VoE - Nicole Kraft === [00:00:00] Nicole Kraft: There's misinformation, there's disinformation, there's malformation, but news itself is not fake. News is news. News, by definition, I mean, we're not super creative in journalism, news is new. It is information that the public needs to have because they didn't know it before. Jen Farmer: From the heart of the Ohio State University on the Oval, this is Voices of Excellence from the College of Arts and Sciences, with your host David Staley. Voices focuses on the innovative work of Arts and Sciences faculty and staff. With departments as wide ranging as art, astronomy, chemistry and biochemistry, physics, emergent materials and mathematics, and languages, among many others, the college always has something exciting happening. Join us to find out what's new, now. David Staley: Joining me today is Nicole Kraft, Professor of Journalism Practice in the School of Communications at the Ohio State University College of the Arts and Sciences. She's the Director of the Sports and Society Initiative at Ohio State, she's been named as the [00:01:00] Journalism and Communication Teacher of the Year by the Scripps Howard Fund, and in 2022, she received the Ohio State Alumni Award for Distinguished Teaching. She has been named the Linda S. Puntney Inspirational Teacher by the Journalism Education Association. Congratulations, and welcome to Voices, Dr. Kraft. Nicole Kraft: I'm very happy to be here. David Staley: Well, you're delivering a Science Sunday talk, the title of which is "Who do you trust? Why journalism still matters". So, why does journalism still matter? Nicole Kraft: Well, it matters because without it, I'm not sure that democracy survives. It was created, entrenched, I should say, within the Constitution because of the importance that a free press has in maintaining democracy and allowing that to flourish, and I think that the road that we're going down in terms of the lack of belief in what is true is really gonna compromise our ability to function as a democracy. And so, journalism has long been the watchdog of the government, it's long been the way that information can be synthesized so that the [00:02:00] public can understand it, and I think that that role has never been more important than it is today. David Staley: You had said we're debating, or maybe there's uncertainty about what is true. What explains that, that's surely not just the fault of journalism? Nicole Kraft: Well, I, it's certainly not the fault of journalism. I think the lack of trust in journalism and that's, you know, one of the defining factors of the modern age of technology is that it's very difficult to identify what exactly journalism is. So, you read things and see things that appear to be in a platform where previously journalism was really the, the primary driver and now I could create a newspaper in five minutes that would make you believe a variety of things. So, the inability for us to distinguish between what is authentically driven by a desire to convey real information and allow people to make decisions based on that real information and the desire to influence how people think and feel and believe, it's really a difficult line to identify at this point. David Staley: Is that your definition of journalism? Nicole Kraft: My definition of journalism is the [00:03:00] pursuit of fair and accurate information in order for people to know what is important for them to conduct their lives within the structure of our society. And right now, that fairness and accuracy, you know, I, I we often talk about objectivity as it relates to journalism; that's not real, there's really no such thing as being objective, but you can look at a circumstance even within your own bias, and look at it fairly and accurately and present it to people in a way that they are allowed to make their own decisions. That doesn't mean that all things are treated equally, so there, there are such things that there is no other side too, and recognizing that journalism has a place for advocacy. There's a movement now called solutions journalism, where we help people come to a real understanding of how progress can be made and how change can be made, and we assist in that. These are all important ways that journalism can influence society in a meaningful way without dictating its path. David Staley: Say a little more about solutions journalism. What would that look like? What would I be [00:04:00] reading? Nicole Kraft: Well, one of our former students works for the newspaper in Richland, and she worked on issues related to women and pregnancy, death in pregnancy, and looking at how as a publication, they could influence health behaviors, they could influence the healthcare system in a way that would protect women in that very vulnerable space. So, it wasn't a question of just looking at, hey, this data exists, it was looking at how we can improve circumstances so that people are safer and that people are healthier, and that women are healthier specifically, and to advocate for and move forward with actions that would make those things become reality. David Staley: Well, I was gonna use that word, advocacy, so journalists as advocates? Nicole Kraft: It exists, certainly, I mean, there's, there's a variety of roles for journalists to play, but fundamentally our goal is to make people understand what is real in a way that is consumable and understandable, and that's where our biggest challenge is coming in right now, is that what is real is being debated, and you know, scientists can certainly tell [00:05:00] you how that's going for them. David Staley: So, in a sense, journalism has been fragmented, as you said, anyone can create a site or a webpage that looks like a newspaper, but in fact isn't. Nicole Kraft: But even pontificating on social media makes people an expert. You know, we have experts all over the place that have no expertise in anything, but they put themselves out as experts. I mean, if, you know, one more person sends me something that was on TikTok or Instagram of some, you know, health related concern and how this is the answer because someone put it out there on a platform that is in relatively fixed to medium that's now being identified as journalistic, even though it has no basis in fact or reality or truth. David Staley: Hmm. So there can't be journalism without journalists, yes? Nicole Kraft: I mean, I think that the ethics that journalists bring to the table are significant, so we adhere to truth. The Society for Professional Journalists has a code of ethics that we follow as reporters: we act responsibly, we do no harm, we are intended to seek out truth and report [00:06:00] it. Not everyone who disseminates information has that same adherence to seeking out truth and reporting it. David Staley: Do no harm, like the Hippocratic Oath. Nicole Kraft: Yes, exactly. David Staley: What would it mean, what does that look like for a journalist to do harm? Under what circumstances? Nicole Kraft: Conveying false information. I mean, the information that we're seeing coming out now about vaccines, you know, presenting that unilaterally without the responsible science that goes behind it, that would be doing harm, and that's what we're seeing is people, I put in quotes, you know, "reporting information" that is not benefiting the public, that in fact could be harmful to the public without any real regard for that harm that could be done. But there's a variety of ways that we can harm people. We can invade their privacy, we can you know, be insensitive when people go through... we're, we're often with people at the worst moments of their lives, and if we don't treat them with the respect and care that they deserve, then that is doing harm. David Staley: In your view, what are the biggest challenges to rebuilding trust between journalists and the wider public today? Nicole Kraft: The lack of confidence [00:07:00] that journalists have really, their primary purpose, that that means anything to the public. You know, there was a, a report recently out of Pew that showed that only 28% of the public actually has trust that journalists are doing the job that they're intended to do without bias and prejudice and, you know, tilted left or right, and when we're at that low a percentage of people who believe what journalists are intended to do, then not a great deal of them believe that we're important or believe that the message that we're carrying forth is one that needs to be incorporated into their lives. And so, until we can reestablish a level of trust with the public and make them engage with us in a way that, that says that we're all working toward the greater good, which is the sustainment of democracy and that, you know, this is evolution of society in a meaningful way, that's gonna be a really difficult lift. David Staley: Hmm. What are steps that journalists can take? Nicole Kraft: Transparency is a big part of it. We're, we're focusing a lot right now on showing people how we report stories, where the information comes from. There's a [00:08:00] distrust of, you know, confidential sources or, or anonymous sources, and when you use such things, it's easy for people to dismiss that, even though we know who those sources are when we're using them, it doesn't mean that the public believes that. So, being as transparent as possible where it is reasonable to be such is a big part of what we're doing. Continuing to carry forth, you know, truth, to carry forth a message of truth, to support that with as much evidence as we possibly can, and recognize the limitations that are in front of us and not ignore them. So, it's easy to say, well, we're doing, you know, the job that we're supposed to do, and if people don't believe us, that's their problem, or we don't present news in a way that they can consume, that's their problem. No, that's our problem, and we need to really be mindful of the public that's in front of us, what their expectations are. They're fairly hedonistic in their pursuit of information. They want things that are entertaining to them, things that appeal to their own interests, sources that are aligned with their own direction of, you know, be it politically, societally, scientifically, and [00:09:00] recognizing that we need to be aware of what that looks like and present information that can connect with the receptors that they have open, because those receptors are fairly narrow. David Staley: Hmm. The charge today is fake news. Fake news is everywhere. Nicole Kraft: Well, fake news is not, that's not actually a real term. David Staley: Well, so I... Nicole Kraft: 'Cause there's no such thing as fake news. David Staley: This is what I wanted to know. How does a journalist respond to that, to this whole notion of fake news or, or this false notion of fake news? Nicole Kraft: There's misinformation, there's disinformation, there's malformation, but news itself is not fake. News is news. News, by definition, I mean, we're not super creative in journalism, news is new. It is information that the public needs to have because they didn't know it before. So, that by definition is what news would be. Whether we do that with an agenda, misinformation is, you know, making mistakes or presenting information that may not be confirmed or that we have varying interpretations of. Disinformation is actual falsehood that is being disseminated. So, when we say things, you know, most [00:10:00] recently about vaccines, you know, that, that the COVID vaccine is killing children. I, you know, that has a level of disinformation to it because evidence, scientific evidence does not show that. Whatever reporting goes out about that, if it is being reported in any way, that is a disinformation campaign. It's not dissimilar to propaganda. So, and then we get into malformation, which is, I'm really intending to do harm to people by disseminating information. That would be, Hillary Clinton is running, you know, that, that rumor of her running a sex trafficking ring in a pizza shop in New York. That was actual malformation that resulted in that pizza shop being shot up. Thank God, no one was injured in that, but easily could have been. And there's a variety of instances that we're seeing now where that is leading to people being harmed, because people are really not sure what they can believe, and so they're believing a lot of things no matter what the source is. David Staley: What about AI or bot generated stories? Where do you, where do you place this in your schema? Nicole Kraft: I'm more concerned at this point with AI generated images and [00:11:00] videos. It's very difficult, the level of sophistication is creating content that is very difficult to identify between real and fake, and people are willing to read a story and assume that that's real, imagine it, it was always seeing as believing, so now people are seeing things and they're not looking at it with a discerning eye or with a criticism to say, is this real? Can I confirm this in another way? You know, how many people forwarded on back in the day when it was just photoshopped, the picture of a shark swimming on a highway, you know, that was flooded and it's like, oh my God, look what's happening on Hurricane Katrina, and then look what's happening on Hurricane Sandy. Well, that was never happening anywhere at any time, but they believed it and now, you know ,you're gonna have celebrities saying things that they didn't say. We already have revenge porn and we have a variety of things that are being perpetrated on people, but pretty soon you're gonna get, and you're getting it now, actually, political figures, saying things that they're not really saying either. And there is such a willingness to believe what's presented to you regardless of what the source is, that that is where we're going to get in some [00:12:00] pretty dangerous territory. David Staley: So, you teach and work with a lot of students, obviously. What is drawing students today into journalism? Nicole Kraft: It varies. We have a lot of students that wanna go into sports journalism, so I would say of the students that I teach, probably 70% of them want to be in sports in some way. But the other, we have plenty, i'm, I'm working with a student right now and he is a public records requesting machine. He has requested a variety of records from the president's office, he's requested from the legislature. He wants truth, he wants to know where the evidence is for a variety of questions that he has, and we do, I, I think the pendulum swings back and forth in, in terms of why people view journalism as important, and right now with the, you know, the concerns that exist around the world, I mean, we could look at any number of crises that are taking place, students do want to know. They want to know information that is truthful and that is real, and the students that we're seeing are recognizing that they have a responsibility to not only get that information, but disseminate it. David Staley: The [00:13:00] students that are interested in sports journalism, do they have the same kinds of ethical concerns or are there other, other drives, I suppose, for them? Nicole Kraft: Well, there's, I mean most of them are driven by a passion for sports, but the, the ones that come into it and really embrace the journalistic aspect of it, those people are looking at telling stories around all of the circumstances about sports. So, you know, money, it's always been a tenant for journalists to follow the money? Well, there's never been more money in sports and, and our need to really understand what the house case did to our athletic budget, which allowed us to pay student athletes directly, what NIL is doing, what inequity looks like, women's sports, men's sports you know, there's so many issues related to sports that, I have people who come to me and say, oh, I wanna report on games, I'm like, great, that doesn't exist anymore. This is what we do now. You know, we synthesize, we interpret, we analyze, and that's really the angle that we're directing people in their sports coverage. David Staley: These students think they're gonna be working for newspapers or ESPN, where do they imagine themselves? Nicole Kraft: We have, they're all over the [00:14:00] board to be honest. So, they do wanna work for ESPN. I had one actually that got an ESPN offer the other day, I think he might turn it down though. He wants to be a broadcaster. They get placed at newspapers, there's a lot of more fan driven sites, so something like 11 Warriors, Buckeye Sports Bulletin, we place students there pretty consistently. They're a very supportive network for our students, and teams are another space that they get placed, so there's a lot of teams that hire journalists, a lot of social media , you know, we have two students that are doing social media that I can think of right now in the NFL. So, there's really so many pathways for sports. There's so much. Pretty soon we're gonna start placing people and we've worked with FanDuel, we're gonna be placing people in venues like that. So, FanDuel has its own TV network, it's gonna be creating its own editorial content that, that's where students will get placed. David Staley: Are there still school newspapers in high school, in other words, have these students done kind of student journalism? You used call it mass media, I think at one stage. Is that, is that still a thing? Nicole Kraft: It does, it does exist. It's certainly less than it was before. A lot of TV stations in that high school space, so 7 [00:15:00] through 12, but they're still doing newspapers, they still have experiences, there's still local newspapers that people are participating in. You know, the people who come to Ohio State have a sport focus often because we are so great at sports, which is one of the reasons I, you know, we will get to this, why the Sports and Society Initiative was created, was we were number one in sports. Our one time divisional Dean, Janet Box-Steffensmeier, said we should be number one in all aspects of sport, and that's what we work toward. Students, I think, feel the same way. We're number one in sports, and so I can be number one in being in sports media or you know, being in sports broadcasting, and we have the opportunities for them to really work at the highest possible level. Our student media, _The Lantern_ is award-winning, it is extremely influential in understanding this campus. In fact, every reporter that I know in the city of Columbus says that one of the first things they do in the morning, if they're involved covering Ohio State at all, is read _The Lantern_ because of the material that we're able to provide. So, that hyper localism that you're seeing in college newspapers specifically, but even trickling down to high school newspapers is [00:16:00] such an important part of understanding the climate and understanding the society in which you live that I, people are coming back to it, and I think that we're gonna start to see even more investment in those environments. David Staley: Well, you mentioned the Sports and Society initiative. Tell us, tell us a little bit more about this initiative. Nicole Kraft: Well, it's the pride and joy of my time here. I work with an incredible group of people. It is through the College of Arts and Sciences. I work very closely with Dean Ryan King, who's the Social and Behavioral Sciences Dean, and as I mentioned, Janet Box-Steffensmeier's goal was we were number one in sports, we should be number one in sports research. So, that was the area that we began, but we've really branched off into three main areas. That research component is huge, and Chris Knoester and Ryan Ruddy both lead those efforts at the graduate and undergraduate level, respectively, but we also host programming around key concepts related to sport. We just did one on gambling, we did an all day session, including our athletic department looking at problem gambling and, and exactly how we're gonna confront that. We hosted Fox Sports here to launch the World Cup, and we had the coach of the men's national team here. We did a, a [00:17:00] panel with Ross Bjork recently and, and some others, Beanie Wells, about the Michigan game and exactly the relevance of the Michigan game as it relates to the changing face of college football. So, those are some of the areas that we approach. We really kind of are on the pulse of what's happening in sports in any given moment, and that's the program we develop and one of our biggest areas of focus is making students career ready. So, we want all of the students that want careers in sports here to know that there is a pathway to utilize our resources, our contacts, all of the excellence that we bring to the athletic table that we can train students and provide them with the networking and the opportunities for them to go out in the world and achieve the dreams that they have related to careers in sports. So, that is a big focus for us. David Staley: It strikes me that gambling's gonna be a bigger and bigger issue. What are you seeing as the impact I guess, of gambling on sports, all sports? Nicole Kraft: I'm seeing a lot of vitriol going toward our student athletes, seeing a lot of danger in people who bet beyond their means and don't understand the guardrails [00:18:00] that are in place that they could utilize. I think gambling is a very scary space because, it's such a, a natural part of being human you know, to compete, and I've been with groups of, of students where we'd be watching a game and 85% of the time they would be on their phones making bets as they went. So, we've eliminated prop bets, which is the ability to bet on a, a moment or a, a single person's performance at a given time on college students, which I think is a, a important thing. It's a scary space to be in because it's just the Wild West right now, and we're not really sure how we're gonna control the impulses of people as it relates to the performance of other people. David Staley: Well, I, I guess I was gonna ask is, is it too late? Is the genie outta the bottle or is, can something actually be done, do you think? Nicole Kraft: Well, you have to ask Mike DeWine that, 'cause he said recently that he perhaps wished that he hadn't signed that into law. I do think that there was and I, I, I grew up in horse racing, so I, I've been around gambling my entire life, but it's [00:19:00] something that was regulated to such a degree, and then we just sort of opened all of the gates at the same time and told people to kind of go to town. So, I do think more regulation is coming. I think we need much more education. The rampant nature of gambling among kids in the 7 through 12 space is really scary and, it's something that we need to be on addressing at that level to make sure that they understand the ramifications of it. David Staley: So, say more about that. I, I, I know next to nothing about what's happening with children, Nicole Kraft: Well, the greatest increase of gambling that we're seeing now is kids in high school. And so, a lot of them, their parents are opening up and I, I FanDuel, I talked to them many times about this, but their parents will open up accounts for them or they'll make bets for them without real, and then you don't realize how much you're winning or losing, and so, you kind of get into this mode of, well, it doesn't really affect me. And then by the time it does, you have some pretty significant issues confronting you. So, we really need to start this education, you know, in the middle school space, certainly into the high school space of understanding what gambling is, the ramifications for it, how to do [00:20:00] it responsibly. Gambling itself is just another, you know, entertainment form that, that people are going to embark on, and I don't certainly see anything wrong with gambling in its existence, and as I mentioned, I've been in horse racing, it, you know, we paid for my college education. But it's important that we understand what the challenges are that are gonna be out there, and that we support people who may not be able to support themselves at this point. David Staley: Hmm. What sort of programming should we see, say in the, in the spring semester? Nicole Kraft: We do a lot of stuff with career focus because of our, the fact that people are graduating, most importantly, so we do a career readiness fair in February. We partner with people from the Indy 500, from athletic teams all around the state, actually, going out to Pittsburgh going in to Michigan, Indiana, from all over, and we bring them in to help our students be better prepared to go out into the working world. So, we do mock interviewing, we work with their resumes and their portfolios and we really help them understand what it means to be in the sports space. Also this semester we're gonna, we have our data analytics conference, which [00:21:00] is just a terrific program that we offer. Ryan Ruddy is the leader of that through economics department and the sports analytics club that he mentors really is the, the driving force behind it. We bring in industry leaders from across sports who look at understanding sports analytics, careers in sports analytics. We have students who present papers, students actually manage all of our panels, they're, they're the hosts for everything that we do. So that's, those are two anchor points that we have, but sprinkled in within that, we do lunch and learns with leaders in the industry, and I know that we have Buffy Filippell coming in from Teamwork, which is one of the foremost spaces where people look for jobs in sports, and so she's gonna come in and meet with our students. We are also going to be hosting events throughout the year that help students understand where they are in the career readiness sphere. So, if you're a freshman, sophomore, what are the things you need to do while you're at Ohio State? What are the opportunities you can take advantage of? Then your junior, senior, and especially our seniors, we're gonna bring in networking opportunities for them to meet people who have career opportunities for them that they can then [00:22:00] pursue. So literal, you know, one-on-one matching of people to make sure that every opportunity is available to our Buckeyes because Buckeyes in the world want to help other Buckeyes and we can bring them together. David Staley: Buckeye Nation. I'd like to talk about your first book published in 2019 that might have the single greatest title for an academic book I've ever heard: _Always Get the Name of the Dog: A Guide to Media Interviewing_. Tell us, well, tell us about the book. Nicole Kraft: It is a guide to media interviewing. So I, I wrote it because I didn't really see anything out there that interviewing is such a, a skill. People think it's a question of asking questions, but it's not, it's getting answers. And so it's really, the question doesn't mean anything, the only thing that matters is the answer. And so, being able to understand what your question will look like to someone else, what does messaging look like? How do you listen? How do you hear? A lot of people think that they're hearing, but they're not really listening. And so, all of those elements coming into just being able to put it in one relatively easy to understand package. I interviewed some amazing [00:23:00] journalists that I'm lucky enough to have in my life and just really talked about how they capture the experiences of others in order for other people to be informed and entertained. And that's, that was the goal behind the book. David Staley: Why did you call it _Always Get the Name of the Dog?_ Nicole Kraft: Because if you haven't asked the name of the dog, you haven't asked enough questions. And it, there's, the introduction to the book is, is actually features one of our students, a former _Lantern_ editor, Colin Binkley, who is now with the Associated Press, and he was doing an interview, he was out at, at a, a tragedy, and among many things that happened, a dog was, I believe the dog was killed, and he reported the whole story back to his editor and then the editor goes, but what was the name of the dog? And he's like, well, I didn't get the name of the dog. He goes, go back and get it. And so, that understanding that if you really, if you haven't thought enough about, because the goal of asking questions is to get answers for the reader. And if you're going to present information and the reader's going to have a question about it and you don't address it for them, then you have failed them. So, you need to have as much information as the reader's going to be expecting and be ready to present that to them, [00:24:00] including the name of the dog. David Staley: Well, how, how much then is too much information? Nicole Kraft: It's all about, about the reader. David Staley: I'm gonna ask you about your family for instance. Nicole Kraft: But it's all about the reader or the listener. So if you had listeners, if we were on a podcast that was about parenting and or, you know, what's it like when you have adult children, then we would be talking about my son who works at he's the head of design at the University of Maryland football team. But, we're not talking about that, and so understanding who your audience is, what their expectations are, what they are, what they need to get out of you, that's your responsibility to them, not what you want to present to them. David Staley: One of the chapters in the book is called "Location Matters". Tell us about, tell us about setting and its importance in an interview. Nicole Kraft: It's a difficult thing to get students to think outside their own headspace, and so a lot of them, I, we had a circumstance recently where we did an interview with someone who kicked one of the field goal or the field goal attempts during game day and won money from Pat McAfee. And so, I said to the student, where are you going to interview this person? And [00:25:00] he said, I'm gonna bring them into the Lantern newsroom and interview them here. And I said, why don't you take them out to where he kicked the football? And he was like, oh, yeah, that's right, like, so you have to think about where people are going to be most comfortable, where it's gonna be the noise will be limited enough that you're not overwhelmed, like we do restaurants a lot, it's incredibly noisy in a restaurant or a coffee shop, so really understanding where you can bring awareness, comfort. I also, I wanna see where people are in their natural habitat a lot of times. So, I interviewed the former police chief of Columbus and she had a suit of armor in her office. Now, it led to a conversation about how her maiden name was Knight and we had this whole conversation about it, but I got to see the pictures on her wall. I got to see the things that were on her desk that were not classified police things. I got to see her in her natural experiences, and that shaped my story. I, I remember doing a story once with a woman whose son had died very unexpectedly in his sleep at the age of like 35. And, you know, sitting down [00:26:00] with her in her house was a much different experience than if I were to have taken her somewhere outside. You know, there were pictures of him, there were places that he had been like, I needed to experience him through her eyes and in order to do that, I needed to be where he was. So, those are the kind of things that you look for. And sometimes you want people to be uncomfortable, so I don't, I may want someone to not be as comfortable as possible, then I'm gonna pick a completely different location. David Staley: Hmm. One of your book chapter titles is, "There are Stupid Questions, But you Don't Have to Ask Them". And, and I have to ask, what, what is this chapter about? Again, the title is just so evocative. Nicole Kraft: I appreciate that. Again, that goes back to really envisioning what the answer will be for people, and one of the keys about interviewing is to ask the question in your own head before you ask it to someone else, and to kind of roll it around and see what the response is that you're going to get. And if you're not going to get the response that you're intending, or it's something that's gonna go completely off the rails, and the example I often use when I talk to my students is I, I cover, I cover horse racing and I talk to a guy [00:27:00] at a horse race, and, and his horse had no business being at the race, she was not a very talented horse, it appeared on paper and I said to him, why did you bring this horse? It doesn't appear that she's competitive at all. Well, he got furious with me and, and was, you know, very hostile, as you can imagine. And I could have asked that in so many other ways. I could have said, you know, people might say that this horse doesn't have the qualifications to be here, but you obviously feel differently. Tell me what you're seeing that other people are missing. That's a much different question. So understanding that the way that you ask things of people, it. That's how they're going to respond to you. Many times we ask questions that make people defensive and we don't mean to, it's just, I wanna know information and I throw it out at you, but if I can think about what it feels like to be you, I, I think about this all the time. I do a lot of press conference interviews and, you know, we did interviews the other night after the, the Buckeyes lost to Indiana, and there were several questions that were coming at Caleb Down specifically that he answered very tersely and it, I don't fault him for it at all. They were very aggressive questions, and I understand [00:28:00] we have to get answers to why things happened, but understanding that this college student just lost an important game on national television that will affect them their path moving forward. You need to be compassionate about that. And so I actually, like, got down next to him and I asked my question and my voice was much lower and I asked him in a very personal way, and the answer that I got was very personal versus the ones that were much more rapid fire and, and a bit more aggressive. So, it really is a question of thinking about the person in front of you and what they need to hear from you and order to be able to support the question that you're asking them. David Staley: I have to ask how did you end up as a journalist? Did you, did you know from an early age that you were gonna be a journalist? Nicole Kraft: Yes. David Staley: Oh, you did? Nicole Kraft: I did. David Staley: Oh, okay. Nicole Kraft: I've never wanted to be anything else. When I was eight years old, I made a newspaper, it was during the bicentennial year of 1976 and so I dressed as Bessie Ross, and I would carry it to my neighbors, and I would give them the one copy that I had of it, and I told them to read it, and then I would take it back and I would take it to the next person. [00:29:00] So I, I mean, I, I've always wanted to know everything. The first story that I had published was about a swimmer named Rick Carey, who in the 1984 Olympics was unhappy with his performance, and I was watching him on TV and I thought like, why is he so mad, I don't understand. And so, I called him on the phone and back then you could dial one area code five, five five one two, one two and get people's phone numbers. And so, I called him in Mount Kisco, New York and I had a conversation with him about what he was thinking, and then I got that story published. I used for my high school newspaper, I used to interview celebrities and I would call just agents and asked if I could speak with actors and sports celebrities. And I interviewed Maurice Cheeks of the Philadelphia 76ers from my high school newspaper in California. And then I showed up, when I went to college, I, I went to Temple University in Philadelphia and I knocked on the door at the Sixers front office and I asked Harvey Pollock, who was the head of statistics, just a genius, and I said, can I work for you, and he said, yes. So I never questioned that I would be in, in a, in a space that I would be questing for information in order to share it with other people. David Staley: So it, it [00:30:00] wasn't a particular journalist or something. You said 1976, I was remembering _All the President's Men_. I think about that time I thought, oh, it might be cool to be a journalist, but that was because of _All the President's Men_. Nicole Kraft: It was, I mean, I did see all the president's men when I was in high school, and it, it didn't dissuade me. I, I remember reading Bob Woodward's book, _The Brethren_ about the Supreme Court that fascinated me. And I, I became obsessed with reporting on the court at that point. So, there are so many pieces that went into it. I was sports editor of my high school newspaper. I have always wanted to get information. I, I'm ultimately a gossip, so I, I like to get information and make sure other people have it. That I think is really the driving force behind journalists. David Staley: Dorothy Kilgallen. I'm dating myself there. Tell us what's next for your research. Nicole Kraft: Well, I, I'll be frank, I don't do a ton of research because I'm a Professor of Practice, so my primary focus is service. I'm chair of Athletic Council, so I'm doing that for the rest of this year, very excitedly so, and I'm working on more course development for our sport focused students. We just created a leadership and sports course that I'm very excited to offer through the [00:31:00] college I've been working with the leadership major there, and we're creating an internship course in sports that will also be offered through the college. So, those are the primary areas. I'm, I have a book that's coming out in July that's called _Storytelling__ Beyond the Scoreboard_ that I was extremely fortunate to work with Jean-Jacques Taylor formerly of ESPN, who's actually an alum of our school of communication or school of journalism at the time, and was a Lantern alum. And so he and I actually had breakfast together at the Cotton Bowl two years ago, and I said, we should do something together. Let's write a book. And he's like, okay, and that's what we did. So, we're very fortunate to have such amazing alums in our, in our space. David Staley: What's the book gonna be about? Nicole Kraft: It's about this idea about sports writing is not about games anymore. And so, how do you build relationships in sports coverage? How do you see where the stories live, how do you extract them from the people who have them? How do you really work with the communities, all of the communities in sports, the players, the coaches, the administrators, the officials. I mean, everyone. Sports is such a microcosm for our world that if [00:32:00] you can understand how to cover sports well, that you can really be a, a, a terrific journalist, and so that's what we wanna help people be. David Staley: Nicole Kraft. Thank you. Nicole Kraft: It is such a pleasure to be here. Thank you. Jen Farmer: Voices of Excellence is produced and recorded at The Ohio State University College of Arts and Sciences Marketing and Communications Studio. More information about the podcast and our guests can be found at go.osu.edu/voices. Voices of Excellence is produced by Doug Dangler. I'm Jen Farmer.