Re-Imagining Education Coverage: Failure & Success
By Alexander Russo
This image has nothing to do with the blog post that follows.
Let’s be honest. It’s easy to dismiss so-called “solutions” journalism. It’s such a goofy name. In education, at least, it’s distractingly associated with the Gates Foundation (who’s funded the Seattle Times’ Education Lab).
There’s a long and highly-valued tradition among journalists for doing the opposite of finding solutions. That’s not what they do.
But even despite all those drawbacks and distractions, there’s also a tremendous appeal to the notion that media outlets can and should provide a mix of investigative pieces and coverage of progress (or attempts at progress) that are being made in even the most troubled situations.
Or at least that’s the case that David Bornstein makes in his work with the Solutions Journalism Network: that journalism should include a mix of investigative work (think Stephanie Simon) and coverage of promising research and programs (think Paul Tough).
“It’s the yin to the yang of investigative journalism,” Bornstein told me in a recent phone call.
To hijack a common newsroom saying, journalism is doing a decent job afflicting the comfortable, but not so good at comforting the afflicted. (Or, as Bornstein puts it, “Really smart people sometimes fall into writing that lacks nuance and creativity.”)
In newsrooms and panels around the country, Bornstein has been making the case that journalism is currently out of whack, focusing too narrowly on its role as “disinfectant.”
[Disclosures: The Gates Foundation invited me to moderate a panel at its most recent education conference and paid my travel expenses. This site is funded by the AFT and Education Post. I am a member of EWA, which has held at least one panel on the solutions approach.]
According to Bornstein, the Solutions Network has worked with about 40 different news organizations and have seen roughly 20 different funders. The outlets include the Boston Globe [funded by Nellie Mae], Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Detroit Free Press [violence prevention], Univision, Fusion, PBS NewsHour, Cleveland Plain Dealer, and WAMU.
Agree with him or not — I’m on the fence — it’s useful to understand what Bornstein’s talking about.
Understanding solutions journalism requires knowing a bit about how journalism gets produced: In pretty much every situation, editors and reports make a choice about how to come at the topic.Take high school dropouts. One approach would be to focus on the schools with the highest dropout rates, pointing out how poorly they are serving kids and using public dollars. Another approach would be to focus on schools making progress lowering their dropout rates — or at least trying to do so — and exploring what if any tactics could be used in other places. A third approach, is to focus on a mix of success and failure, ideally in some way that’s representative of the larger trend rather than focusing on extremes or outliers.
Too often, if not exclusively, journalists in education and other beats these days tend to focus on exposing the problems, flaws, and setbacks, notes Bornstein. It’s an honorable and important function, exposing failure. (It’s my natural tendency to point out flaws, so call me guilty on this front.) But what’s missing in that conversation? And what’s the likely result of overdoing it?
“It’s like a parent criticizing a child every day and expecting the child to do better,” says Bornstein.
If focusing on flaws becomes the vast majority of what editors and reporters spend their time doing, there are problems. Producing that kind of journalism can come to seem a waste of time, painting the same picture again and again. A focus on failure can give the public and policymakers a skewed understanding of what’s going on in schools.
And despite the powerful feelings of outrage that such stories can produce, relying Re-Imagining Education Coverage: Failure & Success | The Grade | The Washington Monthly:
