Big front-page headlines on local school news has always been a rarity for daily newspapers. But these days, say local educators, the region’s dailies are giving the subject less attention than ever before.
Barry Groves, superintendent of the Mountain View-Los Altos High School District, said the decline is due to newspaper downsizing, with fewer reporters available to keep up with local angles — a trend he finds distressing. Groves has worked for MVLA for the past two years, and served as superintendent of the Cambrian School District in San Jose for 14 years.
“Over the past 15 years as a superintendent in this county, I’ve noticed the sad diminution of quality accurate local reporting,” he said. “The Mercury News and Chronicle have cut back their coverage of local school news to the bare minimum. Local radio and television rarely cover our school district events,” he said.
Groves said that when he was growing up in Petaluma in the 1970s, there were multiple media outlets covering Petaluma High School.
“We had a local radio station that broadcast local news, a local daily paper delivered six days a week that covered school and student activities in detail, a regional seven-day-a-week newspaper that covered the county, and two large urban dailies in San Francisco. In Mountain View, we basically now have the Mountain View Voice.”
Groves said the result of the diminished coverage is that it has become “more difficult for the public to become knowledgeable” of what’s taking place in local schools.
Ellen Wheeler, a Mountain View Whisman school district trustee, agrees wholeheartedly with Groves, and adds that on the rare occasion when dailies do run local education stories, the content leaves much to be desired.
“I’m interested in analysis, commentary, and deeper stories written by people that have some expertise and established credibility in news and opinions,” Wheeler said. “Analysis and commentary of stories have been lessened. Newspapers primarily print short news stories that play right into the hands of Internet providers, who provide that same service and in a timelier manner.”
Groves said the information the public reads from the Internet often offers an inaccurate version of events in local schools.
“I am concerned about the lack of a regular reliable independent source of information on our local public activities. More people get their news from the Internet that is riddled with biased Web sites, inaccurate information, and sometimes slanderous and venomous blogs,” he said.
Arts coverage also has been deeply affected by Bay Area media conglomeration, said Evy Schiffman, who has been marketing director of Mountain View’s Community School of Music and Arts for the past 17 years.
Schiffman said it has become increasingly difficult to find anything substantial about arts-related news and events.
“The large papers since the conglomeration that has occurred have cut out most of their arts writers. I can’t go read about the opening of an exhibit or about a new play anymore,” she said.
CSMA used to have an overview of its entire arts season printed in the arts and entertainment section of the Mercury News, Schiffman said. But not anymore.
“It’s much harder to get face time. There’s just not much staff covering arts,” she said.
Schiffman added that with fewer writers on the beat, the remaining coverage is often inaccurate. And she finds that short Web-based articles about arts, entertainment and education are not nearly as satisfying to read as the articles that the large daily papers used to run in these areas.
“Frankly, I just really miss the old papers,” she said.
E-mail Alexa Tondreau at atondreau@mv-voice.com
