Teach for America vs. Journalism

It’s a little lame to write a post that consists of one long quote, but I think the comment below, posted on Michael Gerson’s op-ed “Teach for America: Education reform in action,” deserves the attention:

Experienced journalist Michael Gerson enthusiastically supports the idea that a teacher in a troubled DC school, just “fresh out of college, with five weeks of training, was thrown into the deep end of the teaching profession in a low-income school.” Thus I propose a similar solution for the terrible state of newspaper journalism, which is losing readers in droves:

• Bring in a bold, visionary leader who has three years reporting experience, during which time the person, like Michelle Rhee, claims to have increased circulation from 13% to over 90% (but has no data to support that claim).
• Support this leader’s plan to fire a significant share of reporters and replace them with energetic recent college grads from elite schools who become reporters for a few years before moving on to other, more lucrative careers. (No journalism majors need apply. Smart people already know how to write and they’ll be taught everything they need to know about reporting in a five week intensive summer course.)
• Chastise current reporters for recoiling when the new leader goes around the country blaming journalists for the shameful decline in circulation.
• Consider it perfectly reasonable when the leader says things like [borrowing from DC Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee], “As a newspaper reporter, you have to be willing to take personal responsibility for ensuring citizens read the newspaper daily, despite obstacles. You can’t say, ‘My readers are spending more time on the internet,’ or ‘Young people today aren’t in the habit of reading the newspaper,’ or ‘Their checks bounce, so their subscriptions are cut off.”
• Expect that the good reporters that print journalism needs to attract in order to remain solvent to come rushing to its doors upon hearing the leader’s claims of success with her readers during her own brief reporting stint [again borrowing from Rhee]: “Their reading habits did not change, their interests did not change, their commute did not change, their occupational demands did not change. What changed were the reporters writing articles for them every single day. And that made every bit of difference.”

If journalists discount this as a simplistic, misguided approach of someone who doesn’t understand the news business, please consider that Michael Gerson’s Teach-for-America approach to improving education is just as simplistic and even more misguided.

This comment was written by “efavorite.”