Category: news

The shrinking news hole for education

It should come as no surprise to those of us in higher ed PR who try to get media attention for our institutions, but now it’s official: according to a new report from the Brookings Institution, the traditional news media pays scant attention to education.

Education coverage makes up just 1.4 percent of news covered on a national level, according to the report. And most of that coverage has little to do with learning.

Oddly enough, the amount of coverage in 2009 was an increase over the past two years (0.7 percent in 2008 and 1 percent in 2007.) “This makes it difficult for the public to follow the issues at stake in our education debates and to understand how to improve school performance,” the Brookings report concludes.

Brookings conducted an analysis of national media coverage of education in newspapers, news Web sites, network and cable television and radio during the first nine months of 2009. As CASE points out in its summary of the report, the researchers “found that newspapers and radio stations placed more emphasis on stories related to school finance and budget cutbacks, network television to stories on H1N1 flu or health issues, cable to politics in education, and online sites to education reform.”

I guess those of us in higher ed should be thankful that we get the lion’s share of the coverage. Twenty-seven percent of that national media coverage pertains to colleges and universities. Community colleges don’t fare so well, earning just one-tenth of the coverage four-year institutions receive — a 2.9 percent slice of education coverage overall.

http://genflux.chartle.net/embed?index=23618&content

The Brookings report offers several suggestions for improving the amount and quality of news coverage of education. Topping the list is a commitment by educational institutions to make communication with the news media a priority. Hey, that’s one of the reasons we’re in this business, right?

Friday Five: random-access memory

Update – Friday, Oct. 9, 2009: Since I haven’t blogged all week, and I’m too depressed from the St. Louis Cardinals’ loss last night against the L.A. Dodgers in game 2 of the NLCS (Dodgers now lead the best-of-five series, 2-0), I’ll just keep last week’s Friday Five here. Look for a return of regular blogging over the weekend, or possibly Monday.

Random thoughts and links as the weekend bears down upon us:

  1. Anyone got a spare Google Wave invitation? I’d like one, please. If you would give me your spare, I would be forever grateful. I would be your most ardent fanboy.
  2. Sometimes I wish I were British so no one would give me odd looks when I say “bollocks.” Also, I’d feel much more comfortable saying “bollocks” and would say it more often.
  3. Found out this morning that Clay Shirky (author of Here Comes Everybody) is from Columbia, Mo., home of the world’s oldest journalism school, which is also my alma mater. In his latest blog post, Rescuing The Reporters, he analyzes — and literally deconstructs — a recent edition of his hometown paper, The Columbia Daily Tribune, and concludes, “most of the substantive part of that day’s Trib wasn’t locally created, and most of it wasn’t news.” of course, there’s much more to his post that is worth reading if you’re interested in the state of the news business and where it may be headed. It’s worth a read. (Hat tip to Michael Stoner, aka @mStonerblog, for the link to Shirky’s post and the Shirky biographical info.)
  4. Here’s confirmation that I’m not the only one who has to deal with a lack of response to emails. A post on today’s Chronicle Brainstorm blog, Are you E-gnoring me?, laments the lack of response from harried academics, the absent-minded professor types. For me, the chief e-gnorers are administrators who don’t want to deal with my pesky reminders about missed deadlines, etc.
  5. Sometimes I learn things from the most unlikely of sources. Late last week, an administrator on campus sent me a link to the social media revolution video that’s been making the rounds the past couple of weeks. (The video is related to Erik Qualman’s book Socialnomics, which is also the name of Erik’s blog.) This administrator was one of the last people I thought I’d receive such a link from. I was happy to learn of his interest in social media, and we had a nice 30-minute conversation as a result of his sharing that link.

    6. Bonus: I think it’s awesome that Jim Halpert — Michael Scott’s co-manager in The Office — now has his own World’s Best Boss mug. That just goes to show what a great boss Michael Scott is, to give that gift to Jim.

Have a great weekend.