We hear it all the time: the government is governing against the will of the people. But we've been seeing the same sad phenomenon for decades in every city in America, where the local paper (often enjoying a monopoly) will report and editorialize against the will of the people. I see it every day in my paper in Norfolk.
In particular, I've been astonished at the complacent and complicit way the paper reports on education. They don't report on education. Oh, they'll tell you that a principal has been fired or a new building is under construction. But they won't tell you why a quarter of the class can't read and a quarter of the kids entering school don't graduate. That's the really big news.
Moreover, these kids who can't read won't grow up to be customers of newspapers. So it seems to me many newspapers have a death wish. But then they turn around and say: we need a government handout to survive!
If we're going to improve public schools in the US, we really need the help of local media. They have to engage in a much more energetic kind of investigative journalism. Encourage your paper to do this.
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