Finally, I can type “2016” in these open thread headlines, and it’s actually right!
Some topics:
- South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley To Give GOP’s State Of The Union Response — Why am I only seeing this on the NPR site? Is it old news, and I just missed it?
- Seth Rose suggests changes to penny tax program — On the same day as his fellow councilman turned himself in on tax charges. Seth continues to establish himself as a voice of accountability on Richland County Council.
You know what? This isn’t a Virtual Front Page. I’m going to stop at those two suggestions, and leave it to y’all to come up with any other topics you want to talk about. This is, after all, an open thread…
Related Posts
Well, It’s on the front page of The State paper.
They couldn’t get the two council people story off the main headline fast enough.
Hmmm……………………..
Well, The State was backing the penny tax (and most tax increases), so this story is a little embarrassing for them. They were duped just like many others were.
Oh, give me a break, people!
Got paranoia?
It simply doesn’t work like that. The motivations you imagine simply are not present in the people involved. People making news judgments do not give a damn what the editorial page said. If you’ve never worked at a newspaper, this might be hard for you to understand, but the fact is that only someone who hasn’t worked at a paper would imagine what you’re imagining.
Newspapers are filled with fallible, overworked people who are as prone to evil as anyone. But most of the sins that laypeople ascribe to journalists indicate a lack of understanding on the part of the critics. You imagine they do things they are not motivated to do.
They do a lot of bad stuff, but it’s seldom the kinds of bad stuff that too many people imagine…
Are you suggesting that the general sentiment of the management at The State was not in favor of the penny tax (or another sketchy waste of tax dollars, Innovista)? That Nikki Haley making a speech is bigger news than a multi million dollar tax scam that likely involved a fixed election?
There is also the current state of journalism where newspapers are regularly scooped by individual bloggers (Fitsnews, The Nerve, the group that exposed Bobby Harrell). Rather than work harder to not let that happen, there is some whiff of “if we didn’t do it, it didn’t happen”. The State has really given up the role of investigative journalism in favor of football fandom.
I have no idea what you’re talking about about, Doug. Here’s today’s front page. What is your problem with it?
I believe Barry was speaking of the front page of The State’s webpage. Do people even read newspapers any more? (Half kidding). Right now, the story of the tax evasion is buried on the side as the 4th link… after the death of a NC high school student. Seems pretty unimportant to The State.
Deputies search for suspects in department store armed robbery
10:36 AM
Report: Chester woman dropped drugs in jail for inmate boyfriend to find
9:34 AM
NC high school senior – a world-class jump roper – killed in Wyoming plane crash
9:21 AM
Penny tax fallout: Ex-Columbia councilman gets probation for not paying taxes
11:11 AM
Guess we’ll have to wait until The Nerve or FitsNews breaks the next story to find out more about this.
You want to hear relevant criticism of The State’s main web page? Here you go: In my experience, news judgment is terribly lacking in how stories are displayed online.
Near as I can tell, the editors are making a constant choice of valuing changing up the page — so that a person who looks at it more than once a day is likely to see different things, and be encouraged to keep coming back — over any sort of judgment of relative importance of stories.
As a guy who (many years ago, when I was the guy — at more than one paper — who decided what went on the front page and how it was played) has spent many painful hours agonizing over precisely the right nuance in the play of front-page stories in the old print edition, this is distressing.
Over the next few days, try it and see if you agree. Call up the page multiple times in a day. You’ll see that sometimes the most important stories are played most prominently, while at other times the same stories aren’t even on the first screen.
You will see — if you’re looking at it dispassionately — that it’s far closer to being random than any sort of statement of the paper’s priorities. Beyond, that is, the priority I mentioned… that of showing you something different at different times.
It’s so (painfully, to me) haphazard that trying to apply some conspiracy theory to it is laughable.
As to your completely irrelevant question: “Are you suggesting that the general sentiment of the management at The State was not in favor of the penny tax (or another sketchy waste of tax dollars, Innovista)?”
And again, unless you’ve worked at a newspaper for years, and been a member of senior management, you can’t fully understand just HOW irrelevant such a question is…
But if you want my best understanding of where the editorial board of The State stood (which is the closest thing you can get to an indication of where “management” stood on the issue) on the penny tax, go back and read this.
That’s actually a good post to read, because it sketches out my own view on the tax — which was, as I said, that I was 55 percent for it (I liked the funding for buses, wasn’t crazy about the funding of road projects). And that was enough for me to do my best to try to get it passed.
And as I wrote, on that go-round, I was frankly surprised that The State went for it, because of my knowledge of the players, and the fact that I had been in the room pitching it to the board and watched their reactions. I knew going in that Cindi would be dead-set against it. Warren, it seemed to me, might go either way — although I knew that like me, he would favor the bus-funding part of the measure. Executive Editor Mark Lett, who inherited the editorial department when my position was eliminated, is an unknown to me. He was not involved in editorial decisions or operations when I was there — his and my departments were kept carefully apart — and I don’t recall him ever revealing to me his opinion on ANY issue.
What I believe is that the deciding factor was then-Publisher Henry Haitz. I had reasons to believe that Henry was impressed by Ike McLeese’s support of the measure, and wanted to support the Chamber. Henry was just that kind of uncomplicated, pro-business kind of guy.
Anyway, without Henry’s involvement, I have my doubts that the board would have gone for it. As it was, their endorsement was fairly lukewarm.
Let’s suppose the newspaper world is as Doug imagines it to be — that both editorial and news judgments are made on the basis of personal whim and face-saving. Well, even in a world like that, Henry’s support for the measure back then would cut very little ice with the folks currently making news judgments.
I don’t quite know how to put this without being unprofessional — and you must take ANYTHING I say about Henry with a grain of salt, since the man fired me — but he wasn’t, to say the least, the best-loved boss among the people who worked there then and are still there now.
Even if editors did make news judgments — twisting the truth, burying news — to please former publishers, Henry wasn’t the kind of guy they’d do it for.
Another way to put it: There were four people who made that decision. Two of them are gone now (including Henry, who I see as most responsible for the position), and I know that one of the two who remain opposed the tax.
Enough said. More than enough said, really. In fact, I might look at this again in a few minutes and decide to cut parts of it…
I see enough stories lately about various media organizations covering up their mistakes or refusing to acknowledge the work of other outlets to not be swayed by your utopian view of how you perceived The State to work. Everyone their is just nose to the grindstone, churning out hard unbiased news and never considering any other factors like community relationships, revenue, advertising dollars.
Utopian? UTOPIAN?
Are you even reading the words I’m writing? Here I am, the only expert on this subject that you know, telling you that there are PLENTY of things to criticize in what the folks at the paper do (and even offering some of them, as reluctant as I am to appear as the crotchety old guy taking potshots at my former colleagues), but that YOUR criticism reflects a lack of understanding of what’s going on. And, more than that, in no way fits the observable facts, since the CLEAREST indication of what the editors value, an indication that should be glaringly obvious to the most casual reader, is the story they choose to lead the paper with.
Which is the TRUTH.
How on Earth is that “utopian?”
I won’t jump into too much of the conspiracy fray
but I will say if I want to read an in-depth article about something going on with Richland County or state government, I’ll read The Nerve. I actually have it bookmarked. I don’t have The State bookmarked.
They do a much better job investigating anything at all compared to The State.
The State is totally worthless to me now regarding local or state news and I wouldn’t have said that even 2 years ago.
I’ve bought the paper 4-5 times in the last 12 months- and that was for coupons in the Sunday paper.
I dunno Brad. I remember the Power series from the early 90s. The State was adamant that state government needed restructuring. When it was there was zero follow up that would have exposed the numerous failures of the legislation. The State clearly had no intention of finding evidence to contradict their zealous beliefs in the matter. It was a clear case of journalist bias.
Well, Bud, I know that you have specific complaints about restructuring in terms of the specific agency that you have direct experience with.
But as I’ve pointed out a number of times before, the Legislature never did what we were recommending with regard to that agency (which puts it in the same boat as a bunch of other agencies they refused to reform).
As you know, that battle is still being fought. The Legislature’s — specifically, the Senate’s — refusal to reform that agency is a big reason why we didn’t reach agreement on fixing the state’s roads last year.
Anyway, my point is this: Challenging the value of the reforms we championed in light of an agency that, as we’ve made clear all along, was NOT reformed (they made changes, but I wouldn’t call them reforms) is a non sequitur. It just doesn’t follow…
Study out of Vanderbilt University shows no n benefit from preschool education. Maybe we should focus the spending wasted on 4k on other things like teacher pay, vocational training.
http://www.intellectualtakeout.org/blog/aaaand-another-study-says-preschool-hurts-not-helps
From the report itself: “It is apparent that the term pre-k or even high quality pre-k does not convey actionable information about what the critical elements of the program should be. Now is the time to pay careful attention to the challenge of serving the county’s youngest and most vulnerable children in the pre-k programs like TN-VPK that have been developed and promoted with their needs in mind.”
Nowhere in the report does it say “we should focus the spending wasted on 4K on other things like teacher pay and vocational training.”
Doug, I’m not debating the efficacy of pre-k. I’m asking you to be careful about making conclusions and recommendations before reading a report, avoiding a blog’s spin on the report.
That was my conclusion based on the study. The results showed no benefit to pre-k. Do you dispute that? Why waste tax dolars if there is no benefit?
Brad’s granddaughter would likely be able to learn Chinese at age 6 just as well…
I dispute your conclusion that because of one study, pre-k is a waste FOREVER. This is a new program (2009) and change takes time. The authors are CLEARLY suggesting changes in the program, not stopping the program.
Five years is NEW? Ok, tell me how many years you think it should take to show measurable improvement that justifies the cost? Are we just to accept that 4K is with us forever?
I always go back to wondering what i different today from 20 or 40 years ago when kindergarten wasn’t even mandatory? Were we all deprived in some way? Why are we not seeing any significant change in outcomes despite all the changes in the educational system? Two decades of PACT/PASS testing has done nothing to justify its cost and impact on the teaching process.
Yes Doug, five years is new for programs. That’s changing, as is IT. Agile, Fast Failure. Enterprise systems going away. Does that mean IT failed? Nope, it evolved. Program implementation is just adapting, but believe me, it is.
But are you saying the children who went through the first five years were not expected to demonstrate progress? This isn’t one child for five years. It’s one extra year per child. Did anyone tell the parents of the kids in the first year of the program that they weren’t going to get any benefit but kids more than five years later MIGHT?
IT projects are a lot different. You can prove success in year one. You don’t go into them saying “It’s going to take five years before we know what we’re doing”. Also, when projects AREN’T demonstrating value, they are cancelled not continued. Seen it happen many times.
IT projects are NOTORIOUS for taking too long and coming in over budget, hence the move to Agile rather than Waterfall.
50-70% of IT projects fail. The difference is that people are willing to admit failure in most cases on IT projects eventually.
Has there ever been an educator who admitted a program failed and cancelled it? Even with PACT, when they could no longer cherry pick numbers to make it LOOK like there was progress, they just renamed the whole thing to PASS and never admitted it didn’t do anything meaningful to improve education. And PASS has yet to do anything (and never will).
I don’t know about those other kids, but my granddaughter came out of 4K speaking Chinese…
And that justifies 4k for every child how? Is a nice party trick I suppose but do we really need four year olds to learn Chinese when 30% of 8th graders are illiterate?
I didn’t want my any of my children to learn Chinese at 4 or 5 years old. I didn’t really want my children focusing on letters and numbers too much at that age.
I want them playing like children are supposed to do.
My children all went to private church preschool for 3 hours a day. About an hour of that was focused on some type of academic skill. The rest was play time, art, and fun times.
If no one else at the party knows Chinese, I can speak Chinese too.