Dear Megan:

Maybe you can add this list to the bullying you feel you received after the piece you did on Washington State University and Pullman. But that’s not my intention. In newspaper years, kinda like dog years, I’m an old lady, so look at this as a bit of advice, the kind of advice I give our interns and other young people trying to make their way into this business. I’d recommend a different path, but maybe we can talk about that over lunch sometime.

Like you, I got my start at the Arizona Daily Wildcat when I was attending the UA long, long ago. I loved my experience there, and know that that experience is a bit different for this new generation. I started off on the news desk, spent a summer doing layout and Police Beat and ended my time on the arts desk doing features and got my start as a theater critic. The Wildcat was my second home during my last two years of college and many of the people I worked with were like family.

Your story took me back to a time before the internet. I’ve been doing this for more than 20 years and only took five years off for a short stint in nonprofit work. I was in newspapers before desktop publishing. At the Wildcat, one of my last great editors always pissed people off with her editorials. One in particular was an experience the entire staff felt for several weeks. Back then, Lute Olson was being lured away by Kentucky and good ol’ Lute said he’d stay if the UA gave him more money. Kind of like now, UA students were being stretched thin. Many of us were well-acquainted with Top Ramen, and my roommate and I shared an apartment in a Section 8 complex near Grant and Euclid. Great training for journalism life today.

The editor wrote that maybe the UA and Tucson had to face facts. Maybe we couldn’t afford Lute Olson anymore and that he needed to move on. People freaked. The office had nonstop phone calls from angry Tucson residents. We had death threats and a few male staffers spent the night in the newsroom because some threatened to destroy our newsroom. We were worried. It was genuine. Our editor was calm, even as she was interviewed by AP, BBC, and local and other national news. Eventually everyone moved on and forgot about it, but I liked the fact that my editor stood up for what she wrote at the time, never flinched and never pointed fingers elsewhere. I mentioned it to her a couple of years ago when she was inducted into the Wildcat Hall of Fame, and she brushed it off.

She called it ridiculous. Ridiculous, Megan, because I’ll tell you, I’m sure my former editor faced bigger issues as she continued in her career. I know I did, and if you continue on this path, this act of bullying you say you faced will be small potatoes—at least I hope so. It would be sad for this to be the highlight of your work in journalism for many reasons. But for five minutes, at Weekly World Central, we talked about your column. Sweetheart, it’s pretty ridiculous to compare yourself to a 12-year-old girl who committed suicide. Not only is it disrespectful to that kid and others who face real cyber bullying, but after reading the work you make yourself look silly.

I have a 12-year-old son who has faced real bullying. We have, I can assure you, faced the most amazing obstacles together regarding school and education. He’s amazing and I’m blessed and a lucky woman. He puts up with having a mother in this business, which means from time to time, he has to get dragged to meetings and protests, and he has heard me complain around the house that someone is mad at me or wrote something in response to something I wrote or I have an odd Twitter follower. Only one time, in all these years, has he responded to one attack. He took it personally and I was reminded it’s probably not wise to always share work stuff (but the kid has my back, and I have his. Familia).

But let’s get real. If I wrote what you did and received the same response, my kid, my editor and my small group of friends would have told me, “Well, what did you expect?” They may have Tweeted back to a few with their own screed and they probably would have reminded me of the last time something like this happened, and maybe we would have grabbed a couple of beers. You said some stupid stuff. People are pissed. Deal with it. But don’t treat this like anything more. Maybe a reflection or even an apology to the city of Pullman would have been a good start. I was happy to see this. It’s a good start:

Don’t use modern-day comparisons to cyber bullying and repaint yourself as some sort of victim. You are not a victim. You are a journalist and this is only the beginning, so toughen up. The internet is a nasty place, and so is the world, and so is the newsroom. It’s not fun to be called a slut, whore, cunt or bitch or have a hashtag like #MeganCoghlanSucks, but this is not going to be the first time you will have this happen. You’re lucky your editor gave you the space to respond, because not many editors will do that in the future. One day, people will smarten up and realize that when they disagree with a woman, there are more creative words to describe us—but I’m afraid we are a long way from that time. Sad, but true, so we move on and fight the battles as the come along.

You delivered smack-talk and it got handed back to you. This is a sexist society and world. I’m not excusing the asses, I’m just preparing you. Your mother or aunts probably haven’t and maybe the J-School hasn’t talked about it. But when you walk into that meeting, that game or that future newsroom, pretend it’s the ’80s, but instead of putting on shoulder pads, pretend you have balls. Seriously. I was raised by a single mother and she always reminded me that life is unfair, but she never really explained sexism and she didn’t know the crazy shit journalists face, all genders.

Cry at home. Prepare yourself to argue and stand up for yourself with male editors and male publishers. Don’t take shit from anyone. Stand up for your work in a way that makes sense professionally. You’re in this business. People will say shit about you—some based on truth and some made up. Megan, I want to see you take over sports journalism and kick ass, but don’t ever offer this kind of response again when you are attacked. If you stick with it, it will happen again. I promise. Prepare yourself. Toughen up.

This is what I want to see next:

#MeganCoghlanKicksAss

This article appears in Nov 14-20, 2013.

9 replies on “Dear Megan: This Wasn’t About Being Bullied, This is Part of the Job”

  2. Mari, I may not always agree with everything you write, but on this effort, you nailed it. Couldn’t agree more.

  4. Being only a year older than Megan makes it hard to offer up much wisdom, but it’s safe to say one of the best parts about the Daily Wildcat and student media is how early you end up learning some of your hardest lessons.

    Also, just a typo, but it’d be a real bummer to see that hash tag next, only to have her name be spelled wrong in it. It’s Coghlan, no U.

  5. I have no doubt that Mari has no shortage of personal courage as a reporter, but her reasoning here is deeply flawed, symptomatic of the kind of retrograde, conservative reasoning you’ll find in tech, finance and other industries where women struggle to find a seat at the table and an voice equal to their male peers. Whatever Coghlan wrote, vicious, sexist attacks should not be normalized as a “rite of passage.” They should be spotlighted and shamed. Being labeled a bitch, whore and/or cunt shouldn’t be treated as the normal price of doing business for women in media. To do so, at the very least, shows a lack of imagination for what online discourse can be. At worst, it damages efforts to reform an admittedly sexist society by blaming its ugliest aspects on the very women who endure them. I hope Megan Coghlan and others read this letter and disregards its bad advice. There is a better way.

  6. IPH, Tom can certainly dish on tea-baggers, of which I am a huge fan. Kristina, thank you for that and fixed. You are right. That is one of the great things about working for the Wildcat. Alex, I have good weeks, good months where I am happy to have contributed to some alternative-weekly ass kicking. And I have not-so-good weeks or months. I’d rather place my personal courage where it’s deserved–at home with my mom or kid and good friends as we navigate this world together. Alex, I obviously disagree. There may be a better way, and maybe as a male in the newsroom you are working on making change? I hope you are. You are delusional if you think I am painting her experience as a “rite of passage,” your quote not mine. However, I wonder what good we do in making women who go into this business think it is equal, level and that their work will be approached with respect. Most of the time that is not the case. You may not realize this, so perhaps it’s a good reminder for you, too. Nope, no retrograde conservatism here … just pointing out the elephant in the room that most newsrooms, journalists and programs never discuss. What Megan experienced was terrible and we could round-up the asshats of Pullman, but there is a reality here. Journalism or newspapering or whatever you want to call it is hard, difficult, emotionally draining, low-pay (especially for women) … women in journalism are often still trying to find a place at the table with their peers. I’m not blaming Megan. I want her to succeed. There’s a reality and it’s ugly, nasty and damaging, but it’s real nonetheless. When attacked by misogynists, it is great to be defended, but that defense is rare and most of the time in journalism you are on your own, dusting yourself off and getting ready for that next story. That’s reality, not defending yourself in a column and calling it cyber bullying.

  7. As another Daily Wildcat veteran, let me just say: This is patronizing claptrap, and I sincerely hope that no aspiring journalist who reads it takes it to heart.

    Let’s get this straight: Megan Coghlan writes a funny putdown of a rival university, and Mari Herreras thinks “a reflection or even an apology to the city of Pullman” is in order? A student journalist is subjected to a personal harassment campaign, and Herreras’s response is “Deal with it” and “Toughen up”? A columnist defends herself against misogynistic smears and Herreras tells her to “don’t ever offer this kind of response again when you are attacked”?

    Experience, evidently, doesn’t guarantee wisdom. It’s disappointing to see a veteran journalist advise an up-and-coming journalist to back down and meekly apologize for expressing a controversial opinion, and it’s disappointing to see anyone advise a woman that she should just get used to living in a “sexist society and world,” and that responding to rancid, sexist attacks is unbecoming.

    Finally, the condescension in this piece — as if Herreras is passing on hard-earned wisdom to a complete novice — is unwarranted. I thought Megan’s cyberbulling column did a fine job of relating her personal experience to a broader national issue. I hope she stays in the business — journalism desperately needs voices like hers.

  8. Justyn: Just to be clear, Coghlan’s piece wasn’t a “funny putdown of a rival university,” it was trolling masked as journalism and embarrassing to her personally and the Wildcat (as her “employer”). Coghlan doesn’t, in my opinion, get the right to publicly complain (or to compare her plight to a child actually being bullied) about a regrettable but predictable response that perfectly reflects the language of the internet in 2013.

    I say this as someone who wrote honestly about a friend suffering from cancer who received multiple messages wishing death upon her. This gig can suck sometimes, but I can also lessen how it sucks but not writing bullshit intended to inflame mostly meaningless opinions. It’s not misogyny or sexism she’s facing, just what happens these days when you smack an online hornet’s nest. People care far too much about the corporate institution masquerading as a school they’ve attached themselves to? Surely, you jest!

    Online media can be a terrible place, but when we use terms like “cyberbullying” to describe even an aggressive case of the internet meanies, that word starts to lose meaning.

  9. Let’s get this straight Justyn: the article was poorly written, poorly researched, trash that insulted an entire town and community. That aside, the article was pure troll bait. The first rule of the internet is “don’t feed the trolls.” That’s exactly what she did with her pathetic excuse for “journalism,” and she got exactly what anyone else would have received had they written it. She made ridiculously ignorant statements that were proven wrong on the field. The fact that she was so completely wrong and is a women, gave trolls their obvious target. The few trolls who attacked her, out of thousands who responded to her hit piece, did what trolls do. She never mentions the vast majority of “legitimate Cougs” who she claims to have never met, just wanted her to eat crow and eat crow she should have. She should certainly not have compared herself to an actual bullying victim. She was the instigator and the fact that she would play the victim in such an over the top way speaks volumes about what kind of person she is on the inside: ugly, ego centric and delusional. She voluntarily displayed her ignorance and the world responded in kind.

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