Ethics weak?

Journalism ethics can be fun and even profitable.

Journalism ethics and dental floss have a lot in common…

• Everyone agrees both are healthy.
• Many of us lie about using them.
• Neither is sexy or a hot dinnertime topic.

As SPJ’s ethics chair, one of my solemn duties is promoting Ethics Week. I’m probably not supposed to say this, but no one cares. Not even me.

Ethics Week usually involves social posts like this…

And webinars like this…

There’s nothing wrong with either. Good people dedicated their free time to create smart content. It’s just that very few people saw it. The webinar above has 77 views since the last Ethics Week. And that’s considered popular.

So what if we made Ethics Week appealing to the basic greed festering inside all humanity? Welcome to Ethics Week 2025!

Ethics Hold’em

At the end of February, at the only college media convention in Times Square, SPJ hosted a poker game. Hired a pro dealer. Rented a padded table. And it was entirely ethical.

Instead of Texas Hold’em, we played Ethics Hold’em. As you can see from the photos atop this post, the students had a blast. And the greedier they were, the more ethics they absorbed – because our special deck of cards rewards you with free chips for studying entries from SPJ’s vaunted Code of Ethics.

Want to win $100 for hosting your own game? We’ll mail you the decks for free.

SIN

I’ve advised college newspapers as both an employee and a volunteer for 25 years, and I can tell you what chills an adviser’s blood. It’s not administrators threatening to censor the stories. It’s the editors declaring, “We’re gonna do an April Fool’s parody issue!”

The result is never funny, borderline libelous, and laden with inside jokes only the staff understands. So we cam up with an ethical alternative called Spread Immoral News.

Any college (or even high school) newspaper that publishes a SIN issue online or on paper before Ethics Week can win $500 cash, in small unmarked bills sent to them in a plain paper bag.

College research grant

If journalism ethics are as exciting as dental hygiene, then research into those ethics is akin to studying cavities.

(And to be honest, the latter is more exciting. When I searched Google Scholar, I got What’s Right/Wrong with Journalism Ethics Research? The same search for dental hygiene returned The Fate of Bacteria Sealed in Dental Cavities. I actually read some of that, because I was curious about the bacteria’s fate.)

Anyway.

We’re offering $2,500 for any research into journalism ethics on campus. It’s not a lot of money, which is why we’re soliciting college researchers to study their own kind.

We don’t expect results as compelling as the fate of the aforementioned bacteria. But we’d like to see some insights that might intrigue journalists who believe in ethics but aren’t necessarily excited by them.

If you’ve read this far, you’ve earned your karma for the day, and I hope you’ll help us celebrate Ethics Week. Finally, don’t forget to floss.