that we could communicate with each other during the pandemic.
Um, a lot of students felt like, you know what, the, one of the advantages of remote learning is that I can work [00:18:00] a job and if I have asynchronous class that I can take, I can, I can study whenever I can. It gives me that flexibility. Um, I don't have to drive to campus and find a place to park and spend the time to get there and back every day.
Um, I can, uh, provide daycare for my son or my daughter, you know, those kinds of things. Or I can just be safer. In the midst of a pandemic, where early on we had no vaccine for an incurable virus. So those were some key factors and I think a lot of those factors will remain in place, certainly when it comes to having the flexibility of learning when you want to, and maybe in your own life.
[00:18:37] Gus Herwitz: Tha- that's one of the lessons of the pandemic, one of the challenges of it, and one of the things that this research hopefully will help us understand the nature of the educational endeavor is changing has changed and should change, but it's not entirely clear what that's going to be. If we go back to the old model, it's very much a blended bundle of students who are all [00:19:00] treated as a ho uh, homogenous group.
They're, they're heterologous. They have their own preferences, their own lives, their own needs. Um, and, uh, it's really hard to use this technology to better cater to and suit, uh, this wider range of needs. And something is probably lost when we start doing that. And don't throw everyone into a melting pot, but also a whole lot is gained.
So it's a, uh, Uh, Brave New World or an undiscovered country, um, uh, depending on which of those famous phrases you find, uh, less intimidating. Um, we've been speaking, uh, with Barney McCoy from the, uh, College of Journalism and Mass Communications about his work into, uh, distracted, uh, digital distractions.
We will be back in a couple of moments to continue speaking with him about, uh, the role of the journalist in the research endeavor and the role of research in journalism. Thank you for.[00:20:00]
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[00:20:40] Gus Herwitz: Before we continue our discussion, I'd like to take a moment to remind all of our listeners that we want to hear from you. You can submit your topic ideas on our website or tweet us. At UNL underscore NGTC, or directly at me, your host at Gus Herwitz. We are back now talking with, uh, Barney, McCoy, uh, Barney.
Uh, before [00:21:00] we talk about, uh, uh, research more generally, uh, I'm curious, uh, would you like to razzle and dazzle us with any, uh, uh, specific numbers or results from your, uh, uh, recent research?
[00:21:13] Barney McCoy: We, Yeah. And we talked about what an epic shift there was, uh, students learning, going from a classroom environment to a remote environment.
And these are like US Department of Education numbers. Some of them are, are numbers that we found, but the US Department of Education said before the pandemic hit. Only about, about a third of the students have ever taken any online course. Um, and two thirds were traditional college lectures in the classroom kind of thing.
So, um, before the pandemic, 3% said they had taken some form of remote online class, you know, 90 to a hundred percent of the time after the pandemic 64. Of college students, 91 to 100% of the time were taking remote class. So at such a huge [00:22:00] shift there, 68% said they learn less because of the shift. Uh, four out of five found that online remote learning during the pandemic was either a lot more, 50% or a little more distracting than classroom learning, and yet 52.5% of wanted wanted to have online remote learning options available to them.
When. Was over with. So, top three advantages, Scheduling, uh, working around jobs, saving time and money, and less anxiety about covid. The biggest, uh, challenges were distractions, social isolation, and harder to communicate with their fellow students. 56% of college instructors. So they had never had experience teaching online, and they only had a few weeks to learn how to do it.
So you had chaos raining for a while there until we kind of all began to sort it out,
[00:22:52] Gus Herwitz: and we're still sorting it out. And that last point, I've, I've just been wondering in the back of my mind, how frequently was the greatest distraction that [00:23:00] the, the professor on the screen had no idea what they were doing.
They were messing with the, uh, the technology or just not using it? Well, Didn't know how to set up, uh, the camera or microphone. I mean, we can't all be broadcast journalism, uh, professionals, Barney . Um, so how, how often was it, uh, uh, that sort of challenge and, uh, can we as faculty, I know your research wasn't, uh, uh, really focused on this, but what can we as faculty do to better engage the new medium and can we be, uh, better than we were before, uh, with it?
[00:23:36] Barney McCoy: Yeah, no, I think you've, you've raised some really good questions here, Gus. And I think the point of this all was, is that, you know, what we, what most of us learned in the pandemic is that we didn't have a choice at that time. We had to learn how to go online with our classes and do the best we could do.
And as that began to unfold over time, we learned some new tricks along the way. We became more comfortable with teaching remotely and preparing content for it. Uh, we [00:24:00] call it getting into reps. You know, the more you do it, uh, then you begin to figure out shortcuts. You begin to figure out more efficient ways of doing it, and after a while you even find some things that you would say, You know what, This is actually maybe a more effective way for me to teach this class.
When we go back after the pandemic is over with. Uh, we can, we maybe we'll schedule our class today. It'll be an all zoom class, but we can do breakout rooms and we can each talk about, uh, different prompts or question prompts or research topics that our professor puts to us, and then we can come back and we can share that with people and we can mix it up that way.
So, no, I think there certainly were some advantages. But I think the one thing that we were all forced to do, no matter how uncomfortable many of us felt at the time, I think we, we, we picked up the confidence that came with knowing that eventually we were going to be able to figure out some things that we knew nothing about before, and maybe even get comfortable with them by doing them over and over again and maybe finding some things in there that we actually.[00:25:00] Admitted worked pretty good, maybe even better than what we had before in the classroom.
[00:25:02] Gus Herwitz: So thi- this actually brings us very well to the, the next thing I want to explore with you a little bit, uh, which I'll just frame by saying I am always jealous of and intimidate, intimidated by, uh, those who have journalism backgrounds, especially in education.
Because what are journalists? Journalists are two things. Professional communicators and researchers with an eye to relevant topics and an ability to communicate them in a compelling way. And what should. Educators be, what should academics be? Well, we should be exactly that, but frequently we're not.
We're, we're not trained in communications technology. We aren't, uh, we don't have real training, especially in the Zoom era on sitting in front of a camera, talking to a microphone, that sort of stuff. And in our research, um, we frequently don't have an eye for what are the [00:26:00] compelling, interesting stories and how do we tell a.
Now, on the flip side, there might be an argument that, uh, academic researchers do the research better. Um, they approach it for, let's say, a more academic rigor, rigorous perspective, and a less narrative driven, uh, what's going to get viewers attention, eyeballs, uh, uh, uh, sort of perspective. So, uh, I'm just going to ask you, uh, uh, your, your thoughts on those observ.
[00:26:27] Barney McCoy: Sure. Uh, no, I think your observations are accurate ones. Um, I think journalists in the truest sense, And the journalists who do it best are good storytellers. They know how to tell a story and they know how to relate important points in that story. And when I, when I talk about important points, I'm really talking about research.
Oftentimes it's like, how can I convey what we're finding and the research that we've done to my audience in ways that they will say, Wow, that could be me. Uh, [00:27:00] How can I, how can I relate my storytelling to my audience so that they can, they can understand clearly what I'm talking about and how I can explain to them why it's important for them to be able to want to know about this information and use it to improve their lives, or maybe just use it to be entertained with, but whatever the case is, I think oftentimes the things that researchers, classical researchers sometimes really struggle.
With trying to be able to talk in layman's terms, uh, to a, a broad general audience, which journalists have to do all the time. Uh, journalists oftentimes struggle, uh, coming to terms with the finite research points and researchers delve into and learning how to speak and understand their language, and they have to do that so they can translate it for a broader audience as well too.
But, um, you know, there are some incredible researchers. Isic Asamov is one of the, you know, I mean who, I mean people who can talk endlessly about all of [00:28:00] these incredible, you know, physics, science, uh, mathematics, you know, medicine. And they can make it relatable to an audience in a way that is captivating.
And I think that those people, uh, are genius at what they. But I think that's really what we're talking about is how can I, how can I interpret this for, for my audience? Who is my audience to begin with, and how can I interpret the, uh, this and tell them stories that they'll understand the relevance of.
[00:28:27] Gus Herwitz: Would you have any advice for researchers, academics, um, researchers generally when they're talking to journalists, how to communicate healthily, um, in a way that will help the journalist, uh, share ideas accurately and communicate that narrative.
[00:28:47] Barney McCoy: I think the first thing you want to do when you're talking with journalists is to ask them, you know, what, what is your story here?
What, what, what do you think this story's going to be about? And at least it, it creates a, a [00:29:00] groundwork, a framework that you can proceed with. Sometimes you have to say, You know, that's not really what this story's about, but I can tell you what I think the story's about and why I think it's really gonna be relevant to your audience.
And then, Hopefully that gets things off on by track. Uh, so I think those conversations have to take place first. Um, and I, I think it's important then when you have that conversation, you know, you get all kinds of different, um, experiential levels when you talk with journalists too. And so oftentimes, They have to kind of be the teacher and you have to guide them along.
And oftentimes a journalist, if they're a good journalist will say, You know what, can you break that down a little bit more for me? Cuz I just don't understand it. And if, if I can't understand it, I'm not gonna do a good job at all explaining it to my audience. So I think, you know, those are the challenges you have in communicating back and forth.
Between journalists in general and researchers in general too. I think you get everything. You know, you get some [00:30:00] researchers who are outstanding at being able to convey to a, a, a very general audience, uh, what their, their research, uh, is about, what their motives are for doing the research, what their findings are, why they think it's applicable to society, you know, those kinds of things.
And then there are other researchers that really sometimes struggle. Because they're so focused on what they're doing, they sometimes have a hard time being able to define why it's important for a
[00:30:25] Gus Herwitz: general audience. And flipping that around, coming from the journalist's perspective, um, what guidance would you give a journalist when they're talking to a researcher and the, the researcher?
Is having those challenges, isn't understanding the narrative or thinking in a narrative term, or, uh, they're so deep into the details and the weeds that they, they don't, they might not even understand the importance of their own research. Uh, is there anything that a, a journalist can or should, or shouldn't do?
[00:30:56] Barney McCoy: You know, the, probably the same advice I would give to researchers too, [00:31:00] in, in dealing with journalists, guests, and that is, you know, when, whenever I do an interview. I never bat a thousand. No journalist is ever gonna be able to get exactly, you know, every time out of an interview. They, they can only hope that it will be a good interview and sometimes it is much better than they thought.
And sometimes it's like, you know, pulling teeth, it can be very difficult. And, and oftentimes, uh, I will, I remember one time I did an interview with a, a World War not to World War historian, and I just, I asked all these questions and afterwards I looked at the interview and I go, I just, I didn't succeed in that interview.
I didn't write, ask the right questions. I wasn't, I wasn't listening. Well, that's what I tell a lot of journalists. I said, Take the time to really listen to what that person is saying and think about it and focus on that and make it a conversation. As best as you can. Sometimes the conversation can't be held, but oftentimes it can be held and [00:32:00] that's when you can really get some very insightful things in interviews as a journalist that otherwise would never have appeared.
So, but it's a process and, and I, I always tell people, it's like, no one's gonna bat aou, and I can guarantee you, no matter how good you are, You're just gonna have times where you just felt like, man, I prepared for that interview and it just wasn't a good interview. And I, and maybe it was me, maybe it was the person I was doing the interview with, maybe it was both of us.
But you know, you have to be able to adapt as best as you can. And certainly preparing for the interview with getting as much background as you can on the topic and on the researcher, uh, that person, you know, what's their background. All those things could come in handy in trying to break down those barriers and making people feel more comfortable when you're doing an interview with them.
[00:32:47] Gus Herwitz: And how, as a consumer of journalism, Should readers, listeners, viewers try to evaluate, um, whether the information, uh, that they're being presented [00:33:00] with is high quality, is accurate, is thoughtful, I'll, I'll answer partly my own question with a thing that I'm constantly screaming at. Uh, I, I won't say, uh, which New York based large newspaper, I, I scream this at frequently, but what's the denominator?
I, I always want to. The denominator. Um, and it's amazing how frequently I'll, I'll be reading a story. All this terrible stuff is happening. What's the denominator? You've come up with four cases. Is this out of eight cases or 80 million cases that matters? So are, are there things that you would, uh, point to, uh, uh, us consumers of information that we should be on the lookout for?
[00:33:40] Barney McCoy: Oh sure. I, And I think you raised a couple of good points there and you know, since most of my background is in broadcast journalism, if my wife were here, she would tell you how often she gets tired of me screaming at the television set when I'm watching a newscast and, you know, and asking the same questions you've just raised here.
But, um, you know, there's an old saying in journalism if your [00:34:00] mother says she loves. Check it out. You know, you have to be skeptical. You have to want to be, uh, an independent when it comes to determining what information you value, what you're willing to believe, and, and being skeptical about it and say, Okay, you say these things.
Who are your sources? Where are you getting this information from? Uh, can I independently confirm what you're telling me? Uh, and from multiple sources, not just yourself, but most importantly. Who are your sources? Tell me who they are. And, you know, I, I think that has to be an important place. Uh, I also think that being able to sample a diverse array of information sources can help you be, uh, much more critical about the information that you're looking at and be a better diviner, if you will, separating fact from fiction.
Uh, and just accuracy, you know, And, and one thing I, I'm gonna be teaching a class next semester and it's all about news [00:35:00] literacy. And we will be delving into actually analyzing not just independent, uh, individual stories that are being produced by newspaper outlets and online news organizations and broadcasters and so forth, but we also wanna be able to break it down.
How can we measure the bias levels? Where is the bias taking place? What is the level of accuracy? Is their opinion being inserted into this, uh, so-called news article? Those kinds of things. And actually, you know, you can basically come up with some type of a waiting system to determine what the bias level is.
Is it, does it tend to go left? Does it tend to go right? Is it pretty much straight down the middle? You know, where is a level of accuracy? You know, how is their attribution, uh, are they using loaded words in the stories that they're broadcasting or writing? Showing us, Well, those kinds of things. So, um, you know, those are all factors that kind of go into the message, and I think the more.
Discriminating we are and understanding what those factors are. Then the easier [00:36:00] it might be for us to figure out whether what we're getting is a bunch of baloney or if it's actually the kind of material that we would say, You know what? I could come back here and I would tend to trust what they're telling me most of the time.
I say most of the time because everyone can still make,
[00:36:15] Gus Herwitz: make, make mistakes. Yeah. One, one of the, um, ideas that has been burned into my, uh, identity as a researcher by one of my mentors is, uh, trust a literature, not a paper, which is, uh, I think echoing some of, uh, what you say there. There can be idiosyncratic papers.
There can just be one off mistakes that have, uh, uh, no intent to deceive just bad data for some reason. And it gets published in a reputable journal. Wait until there are 10 of papers on that topic by, uh, several different authors. And, and at that point there's some real robustness there. Um, um, so you've had.
Wonderful. I I shouldn't frame it this way. I shouldn't be mean to the IRB [00:37:00] because IRBs do great and important work, uh, in, in ensuring the quality, uh, and, uh, appropriateness of our research and methodologies. Uh, but they're never fun to work. Uh, with IRBs because they're holding us accountable and making us, uh, uh, do the hard work.
Um, but you've had the opportunity to work, uh, on research, uh, uh, engaged through an irb, and you've done journalistic investigative, uh, uh, research. Uh, curious your reflections on the, the differences in research methodologies and approaches that, uh, academic style researchers and journalists bring, uh, to investigating a, uh, topic.
[00:37:40] Barney McCoy: Incredibly, uh, in my experience, um, Much more stressful as an investigative reporter. Um, often because, uh, lives were in the balance. If we were doing an investigative report, uh, involving corruption that might lead to a criminal [00:38:00] investigation and somebody being convicted and put in in prison, which has happened before.
Um, so I say, you know, and. Oftentimes too. It's just like, you know, when I was an investigative reporter in Columbus, Ohio, uh, and we had a very good investigative unit, uh, our vetting process, you talk about double blind, you know, peer review, I mean nothing compared to vetting it with attorneys. Over and over again.
Um, or even, you know, having someone try and sue you and defend your investigation in a courtroom if you have to do that, or being deposed in a court case where, um, or you know, I'll give you an example. One time I did an investigation on, uh, the Ford Wind. And we had gotten complaints from people that the transmissions in those early models of the Ford Wind Stars tended to break down prematurely just about the time the warranty was running out.
And so we went to independent, uh, [00:39:00] Uh, transmission specialists, , and they go, Oh yeah, we're putting our kids through college on fixing these forward wind starts cuz they break down all the time because they have an aluminum, uh, forward clutch piston in those things that when it comes into contact with the harder metal around it, it just shreds those things and they break down and that can become a safety.
So we actually went to, uh, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. We did a content analysis and we found that, uh, even though, uh, the Ford Windstar comprised about 11% of all the minivans that year, it amounted to something like 45% of the transmission complaints with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
So, you know, and then we even got, then we went to Washington and even got a, a, a release from a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration saying that yes, they are prone to premature breakdown. And so people who were taking Ford to small, small claims courts to fix their transmissions, you know, Ford [00:40:00] was not happy with us.
Ford pulled over a million dollars in advertising with our television station. So my general manager had a couple of choices to make. Do we fire bar McCoy because he's the messenger or do we eat a million dollars in lost revenue? They ate a million dollars in lost revenue. That wasn't an easy thing for a sales manager and a general manager to do.
But, so a lot more, you know, not most people when they're doing research, you know, at a university level, don't have a million dollars in their reputations on the line. Mm-hmm. , uh, when I was doing investigations into, uh, the, uh, uh, uh, the folks who were doing all the. airline security after the nine 11 attack.
You know, we were checking their security systems and finding that there were false in those, and they were out for my job, you know, so , uh, so a lot more stressful. But they both mean that you have to [00:41:00] be precise. They both mean that you have to double check your, your data and your material and, and your findings because you're putting it out there for people to consume.
And, uh, and so, you know, that's why I'm glad that we have an irb because oftentimes, Gosh, you wanna surround yourself with people that will go, You know what, is that really right? I go, No, I, I, thanks for catching my mistake. Uh, I can fix it before it really makes me, or the station I work for, you know, embarrassed.
So that's what the IRB folks, that's, that's the role that I think they play. Um, so I don't know. I, I, I, I would just say that they're, they're both incredibly important and you have to do your due diligence. And it takes a lot of time. Both are stressful, I would say, for researchers that are on a tenure track.
I understand Publisher Parish, get out there and do that research. That can be incredibly stressful too. But investigative reporting is, is honestly, I
[00:41:52] Gus Herwitz: think, uh, coming from the lawyer perspective, better the IRB than the lawyers. And, uh, I'll, uh, uh, start to bring us [00:42:00] to a close with a note, a reference that not many, uh, listeners probably will get.
But I remember a, uh, a scene from W K R P in Cincinnati that was very similar to the one that you just, uh, described when the advertiser storms into the general managers, uh, office and is demanding, uh, that they pull a story or an advertisement or something like that. And if they don't, they're gonna pull their funding.
And the, the general manager. fine. Pull your, pull your funding . Um, and that, that's, uh, if you're going to be in any sort of research business, uh, it can be hard. But that's, uh, the, the commitment that you need to, uh, be willing to make. Well, uh, we, you, uh, discussed that you don't know when. Any given interview is going to be a success or a failure.
Um, I certainly understand that, and I, uh, uh, want to thank you because I think from my perspective at least, this has been a wonderful success. Uh, thank you for, uh, taking your time to chat with us. [00:43:00]
[00:43:01] Barney McCoy: Thank you guests for having me on, and I appreciate, uh, all of your time. Some great questions, By the way, today, I will say one final parting note when it comes to, uh, pressure that advertisers can put on on news outlets today, is that news.
Many news outlets have a much. Thinner profit line these days. So that pressure being brought to bear advertisers on news outlets, uh, is much, much greater today than it was even 10 years ago.
[00:43:27] Gus Herwitz: Yep. And that, that's a whole other kettle of fish. But the, again, Digital distractions, digital economy, digital information.
It's just reshaped, uh, everything about how we produce, distribute, and consume information. Um, well thank you again, and thank you to our listeners. I've been your host, Gus Herwitz. Thank you for joining us on this episode of Tech Refactored. If you want to learn more about what we're doing here at the Nebraska Governance and Technology Center, or submit an idea for a future episode,
You can go to our [00:44:00] website at ngtc.unl.edu or you can follow us on Twitter at UNL_NGTC. If you enjoyed the show, please don't forget to leave us a rating and review wherever you listen to your podcast. Our show is produced by Elsbeth Magilton and Lysandra Marquez and Colin McCarthy created and recorded our theme music.
This podcast is part of the Menard Governance and Technology Programming Series. Until next time, keep on reporting.