Sometimes Story Sharing Can Be a Bad Idea
Skipping school: On February 1, the Maine Department of Education released a list of changes it was making in financial aid to local school districts. Nearly all those alterations were reductions, in some cases substantial ones.
These cuts will have a substantial impact on many schools and virtually all property taxpayers, so it seemed like a no-brainer for any legitimate news source to turn out a story detailing how much the education system in its area would be affected.
But for some inexplicable reason, two of the state’s daily papers opted not to do their own stories. Instead, the Bangor Daily News and Lewiston Sun Journal ran an article they got from their story-sharing arrangement with the Portland Press Herald that focused primarily on how the changes would impact Portland’s schools.
The Bangor paper did post a brief Associated Press piece on its Web site that included a link to the education department’s full list. But it didn’t do a story on how the reductions would hit schools in Bangor and vicinity. It didn’t do a regional piece on the reaction from Aroostook, Piscataquis or Washington counties. In fact, it didn’t do anything – until the next day when it ran an article on how much Hancock County stood to lose.
The rest of its coverage area? Hey, they can look it up for themselves.
The Sun Journal did a little better, turning out a regional piece on February 3, a story that contained not one bit of information that couldn’t have been obtained and printed 24 hours earlier.
The best coverage of the issue was in the Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel, both of which gave their stories the local angles they needed (the two papers opted not to pursue their usual policy of sharing coverage, instead producing separate pieces geared to their individual circulation areas), and the urgency the issue demanded (they managed to get these articles into print on February 2, the morning after the information was released).
One more note on the Press Herald’s coverage. Pseudonymous blogger Thomas Cushing Munjoy has raised some serious questions about that paper’s figures concerning the municipal school budget and the amount the city is losing in state aid. Munjoy’s math seems to have some validity. To date, however, it’s had no effect on the coverage.
If he’s wrong, it would be instructive if the paper proved it.
If he’s right, it would be ethical to run a correction.
Missing point: An alert reader e-mailed to question a statistic in the latest Arbitron survey of Portland radio stations.
If you click on any station and then click on “Details” about the Portland market, Arbitron will inform you that the area is “13.0% Hispanic.”
I checked the U.S. Census figures, and I think they got that decimal point one figure too far to the right.
Bore no more: Maine Press Association executive director Mike Lange has posted an instructive piece on the group’s Web site on how to cover town meetings without putting readers to sleep.
Nothing Lange writes is particularly shocking or innovative, but considering the number of unreadable and/or incomprehensible town-meeting stories I’ve seen in Maine papers in recent years, it wouldn’t hurt anyone assigned to cover one of those events (as well as their editors) to take a little refresher course in Journalism 101.
Al Diamon can be e-mailed at aldiamon@herniahill.net
The views expressed on this Web site are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily represent the views of Down East Enterprise or its employees.
Munjoy and Portland School Funding
Thomas Cushing Munjoy is not correct, but he is not wrong.
The two figures are comparing apples to oranges. I agree the numbers look similar, but the 2010-11 number includes the stimulus money we will get and the 2009-10 number does not. But that does not tell the whole story because the curtailment is cutting $2.9 million in 2009-10 so that number should have been listed in the report as $2.9 mill less.
It is a very complicated set of numbers made even more complicated by the ed committee vote to waive penalties on Wednesday, that will transfer $500K from Portland to other schools.
What would have been a good article is to explore why several legislators who districts will lose money voted to waive the penalties. I am still trying to get the information from afar a to who voted how on that amendment.
The Portland super is also complicating the reporting on funding by referring to $1 million reduction in Title I funding. That is off budget money and make our loss sound higher than it really is.
Media muff missed the story...
Dear Al,
We appreciate the comments on the sharing arrangement with our colleagues in Maine.
We did, however, have a local story on the school funding situation in Maine.
It ran A1, lead story in print, on Wednesday, Feb. 3 -- and was posted on our site at 12:01 a.m. same day.
See:
http://www.sunjournal.com/content/citschoolmoneyg020310
On the jump page, A-5 we had a two-column wide graphic that detailed the loss or gain for each school district (19) in our coverage area including a percent gain or loss column.
We realize the initial reports came out Tuesday a.m. and we wanted to "drill down" as they say on what it would mean to our readers and our schools.
To that end, we since have covered and continue to cover the reaction to this funding change and how local school districts and even parents are reacting to it.
Contrary to your remark we have dedicated multiple reporters in all five of our regional offices on this important issue. We also reported early the projections of cuts proposed by the Maine Department of Education and reaction to that several weeks prior to the "official" news.
So to imply we missed or ignored the story and opted instead for a shared story from our partners is unfair and untrue.
Just thought I would attempt to set the record straight. We continue to publish online and in print stories and photographs meant "to inform, challenge and reflect the communities we serve."
I believe those we share stories with in Maine have likewise localized the effect on their schools as well.
While you are often dead on with your criticism were a little hasty in passing judgment on how this important story was handled by the Sun Journal and other Maine news organizations.
Kindest regards,
Scott Thistle
Regional Editor
Sun Journal
sthistle@sunjournal.com
207-689-2849
Sun Journal coverage
Scott -- If you look at the sixth paragraph above, you'll see that I noted your story that appeared two days after the figures were released. My point was that you initially relied on material that came from Portland and focused on that city, waiting an extra day to do local coverage. That's not impressive.
I'm sorry you don't think that kind of delay is a valid criticism, but I'll bet your readers who are taxpayers and parents of school kids do.
Al Diamon