I will use my last column of 2009 to make a case for why Education News Colorado matters.
Thanks to a new report from the Brookings Institution, I have a heavyweight in my corner. The report, “Invisible: 1.4 Percent Coverage for Education Not Enough,” bemoans the diminishing quantity – not to mention quality – of media education coverage in the U.S. Says the study’s introduction:
“During the first nine months of 2009, only 1.4 percent of national news coverage from television, newspapers, news websites, and radio dealt with education. This paucity of coverage is not unique to 2009. In 2008, only 0.7 percent of national news coverage involved education, while 1.0 percent did so in 2007. This makes it difficult for the public to follow the issues at stake in our education debates and to understand how to improve school performance.”
The report lays out in detail how thin education coverage has become, and how trivial or breaking news-related the vast majority of that coverage is. For example, budget crises, politics and the H1N1 flu epidemic comprised over one-quarter of education stories in 2009, while curricular issues, teacher preparation and training and general education reform made up just 8 percent of education coverage.
None of this is likely to change any time soon. From all signs, newspapers will continue to diminish, TV newsrooms will keep shrinking, and news websites will remain fixated on trying to replicate the breadth of newspaper coverage.
So, what does Brookings believe needs to happen to reverse this slide? First of all, the report’s authors say, schools and education officials need to get more proactive about getting information out to the public.
Second, surviving education reporters need to focus their attention on what matters, rather than on easy, quick-hit stories. This means, the authors say, “reporters should draw on education research in the way that health care reporters use medical research.” (I’d argue that there are huge qualitative differences between medical research and educational research. But that’s a topic for another day).
Third, media outlets should focus more attention on education reporting rather than cutting back.
Finally, and most relevant to EdNews, is this recommendation:
“Foundations and non-profit organizations should focus on developing alternative forms of education coverage both nationally and locally. At both levels, they should encourage more emphasis on reporting about teaching and teaching methods, curricula, course offerings, testing and other issues that directly affect learning and are receiving scant ongoing coverage. They can also encourage both investigative journalism and in-depth reporting of particularly successful (and troubled) schools and school systems.”
Couldn’t have said it better myself! I have done some research and have not found another website like EdNews anywhere else in the country. There are sites that aggregate and redistribute news from other sources. There are a growing number of sites that try to replace newspapers by covering a variety of issue areas in a community. But with resources spread thin in these times of economic hardship, that strategy seems too costly.
What we have done with EdNews is to pick an issue that’s important to the community, as well as many individuals within the community, and cover it with more depth than a local newspaper or TV news station can. The Denver Post does a solid job covering Denver schools. But the Post these days has just one education reporter.
We have three full-time staff, dedicated full-time to covering education in Colorado. We can’t get to every story with three people, but we can get to many of the most important ones. And with 50 years of experience spread among the three of us (but we look young), we’re pretty good at choosing the most meaningful stories.
So thank you, Brookings, for helping make the world aware of what Colorado has been learning over the past couple of years: The shrinking of the so-called mainstream media needn’t lead to a decline in top-quality local education news.
We also thanks to our funders, current and prospective, for their belief in the model and in our work. The Brookings report shows that you are ahead of the curve.
We know we’re having an impact when people start hurling boulders at us, our funders and the Public Education & Business Coalition, the non-profit of which we are a part. When critics of dubious credibility feel they have to attack us with outright falsehoods, half-truths and paranoid conspiracy theories, we must be doing something right.
Happy Holidays.
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Alan I agree with you 100% that EdNews plays a crucial role.
But one criticism of this particular report is that its authors focused on national news in newspapers by examining education stories that made the front page.
(See http://www.educatedreporter.com/2009/12/everything-thats-wrong-with-us-part-one.html#comments)
This doesn’t take into account that education remains very much a local issue (given that the feds provide only about 10% of education funding), meaning that much coverage would appear in the Metro sections of newspapers.
That said, I think it’s sad that national coverage includes so few education stories. Also sad is that so much coverage is devoted to what I used to call “non-education education stories”–i.e. stories in which schools are merely the setting for issues that are largely unrelated to the core teaching and learning mission of education. (For example, H1N1, political opposition to Obama’s speech to school children.)
The report’s authors present a much rosier view of education reporting in the section in which they describe case studies of local coverage in four metro areas: Phoenix, Providence, Des Moines and Minneapolis (starting on p. 18). Based on these studies, they concluded:
“We found significant differences in how local and national outlets reported on education…In general, local papers appear to be more substantive and to devote greater attention to education policy and school reform than do national news organizations. Local education writers tend to focus less on crime stories or episodic coverage. Three of four newspapers had blogs and provided interaction devices for reader commentary.”
Another criticism of the report is that it doesn’t really systematically account for new media–like EdNews. Alexander Russo has some interesting things to say about that Dec. 2 @ thisweekineducation.com.