Answers lead to viral experience

Maybe this column should be headlined: “The things you can get into when you’re not really trying to get into things.”
Bear with me. I’ve had my first ever experience with “going viral” on the Internet, and I’m still a little dizzy from it.
It started on the afternoon of Jan. 26, a Monday. I was writing a story about that morning’s meeting of the county drainage board (the glamour of small town journalism never stops) when I got a phone call from Tom LoBianco of The Indianapolis Star.
Tom and I have never met, but I admired his work for The Associated Press when he was covering the Statehouse and knew that he’d moved to The Star.
He asked me if I had a few minutes. He’d come into possession of an internal document from the Pence administration spelling out in some 17 pages of detail plans for a state-run news service that sounded eerily like some of the things I’ve encountered in the former Soviet Union over the past couple of decades.
Would I like to comment?
Why me? Good question.
Turns out that Tom had first called John Strauss, another former AP reporter who is now teaching at Ball State University. John and I have known each other for years, and I’ve spoken with his students about the challenging issues of press independence in countries attempting to move away from authoritarianism.
In other words, I was a logical person to call when alarm flags surfaced in the Pence plan.
So, I spoke my mind.
Okay, okay. I’m sure there are folks who would say — Gov. Pence among them — that I didn’t just comment, I shot my mouth off. What can I say? When you write opinion pieces for more than 30 years and you have strong opinions about press independence, those opinions rise quickly to the surface.
So when Tom read me parts of the internal memo, I exclaimed in reference to the governor, “How Soviet of him!”
That quote didn’t make it into Tom’s story. Cooler heads among the editors at The Star nixed it. But another, longer quote in which I described the plan as “ludicrous” and explained the dangers of government-run media outlets did make it in. And did so prominently.
The interview, which was like talking to an old friend I’d never met, took about half an hour. Tom, to his credit, sent me a PDF of the entire memo so I could check it out and get back to him if I thought he might be misreading things or misunderstanding.
By about 7 p.m., maybe earlier, the story was posted online at The Indy Star’s website. By about 7:30 p.m., I had an email from daughter Sally, expressing amazement about the whole thing.
Two hours later, I was reading myself being quoted on the website Politico.
By breakfast the next day, I was reading the same recycled comment on Huffington Post and the media news site maintained by Jim Romenesko. And the hits just kept on coming.
About 11 a.m., I was helping out in the newsroom when Lloyd Grove called from The Daily Beast. And before I knew it, it was off to the races again.
It’s a very odd feeling, knowing that your thoughts, your comments, your momentary asides are zipping around cyberspace, being read by goodness knows how many people. There you are in real space and time, minding your own business, and this whole thing is playing out digitally and electronically.
And it didn’t stop.
I “Googled myself” about mid-week and found the same comment popping up all over the world. Coming back to the office Jan. 28 from a meeting, I found a phone message from a talk jock in Palm Springs, California. No thanks to that, I decided.
But that night I did agree to a phone interview with Indiana Public Broadcasting. By then, the governor had stepped in to do his best to make this a one-day story. He took his lumps, acknowledged the stumble and moved on. He hadn’t canceled JustIN at that point, but the handwriting was on the wall.
While I stuck with my earlier remarks, my comments that time around were a little more gentle. I gave the governor credit for backing away quickly.
I also should have acknowledged that it’s very different to be on this side of an interview. I’m used to asking the questions, not giving the answers.