I got a good education from my now defunct alma mater, Mills College. I got a degree in English and minored in journalism and economics. I remember being taught that applied practice of journalism was worth more than being in classes all the time for it, and our student-run newspaper was truly student-run — all the editorial decisions were made by the student journalist editorial staff with no interference from our faculty advisor. Critiques would come after we published issues.

So it should be of no surprise to many that I pushed back on my professors a lot when I did my Masters program at USC. I remember when someone in my cohort did a profile on a gay athlete in Los Angeles, seemingly tokenizing him as The Gay Athlete on his team. I, and another member of my cohort, pushed back on that tokenization and framing in class, but I also remember people bitching about the pushback in the media center after class.

We were required to take a class that did talk about diversity in newsrooms where our professor and guest speakers did highlight how racist the industry has been. I thought it was one of the most important classes we had and I thought what they had to say was crucial to understanding how this industry should change. Unfortunately, I do remember members of my cohort also bitching about this in the lobby after the fact, one of them characterizing it as “we know racism is real we don’t need to be told about it.” Both of these outside class bitching sessions happened in 2015.

I think about these moments and my j-school experience these days. I usually say that I didn’t really learn anything other than data journalism and working on a sports beat — and learning that I hated working a sports beat — while I was a student at USC. Everything I learned about what it means to be a journalist was from being a student at Mills. My own bitching came in the form of how there was little to no critical thinking that was being applied when it came to how stories were presented, framed, and reported on.

There were outliers, of course. Just as there are always outliers to any generalizations. But it always seemed telling to me that what I saw in the USC Annenberg Media Center was paying attention to the trends in journalism and reporting in that way. I knew that my generation was seeing media shift to become more digital but somewhere lost in that, journalism principles were abandoned. Media literacy went away.

I taught journalism workshops to youth after graduating. I used to take the local, dying newspaper as an example for the youth to learn editing. I’d ask, “how would you frame this? What is something you wish you found out more about that wasn’t in this article? What would you do differently?” These questions seem so simple enough, and I hope that it’s stuck with the youth I taught after all these years. The local paper I used as an example has been thoroughly decimated in the last 20 years, usually only having two full time reporters on staff.

In my Journalism 1 class at Mills, my professor and mentor told the class to always write stories in a way that a five year old and a 50 year old can understand it. I always understood that to mean “write so everyone can understand it equally” but about 15 years later, that means “dumbing it all the way down so you treat a 50 year old like a 5 year old.”

With the way Bari Weiss has taken over CBS News, I cannot entirely say I didn’t see something like that happening. We’ve seen the decline in media literacy and critical thinking as part of what seems like the death of society over the last decade that we’re getting to the point where the worst of the worst is at the top. Everything was leading in that direction when you have people with ulterior motives, and some with a lack of journalism knowledge, failing upwards. I can’t say I’m surprised it’s white women — they usually do tend to girlboss their way up like this.

I know I’m a nerd. I was the kid who asked their parents for a subscription to the newspaper in middle school because they wanted to be informed. I read the text Georgia SB 202 in the press box at Truist Park during All-Star Week. I’m currently reading labor law and labor economics textbooks so I have a good grasp on MLB labor negotiations. I’m a chronic overachiever and this makes me an outlier in a lot of ways.

It was stressed to us at Mills that getting it right was more important than getting it first. It was also stressed to us that journalism wasn’t just reporting what happened, but holding people in power accountable. But you need to have a strong moral compass to be able to suss out who in power needs to be held accountable, and also a backbone. It pains me sometimes when I see people tagging me on bluesky essentially as “the only reporter who would actually ask MLB hard questions.” I appreciate being known for that, don’t get me wrong; it also tells me that my education from Mills is valuable. I just wish I weren’t the only one who did this regularly in baseball, but everything was leading in this direction.