Brother Can You Spare a Dime for Education News?
The Brookings Institution has a webcast of its panel on its new report, Re-Imagining Education Journalism. It’s starting right now, and the report was embargoed until right now, so I’ll have to work fast.
While the 25-page report has some great insights on the substance of education journalism these days, it is mostly concerned with the business of education journalism – that is, how to get people to pay for it.
After discussing various models, the authors conclude, “Outlets that have a well-defined niche and offer content that is hard to get elsewhere have been successful at developing premium content and subscription web sites.”
There a couple of areas where I disagree with the report. The authors concur with a statement by the Washington Post‘s Jay Mathews that national education coverage is too focused on “ideology, politics and budget fights.”
We can all pray for the day when education decisions are made based on unbiased research and sound practices, but in the real world those decisions are made based on ideology, politics and budget fights. It only makes sense to cover that overarching dynamic.
The authors also state, “As the economy comes back, we need to figure out ways to raise the stature and prestige of online journalism.” Since the traditional media spent years badmouthing their online counterparts, this is a deeply ironic recommendation. Blogs have traditionally linked to the newspaper stories they reference. Newspapers linking to stories they got from blogs is a relatively new phenomenon.
Head over to the Brookings webcast for more.
UPDATE: Russo hates it.
