April | 2014 | Schmidtcomm's Blog

The happy morning news anchors greeted me with this headline: “Shots fired in Green Bay.” Now that’ll make you sit up. Where? Who? Was it a school? I flipped to another station and got the grave headline: “Shooting on campus.” Which campus? Spousal Unit tuned the kitchen radio into the all-news station but all we got was “Shooting in Green Bay.”

The anchors reported that information was still coming in, police reports were not updated, reporters were en route to the scene, more information would be available shortly, we’ll keep you informed, and on and on…

Several hours later I learned the “shooting” was actually three shots fired. The incident was not on a school campus but on the east side of the city near the University campus. As for the immediacy, it happened overnight.

The producers and writers did their jobs well this morning. The headline “Shots fired in Green Bay” made my heart beat faster. Had they used the more accurate headline “Shots fired near University overnight,” I would have realized the incident was not ongoing,

When there’s breaking news at your business or organization, keep this in mind.

It might be a dumpster fire but it could be reported like this: “Rescue units and a tanker truck were called out overnight to a fire at XYZ Company…”

Is this wrong or misleading? Nope—and I would do the same thing if I were still working in a newsroom.

You owe it to yourself, your employees and your customers to learn how news is communicated and why reporters and editors do what they do. Before you see it posted on Facebook.

If you’re interested, find me at mkathrynschmidt@gmail.com.

I can’t help thinking: what would happen if we treated the arts like March Madness? Imagine picking brackets that have symphony orchestras facing off against each other. Imagine televising opera casts in a sing-off to determine who performs with the most heart, talent and skill? Would Vegas run the odds on ballet dancers who can jump higher or twirl faster? In your fantasy league, would you draft a team with Cecelia Bartoli, Renee Fleming and Maria Callas?

This year, ad spending on the Final Four will generate $1.15 billion (BILLION) which is higher than NFL Football or NBA Basketball (yawn). This year, nationally televised arts will generate this much in advertising revenue: (crickets).

I’m not dissing organized sports or the Final Four. I’m a Badger alumnus and rooted for Wisconsin to win. But I’m a singer, I love the classical arts and happen to think the lessons learned in a practice room or in a band concert are just as important as those learned on a field.

As a culture, we worship the warrior in sweat socks. If we paid even half the homage to the artist mastering Mozart, what would be the outcome?

In this weekend’s contest, we will see the product of organized and well-funded high school sports playing at a very high level with organized and well-funded college athletics. I think of my friends who teach high school music and how their booster clubs scratch to find money to repair uniforms, repair old instruments and send kids to state ensemble competitions. Take that up a notch and think of the local arts groups that operate on budgets that wouldn’t keep sports teams in shoe laces.

When you don your red and white this weekend, please take 10 minutes and think about what the world would be like if we devoted this much time and money to the arts. A sustainable world needs both sporting competition and artistic expression, but we are far from parity when funding the arts.