Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goodman said it's difficult to be a newspaper columnist, constantly churning out opinions on every issue of the day.

She's even heard some say holding the job is like being married to a nymphomaniac.

"Every time you think you're done, you have to start over again," Goodman said a friend told her.

Goodman shared stories from her 40-year career and discussed the current state of the media at the fourth annual Neal Shine Ethics Symposium on Monday at the Kellogg Center.

Jane Briggs-Bunting, director of the School of Journalism, estimated that about 300 people attended, a marked increase from last year.

"Every year, it gets bigger - especially when you get people like Ellen," Briggs-Bunting said.

Goodman was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Commentary in 1980, and her columns now appear in more than 450 newspapers nationwide.

Goodman criticized the rise of what she called "food-fight journalism," in which talking heads hurl opinions at each other as loudly and divisively as possible.

"Americans have felt ambivalent about many of the societal issues of the time, but rarely did they hear that ambivalence in the media," she said.

Goodman said although the shift to more personalized news has created a schism in society, she believes it can be harnessed to provide the public a clear vision of the truth.

"We need to hold onto the idea that we should be less hasty and somewhat more layered in our analysis," Goodman said.

Members of the standing room-only crowd were impressed by Goodman's knowledge.

Lansing resident and longtime journalist George Trumbull said he agreed that the media is helping to divide society.

"I see polarization as even more of a situation above and beyond newspapers - it's everywhere," Trumbull said.

The event was sponsored by the School of Journalism and several other university departments and honors the Neal Shine Fund for Ethics in Journalism.

The fund is named for Shine, who spent 46 years at the Detroit Free Press and hired Goodman at the paper in the 1960s.

Shine said the lecture series helps budding reporters understand the ethical dilemmas they could face.

"It's important for young journalists to realize that there are rules, what those rules are and that things aren't always easily solved - they aren't always black and white," Shine said.