The Citizen isn’t necessarily renowned for its amazing journalistic quality, as is true with many small-town newspapers. But over the last week or two of reading the paper, I’ve really noticed a lack of news judgment, or at least the appearance of it. With a population of just over 80,000 in Rockdale County (Clarke County has almost 113,000) there should be something newsworthy going on most days of the week.
But I’ve found most of the items under the “News” section tend to be more feature stories and there just seems to be a lack of newsworthy items, which kind of makes me sad.
In the Sunday paper there was an article on the front page about a couple which was caught “in the act” in a parking lot over the weekend. I could be wrong (and definitely don’t claim to know everything about news judgment), but I just don’t see that as a front-page story, especially for a Sunday paper.
So now that we all know where I stand on The Citizen as of right now, I can get to the article published in the Feb. 12 issue by Michelle Floyd, titled “C.J. Hicks receives national award.”
Minus a few very small errors, the copy is clean. But my problem with it is that it touches on an issue – this elementary school having 81 percent of its students in an economically disadvantaged category – and doesn’t give any sort of explanation why that may be.
The article is about C.J. Hicks, an elementary school on the north side of Rockdale County, receiving national recognition as a High Flying School. Floyd informs the reader that schools qualified for this recognition must have a record of academic success, a population where more than half of the school’s students live at or below the poverty line and the student population must be highly diverse (presumably in terms of race/ethnicity, though that is not specifically stated).
I think one of the most interesting angles of this story is how an elementary school with such a high percentage of economically disadvantaged students is doing so well. Not to say it should be doing poorly, but rather I’d like to know what these teachers do to make sure they provide their students with the best possible learning environment and how they have been successful in doing so. I would like to know why so many students at this school are living at or below the poverty line. Is this a problem at any other schools in the county?
I know the story is about the recognition being received, but I don’t think it would hurt to include some of that additional information as well. I’m also slightly confused about what the High Flying Schools Award (mistakenly referred to as just the High Flying Award in the eighth paragraph) actually means for the school. Will the school receive some kind of additional funding? Or is it purely an honorable recognition?
Floyd mentions C.J. Hicks has been making adequate yearly progress (not certain why the phrase is capitalized in the article) for the past seven years. I’m left wondering, what constitutes adequate yearly progress? She also mentions the school offers “community collaboration and special programs and character-building initiatives.” I’m interested to know what kinds of collaborations, programs and initiatives the school is involved in.
Some of this could simply be due to lack of newshole, which can definitely impact the amount of in-depth reporting a story receives. But I think at least some of the questions that came to mind when reading this should have been addressed in the article.
The responsibility for answering such questions falls on both the reporter and the editor, but I think the editor really should be the one to recognize when an article brings up unanswered questions. It’s all too easy as a reporter to get so close to the story and think everything makes sense. A smart, observant editor should recognize when there are holes and do their best to patch them before the article is printed.
-Brittany Cofer
Brittany,
ReplyDeleteGood analysis. You raise a lot of appropriate questions. As we've discussed before, it's common for news stories to use specialized terms (adequate yearly progress, for instance) without properly explaining them. This is where the reminder "What you take for granted, you cannot improve" comes in. Readers end up scratching their heads, and instead of feeling smarter after reading a story, they feel dumber.
I think your two key questions are:
-- What does the school get for winning the award, money or just a handshake?
and
-- What is the school doing differently from others that makes it so successful?
It could be a really interesting story. Maybe the paper will follow up.