BillHobbs.com - Blogging about politics and media from Nashville.

NashvilleIsTalking.com has a pretty good round-up on the Kay Brooks story, including links to various blogs and the news articles in The Tennessean and the Nashville City Paper. It's not central to the debate, but I've noticed something a bit interesting in the news coverage about Kay Brooks' election to fill a vacant seat on the Nashville school board. The Tennessean hasn't mentioned Brooks' blog, where she writes extensively about education issues. The City Paper today describes Brooks as "an Internet blogger on education issues," but fails to give readers the name of or a link to her blog. It's http://kaybrooks.blogspot.com/.

I can't for the life of me figure out why The Tennessean isn't telling readers about Brooks' blog, and how to find it. If it's because the reporter simply doesn't know about the blog, that's pathetic - and would suggest the paper doesn't pay much attention to the city's rather active and informed political blogosphere.

On the other hand, if the reporter knows about Brooks' blog but is choosing to leave it out of the story, that is a serious error in journalistic judgement. Newspapers are supposed to help readers be fully informed, especially about policy and government issues. Brooks has just been appointed to fill the unexpired term of a school board member who resigned early. She has written a blog focused on education issues since April 2005, which seems to be a relevant fact in and of itself.

The content of her blog is also relevant. Readers who want to know more about Brooks as they decide whether or not to vote for her in August would be well-served by reading her blog. Readers - and the voters of Brooks district - can not be fully informed without knowledge of her blog.

If I was the education reporter or editor at The Tennessean or the Nashville City Paper, I'd be reading all of her blog, starting with the April 2005 archive, and preparing a follow-up story.

I posted the following on Nathan Moore's blog also:

I have refrained from comment on this school board controversy, but I'll put in a word here for Kay, with some qualifiers.

I don't live in Nashville. I am a strong supporter of public schools. They are essential to our national cohesiveness, which is under threat. Americans are becoming more fragmented as a people. I believe contemporaries lose out on some valuable things when their generation isn't schooled together - interacting, growing and sealing a group consciousness and sense of purpose, and pulling one another forward. The baby boomers had that.

The growing popularity of private schools and home-schooling concerns me, but I don't condemn those alternatives. Far from it.

My husband is a retired elementary school principal whose school became a National School of Excellence under his leadership. He taught at the high school level for many years. He could write a book about what's wrong and what's right with public schools today.

I've criticized politicians who arrogantly perpetrate policy (including immigration policy) that is destroying our public schools and the educational opportunities for kids without the options available to the politicians' kids, many of whom are in private schools.

And I can understand some of the criticism of folks who want to serve on a local school board but teach their own kids at home or have them in private schools. But these folks are part of the community and have ideas worth listening to and possibly implementing. Give Kay Brooks a fair chance and consider what she has to say. Clearly she has done her homework.

Posted by: Donna Locke at May 19, 2006 4:20 PM

May 19, 2006

Kay Brooks Update