Admit it: When you sit down to watch “The Real Housewives of D.C.,” (after, of course, taking in “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer”) do you really want to see some boring real-life society ladies? Or do you want to see that incredibly glamorous Northern Virginia woman who crashed President Obama’s first state dinner (with her willing husband), compromised National Security, posed as a former Redskins cheerleader even though she couldn’t dance to the team’s fight song (oh, the shame!), and generally drove the local and national media into a self-igniting frenzy?
Well?
And you wonder why only 1.4 percent of national news coverage is devoted to education? Let’s see: PISA test results . or the latest exploits of Tareq and Michaele?
I’d choose PISA, but, then, I’m an intellectual. And I love reading bar graphs.
All right. Jokes aside. This is serious, the Brookings Institution says. And, of course, it is. But, as The Core Knowledge Blog’s Robert Pondiscio notes, newspapers and other media are businesses — and embattled businesses, at that — “not public interest vehicles.”
“The call for more, better and nuanced education news is fine,” he writes, “but the idea that our oxygen-starved major media ought to be the standard-bearer is a bit of wishful thinking. It ignores too many irreversible trends in the way news is produced and consumed.”
Pondiscio does agree with a Brookings recommendation that foundations and nonprofit organizations supply what it calls “alternative forms of education coverage, both nationally and locally.”
On another note: Ever wonder how to get your son or daughter into a top-notch institution of higher learning, like, say, Atlanta’s Emory University? Here’s a hint: Don’t let their admissions essay be a travelogue about your church’s last mission trip.
Guess it’s been done before. Anyway, that’s some of the advice that Jean Jordan, Emory’s dean of admissions, gives to Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Laura Diamond. Alas, informative as this advice is, it still doesn’t truly crack the college admissions code for AJC blogger Maureen Downey, who’s helped one son and daughter get into college and is bracing to go through the process again in eight years.
“Anyone have any good advice for high school seniors and their weary parents?” she asks.
Well, if you want to get noticed, maybe this site could help. Or maybe not.
Lawrence Hardy, Senior Editor
