Out Of Class #1: Neutral Experts

Neutral experts are people who have a great deal of knowledge and/or expertise regarding the subject you're wring about, but importantly they don't have an interest in the outcome. It's someone who can offer analysis that helps readers decide which side of an issue is more credible. In a one-sided story, it helps readers evaluate whether the people you're writing about are on the up and up.

Think of it in terms of a game: you normally have one side and the other side, right? How you view the game depends on which side you're on. Unless you have a referee, that is. A neutral expert is sort of a referee, helping point on when one side is telling the truth and the other side is stretching it a bit -- or a lot.

Most news stories at least attempt to include at least one neutral expert. And many of your first out-of-class stories would have benefited from having a neutral expert included.

You can find a neutral expert about almost anything, no matter how obscure. Let's look at this example: during the run-up to the 2008 presidential election, a lot was made about how the Obamas would fist-bump each other. The New York Times Sunday Magazine even did a story about it.

Here's how the story started:

Is this the end of high-five?

On the night in June that Barack Obama clinched the Democratic nomination, he and his wife, Michelle, exchanged what was variously described as a “closed-fist high five,” a “fist pound,” a “knuckle buckle” and a “fist jab.” Jonathan Tilove in The New Orleans Times-Picayune called the gesture “the dap heard ’round the world,” which he felt encapsulated “the new cultural trajectory of American politics.”

Believe it or not, they found an expert on fist-bumping. And that expert is right here. Let's continue the story:

Prof. Geneva Smitherman, director of African-American language study at Michigan State University, says: “Pound is when knuckles touch in a horizontal position. That’s the gesture that Michelle and Barack used. Dap is when the knuckles touch in a vertical position. Both gestures can be used as a greeting, to signal respect, agreement, bonding.”

Dap started among black soldiers during the Vietnam War; to give “some dap” (not usually “a” dap) means “to offer kudos, congratulations”; Prof. James Peterson of Bucknell, a hip-hop historian, says he thinks it is rooted in dapper, “neat, fashionably smart.” Pound came out of hip-hop in the late 1980s. Fist bump came later: a 1996 note in the Sports Network wire service reported that Eddie Murray of the Baltimore Orioles was accepting congratulations from baseball teammates with “high-fives, handshakes or fist bumps.” Peterson says the new phrase robs the gesture of its cultural significance, which includes the Obamas’ “quiet but pronounced in-group affiliation with all of black America.”

Hand signals have a checkered history in politics, from Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s V-for-victory sign to the famed photo of Gov. Nelson Rockefeller “giving the finger” to hecklers to the clenched-fist salute of “black power” to Lyndon Johnson’s fondness for “pressing the flesh.”

When Michelle Obama visited Barbara Walters on “The View” on ABC, the candidate’s wife sought to soften her image with “I have to be greeted properly. Fist bump, please. It is now my signature bump. . . . I got it from the young staff. That’s the new high-five.”

Colleges are notorious for being loaded with neutral experts (think of all your profs doing research, and all the TA's working on their thesis papers!) So really, there's no excuse for you NOT to find a neutral expert, especially here or at other schools.

Like many other schools, MSU -- in hopes of getting free publicity -- even makes it easy to find experts. The MSU News Office's Web site has an experts list, which you can link to here: http://news.msu.edu/experts/Results/?

Just looking at the first page, these are just some of the topics for which MSU can find you a neutral expert: wind power, renewable energy, water preservation, breast cancer, breast cancer education, medical education, microfinance, filmmaking, documentary production, sensors and nano-bisensor devices for biodefense, health diagnostics and theraputics, child welfare, biblical references and history, Samartian population, meteorology and climatology, Isreali-Palestinian conflict, Israeli politics, society and culture, international relations, U.S. foreign policy, school funding, school choice, school district building projects, the effects of mass communications, health communications, communications campaigns, international relations, the Middle East, Muslim issues, the early formation of galaxies, tax and expenditure policies, state and local public finance, poverty and income distribution, campus sustainability, Internet governance, new wireless technologies, telecommunications regulation and policy, bone and tissue engineering, labor markets, chaos theory, alternative dispute resolution, primitive stars, galaxy formation, labor unions and collective bargaining, international and domestic labor policy, work and family policy, flexible scheduling policy, tropical diseases, malaria, AIDS/HIV . . .

. . . and those are just a FEW of the subject areas!

You can also search by typing in a topic here: http://news.msu.edu/experts/

I took some general topics and looked for experts. Like Google, sometimes you have to try the same general term in different ways (like if you're searching for an expert in campus safety, you try that term, then campus, then safety, then police, and so on).

Under "campus living" I found one expert. For "transportation" I found two. There were three each for "housing" and "discrimination" and "elections." I found four each for "police" and "campus" and "drug." For "safety" I found 14! And "health" produced 35!

And you can filter by these general topic areas: agriculture and environment; arts and humanities; athletics; board and administration; business, economy, law and communications; education; family and social issues; health, medicine and veterinary medicine; international; science and technology; staff and faculty; students and campus life; tuition, costs and enrollment.

Plus, there's always Google, right? And other schools as well. And think tanks. And private research institutions.

Wherever you find a good one, it's critical that you do. Journalism isn't about just getting both sides of the story. Getting one side and the other side and nothing else is just enabling a fight.

We're about trying to arrive at a verifiable version of the truth based on facts and checking out what people have to say, right? That's the role a neutral expert helps accomplish.

To paraphrase legendary baseball announcer and willful drunk Harry Caray -- and this might be the only smart thing he ever said in his life, God rest his soul -- there are three sides to every story: your side, my side, and the truth.

We need to get more than two out of three. We need all of 'em. And from here on out, each out-of-class story will REQUIRE your citing of at least one neutral expert!

So go find some neutral experts!