Crowded Field of Online News Sites Focuses on Education Issues
National and Local Outlets Providing a Wealth of Specialized Content
Joshua P. Starr considers himself a big consumer of news about education. The veteran educator and former superintendent has had a lot more content available to peruse lately.
The past two years or so have seen a boom in online news outlets covering education. New local and national sites are focusing exclusively on the subject; general-interest sites have education beat reporters or otherwise include K-12 issues in their mix.
"I happen to be a pretty avid reader of a lot of those things," said Mr. Starr, who was in the news himself in February after he and the Montgomery County, Md., school board failed to come to terms on renewing his contract as district chief.
He rattled off a few news sources he checks regularly, including some that fit the definition of new, some that are decidedly old-school, and others that fall somewhere in the middle: Education Post, The Hechinger Report, Politico Morning Education,The Washington Post's Answer Sheet blog, and Education Week.
He also checks a number of other blogs, print publications, and news "aggregators," which are sites such as Real Clear Education that link to articles from a variety of sources.
"I do think that superintendents need to stay abreast of what's being said about public education, and what the discourse is," said Mr. Starr, who in June became the chief executive officer of Phi Delta Kappa International, the professional association that publishes the Kappan magazine and the annual PDK/Gallup Poll on education.
Disruption Yields New Titles
The "digital disruption" of the news business—which involves huge financial challenges for "legacy" news organizations but also an explosion of online outlets—has so far "been pretty good for education reporting," said LynNell Hancock, a professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
Multimedia
"There are far more places now that are doing serious, long-form education reporting," said Ms. Hancock, who directs the Spencer Fellowship Program for midcareer education journalists and who covered education for Newsweek. "And there are more places for reporters to do this kind of work than ever before."
The new sites are diverse in scope as well as in business model or funding status. While several are for-profit ventures or part of larger companies, many are nonprofits supported by various philanthropies.
In addition to all the titles on Mr. Starr's daily reading list, the new online outlets include such education-specific ones as Chalkbeat, which has bureaus covering state and local education news in New York state, Tennessee, Indiana, and Colorado; LA School Report, which covers the Los Angeles district; and IdahoEdNews, a new effort covering school matters in that state.
Some of the newest education-focused sites include Bright, a more feature-oriented outlet; and The Seventy Four, co-founded by the former NBC News and CNN anchor Campbell Brown. That site, whose name refers to the 74 million U.S. children under age Crowded Field of Online News Sites Focuses on Education Issues - Education Week:
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