Boom on the School Beat

When voters in a Portland, Ore. suburb recently torpedoed a tax increase that would have provided more money for their schools, Superintendent of Schools Floyd Light knew just what the trouble was: Wilma Morrison, education editor of the union-struck Portland Oregonian, had not been around to push for the measure. Said Light darkly: "Her being out definitely hurt us. The story was not brought before the public."

In crediting Editor Morrison with such influence, Light was pointing a finger at what may be the biggest boom in U.S. newspapers: education reporting, long neglected by the nation's daily press but now getting the benefit of better talent and more news space than ever before.

As one part of the new look in education coverage, the New York Times has three fulltime education reporters working under Education Editor Fred M. Hechinger, who last week landed three education stories on Page One (one morning last week, the Times devoted three inside pages to education news). The New York Herald Tribune's Terry Ferrer (sister of Actor Mel Ferrer) has a staff of two, and last week the Trib gave full play to the beginning of her exhaustive, five-part study of U.S. colleges and universities. On the Minneapolis Star, the education beat is covered in depth: one man for higher education, another at the secondary and elementary level, still another staffer who keeps busy supervising the 35 high-school students who work as paid education stringers.

In Chicago the Sun-Times's Education Editor Ruth Dunbar roves a beat that in recent years has encompassed Russia and the Far East, produced effective stories on the public-education systems in the Soviet Union, Korea and Japan. Helen Fleming, of the Chicago Daily News, writes with such telling effect on the local education scene that, after a series observing that the Chicago school system made only seven of 16 basic high-school courses compulsory, and questioning the latitude this left the student, the school board added four more courses to the compulsory list. In Los Angeles, as a public service, the Examiner each week distributes 114,000 copies of a current-events tabloid to 115 high schools. And Portland's Morrison, a tireless crusader for better schools, has helped get teachers' pay boosted, forced the Portland school board and the state board of higher education, which both used to hold closed-door meetings, to open up; in fact, the Portland board passed a resolution guaranteeing the press's right to cover all meetings.

Retiring the Hacks. It used to be that the journalist assigned to education ranked somewhere below the real estate editor and above the chief copy boy.

When Benjamin Fine, who spent 17 years as the New York Times education editor before moving last year to the North American Newspaper Alliance, first hit the Times for a job, City Editor David H. Joseph told him there were no "reporting jobs" open--but took Fine on as an education writer. Recalls the New York Herald Tribune's Terry Ferrer: "In the early days, most of the papers used women who would be sent out on education stories when they weren't busy on society. A lot of stuff was passed off as education reporting when it really wasn't. I mean the pictures of college girls in tight sweaters and football helmets." A pent-up postwar demand for new schools and new teachers generated a new public interest in public education--and forced newspapers to re-examine a neglected corner of the local scene. Inevitably, the hack writers began to disappear, and today's education reporter bears little resemblance to his predecessor. He knows his subject and often brings to it, as in the case of Ben Fine (who holds seven honorary and one earned doctorate degrees), actual experience in teaching. At an educators' conference several years ago, when one speaker tried to fob off some phony statistics on teacher-student ratios, the assembled reporters not only challenged them but were able to show where he was wrong.

The education reporter no longer looks at the schoolroom picture windows or handsome parquet floors shown off by proud principals; instead, he is interested in the teachers and the students. After the first Russian Sputnik restimulated interest in education in 1957, says Education Editor Richard Philbrick of the Chicago Tribune, there "was a sudden increase in interest in the curriculum and the scholastic standards. The newspapers merely reflected this change in emphasis."

Preparing for Problems. The new emphasis on interpretive reporting has earned both the respect and the gratitude of the educators themselves. Says Dr. Francis S. Chase, dean of the University of Chicago graduate school of education: "Education reporting is 100% better today than it was even five years ago. One of the important differences is that the papers tend to assign good people to education stories now." Perhaps the healthiest sign of progress is that the newspapers recognize the need for even more improvement in the field.

"We're still moving too slowly and doing too inadequate a job," said Paul Swens-son, managing editor of the Minneapolis Star, last week. "We have shown a willingness to expand manpower, devote more space and tackle the complex side--the philosophy rather than just the business --of education. But we're still not ready for the big problems of the 1960s." What seems certain, in the light of continuing improvements, is that the new breed of education reporter will get ready.

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