Blogger,
Lamar White, has done brilliant reporting, yes, real reporting, on Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal and his gradual destruction of public education in Louisiana. To all you professional journalists who mock the efforts of bloggers, and not all paid journalists do, my advice would be to learn from the likes of Lamar and other fine bloggers. Lamar explores the results of the efforts of the out-of-towners whom Jindal has brought in and paid high salaries to "fix" public education in Louisiana. I don't mean to imply that our education system did not and does not need fixing, but Jindal's failing gurus are most emphatically not doing the job of improving public education in Louisiana.
John White and his team at the Department of Education, in an effort to
demonstrate how the public school system is failing Louisiana school
children, are diverting millions in funding every year from public
schools in order to enrich some of the worst schools in the United
States– religious zealots posing as educators, fly-by-night operators
who don’t even have the necessary infrastructure, and bigoted and
religiously intolerant “church schools” that specialize in utilizing
thoroughly debunked textbooks and materials to stifle dissent, schools
that seek to enrich themselves with taxpayer dollars while reserving
their right to expel any student on the basis of their perceived sexual
orientation or religion.
There you have it - the fix for public education by the well-paid out-of-towners, who are no more than flim-flam artists paid generous salaries by our flim-flam artist governor. I am no xenophobe, but please, Governor Jindal, if you're going to bring in people from other states and pay them high salaries, even as you lay off thousands of state employees and raise the unemployment figures here in Louisiana, at the very least, hire people who are knowledgeable and competent in their jobs, and not the likes of John White and his cohorts.
To all you professional journalists who mock the efforts of bloggers, and not all paid journalists do, my advice would be to learn from the likes of Lamar and other fine bloggers.
ReplyDeleteWell said.
You might want to see the blog of +Nick Baines of Bradford: his most recent post has a lot to say about the debased state of modern journalism.
And you might also want to look out the work of two guys - Rico Sorda and Neil McMurray - who have carefully researched and exposed the corrupt behaviour of politicians in Jersey who by fair means or foul have been trying to discredit the investigation into endemic child abuse.
James, for me, it's a chicken/egg question. No doubt fewer people read newspapers and watch TV news, but I wonder if the blame is all on the internet. On the spot reporting on TV has almost disappeared. I once liked the Sunday TV news shows, but now the guests are the same, tired old pundits, spouting the conventional wisdom of the last century, and I'm not talking the 1990s.
DeleteNewspapers were taken over by media moguls who valued the bottom line above reporting the news, and the result was obvious and predictable. I could go on about how TV and newspapers were participants in their own demise.