Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
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Sunday, August 27, 2006
Newspapers, education and the Internet
Back in June, my edublogging pal Alexander Russo at This Week in Education predicted that the mainstream media (MSM) was going to go hog wild into education blogging this year, with no less than 10 MSM websites launching new education blogs. And within days … uh, well, nothing happened for a while.
But yesterday, I noted the appearance of a new education blog at a MSM website — The Hall Monitor by the White Plains, N.Y., Journal News — and last week, I wrote about the Houston Chronicle’s new blog, School Zone.
Counting, the Miami Herald’s Gradebook and the Los Angeles Times’ School Me!, which both launched in the spring, and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s School Zone, which launched in February, it appears Alexander is halfway there.
Given all the changes, I thought I would quickly update my list of who’s out there blogging about education for the MSM. In order of appearance, they are:
- The Chalkboard by Jennifer Fernandez and Morgan Josey, education reporters at the Greensboro News-Record.
Begun in 2004 by Fernandez and former News-Record reporter Bruce Buchannan, The Chalkboard is intensely local and very engaged with Greensboro-area readers, who comment frequently, but doesn’t often tread into issues outside of North Carolina.
- Get Schooled by Patti Ghezzi of the Atlanta Journal Constitution.
Get Schooled launched in early 2005 and touches on a wide variety of education topics — local, state and national. There’s usually a Georgia tie-in, but fortunately there is a ton of interesting education issues there. Get Schooled engagingly written by Ghezzi, easily the most experienced blogger among us MSM edubloggers, it generates an incredible amount of discussion in its comments.
- Get on the Bus by Scott Elliott (yours truly) of the Dayton (Ohio) Daily News, which launched in August 2005.
With Get on the Bus I try to write about a range of education topics on the local, state and national level and encourage reader interaction through comments. Ohio is a big player in education issues like testing, standards and vouchers and Dayton has been the nation’s No. 1 charter school city for several years, although it looks like New Orleans will supplant it this year as most of the schools now open there are charters.
- Campus Watch by Greg Esposito and Amy Kovac, the higher education reporters at the Roanoke Times in Virginia, which started in November 2005.
This one is a little more narrowly focused than the others, since it’s specific to colleges and mostly revolves around Virginia’s higher education scene, but I’ve found some really interesting stuff here. They seem to have a knack for using the blog on breaking news stories, of which they have had a few big ones lately. Campus Watch allow comments and have growing reader interaction.
- School Zone, launched in February of 2006, is written by a team of education reporters at the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel — Alan Borsuk, Sarah Carr, Jamaal S. Abdul-Alim, Alice Chang, Kate Goodloe, Amy Hetzner and Megan Twohey and education editor David Haynes.
The Journal-Sentinel has excellent education coverage, anchored by experienced education reporters Alan Borsuk and Sarah Carr. They are joined on the blog by suburban education reporters and they write about education issues big and small in the Milwaukee area, which fortunately for us has tons of interesting stuff going on. Milwaukee has the nation’s biggest voucher program, for instance. Unfortunately, School Zone does not allow comments.
- Miami Gradebook, which first appeared in April of 2006, by Matthew Pinzur, the education reporter at the Miami Herald. Comments are allowed.
Pinzur is great and the education issues in South Florida are fascinating. Sadly, Matt just announced he is switching beats and it is unclear if Miami Gradebook will continue in the same fashion after he moves on.
- School Me!, which began in May of 2006, by Bob Sipchen and Janine Kahn at the Los Angeles Times.
This new blog is really a hit, rounding up world education events once a week, highlighting teacher blogs and following the crazy education stories of the Los Angeles school system and elsewhere in California. Sipchen, a columnist and Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, writes an excellent Monday column online and in print. Great use off graphics, photos and art at School Me! too. The only bad thing I have to say about School Me! is that it doesn’t allow comments, which it really should.
- School Zone, just launched here in August of 2006, is written by the education team at the Houston Chronicle — Jennifer Radcliffe, Sarah Viren, Ericka Mellon, Cynthia Garza and Jason Spencer.
If ever there was a perfect match for education blogging and a news site, it’s the Chronicle. The paper is considered one of the best MSM news sites anywhere and earlier this year was named the “best blogging newspaper.” Meanwhile Houston, the birthplace of the ideas behind No Child Left Behind, has loads of interesting education issues and stories. This blog also allows comments. Seems like there’s a good school joke to be made here about how they copied their blog name off Milwaukee’s paper, but I couldn’t come up with anything funny enough.
- The Hall Monitor, at The Journal News of White Plains, N.Y. also just appeared here in August, 2006. It’s written by the paper’s education team — Diana Bellettieri, Alice Gomstyn, David Novich, Leah Rae, Lanning Taliaferro, Randi Weiner, David Wilson and Dwight R. Worley. Comments are allowed.
Whew! That’s a lot of contributors! i’m not normally a big fan of blogs written by a group. I think a blog tends to have more personality if it’s written by one or two people. But so far, The Hall Monitor looks promising. And perhaps just a few of those contributors will find out they really like blogging and start carrying most of the load.
Altogether I count nine MSM edblogs now! That’s triple what there was after I started Get on the Bus just over a year ago. Maybe Alexander will be proven right after all.
BTW, if you know of another MSM edblog I haven’t mentioned here, please let me know. Also, one other MSM site to check out is Class Struggle by Jay Mathews at the Washington Post. This is really more of an online column than a blog, and it also has no commenting. But Mathews is one of the best in the education writing biz, so he’s always an interesting read.
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