obviously i'll have something to say about this...

Honest question: Do you really think that any talented black or female journalist has any trouble whatsoever finding a job? Talk to any university internship coordinator...that's what newspapers covet. That's what just about any media-related company covets.

This is hardly the issue. Talented women and minorities simply aren't left to waste on preps and junior college basketball. Their entry-level is much higher than that. And why would minorities go anywhere smaller than the big papers that offer them positions? One of the problems with numbers is this: In half of these places, minorities wouldn't go because, quite simply, they don't have to; if they're any good at all, they're at a mid-major daily.

Mind you, I think this is a real problem. I like to tell the story of a university journalism professor who visited a smart, black, female 17-year-old who lived nearby to try to recruit her to the school. Offered her everything - the equivalent of an athletic scholarship - tuition, room, board, books an internship after her freshman year. You name it.

And she said thank you, but why would she go to the state school when every Ivy League school, Stanford, Georgetown, Cal, Duke and Northwestern were offering her the same thing?

The moral was this: Universities and other professional institutions - hospitals, law firms, the government - love to cherry pick the best minorities, assimilate them, put them out there as poster children for said school or firm, pat themselves on the back, and let the rest of the minorities fend for themselves.

In other words, if you take that number from 4 to, say, 15, you're helping 11 people, just like there's 500 rich rappers, and a bunch of guys doing it part-time, selling CDs out of their trunk. Doesn't mean the problem's gone and, more importantly - it does mean those 11 people will be more inclined to hire minorities.

 

Uh, yeah, higher property taxes generally mean better schools. That's what I'm saying. I'm also saying it's madness.

Look at what you just wrote. You prefer all that nonsense to simply changing the funding mechanism?

 

A thread should never be locked unless there is simply and only urine streaming about the room.

 

Piss off.

 

Yes -- I prefer having a CHOICE to live where I want to live and knowing I can get a better school system for my kids to go to.

The problem with what you are proposing is this -- it will pull the better school systems back down to the middle and it still won't pull the worst school systems up to the top.

It would then create a situation where people who want the best education for the kids would have to pony up the cash to send them to private schools and they would do so in mass numbers, further weakening the school systems -- and where would that leave the public school systems?

At least now, there are many, many good public school options for people to choose from. Under your plan, the best public schools would sink into the sea of mediocrity.

And unfortunately, funding is only one of many reasons the inner city schools and schools in poorer areas suck and no amount of social engineering and tax shifting is going to change.

It is the same thing when it comes to health benefits -- I don't mind paying a higher premium for better health care --- even if it means I don't get to have a big screen TV and a sound system in my car that people three counties away can hear.

Life is about making priorities and making sacrifices to make those priorities come to fruition.

Unfortunately, there are far too many people in this country who don't understand that. They think they deserve to have everything handed to them and they deserve it right now and if Joe up the street has more -- even if it is because he worked harder or because he sacrificed more to make it happen -- it is unfair.

 

Even more surprisingly, I mostly agree with you. (By the way, I'm ignoring the last five or so pages here. I just don't feel like slogging through them).

I say mostly because I can understand Stringer taking Imus's comments personally. He was talking about the players on her team, which directly reflects on her. But I don't think it's wrong to say Stringer milked the controversy for her own ends. And I see no reason why she shouldn't have done that. It doesn't mean her response wasn't sincere and she has every right to do whatever she can to promote her program and her sport.

Edit: Ok...now I'm kinda glad I didn't keep reading...

 

It is, indeed, off.

 

With great respect for Ace--and I'm not even sure he's completely serious here--that makes me shudder.

Female sports readers are just sports readers....why and how would you 'feminize' a sports section without turning off your core readership? I guess I'm channelling Boom, who spent the football season grieving that the Jets coverage in the Times was more appropriate for Ladies Home Journal.

I have the same issue with the notion that female sportswriters will draw more women to the section. It's an insult (maybe unintentional) to suggest women writers and editors are somehow soft enough to attract fans who won't read male writers.

Are there like ten different threads going on here? I am so confused.

 

I am being facetious.

A recent scary trend is to really go after targeted advertising demographics. And females 18-45 or whatever are the most coveted.

I remember one editor being really impressed with how well NBA coverage was attracting female readers.

But I do think any good journalist with ideas that would attract readers of any stripe or gender or transgender would be welcome.

And I have worked with lots of good journalists -- many of them females, some of them sports editors.

The more the merrier.

 

I think its easy to say an engaged parents can often, key word, often make success stories out of children graduating from some of these shytty schools. My personal experience of going to one of those shytty mostly african american schools where the apathy and expectations from disinterested teachers was greeted in return by students smart enough to know that their teachers had little interest in their futures or potential. In the middle of an new AIDS epidemic in our community during the mid-80's I was reading from textbooks in my health class dating back to the days when afros were the in and venereal disease was as bad as it gets. That's a recipe for disaster.

And for many of us raised in a single parent households, all a busy parent has time to offer is trust for these schools to correctly educate their children. Not an easy task.

My oldest daughter lived away from me for several years and was a product of the Miami Dade County school system. After spending several years with me in NYC, my request to put her back one year to overcome her "she's a well behaved, not well educated" school promotions and spending over $20,000 school fees (paying for an education I received for free, pre-reagan administration) is finally showing results. She recently got accepted to one of Miami Dade County's most successful magnet schools. I'd like to believe that my parental efforts should be shared, but the athletic talents which allowed me to break free from the ranks of my limited "hood" education and obtain a higher degree of education to then impart on my children is an anomaly.

Several months ago recommendations by the New Commission on the Skills of the American workforce, a bipartisan commission of former cabinet members, college presidents, business and civic leaders, called for sweeping and dramatic reforms in the American education system. Yet this was greeted by the press with little to no fanfare. structural flaws in the education system hurts the field of journalism more than anything, so it would be in our best interest highlight initiatives like the commission as front page news instead of these all sizzle stories.

 

Did I propose a plan? I'm simply saying that the property tax funding mechanism is a total disaster. Which it is. Everywhere.

States still partially fund education, you know, and states are coming up with some pretty absurd ways of trying to equalize schools outside of the property tax funding. What you hope won't happen...will happen if we continue to fund via property taxes. You can beat your fists against a wall, but once cities annex these school districts -which they are - then take all those tax dollars away to fund inner-city schools - which they have -mediocrity will ensue - which it is. And any state legislature that wants to drag its feet better look at its state constitution, and be prepared to eliminate that "equal education" clause that's at the bedrock of most of them.

You gotta think about this issue a little harder. The system's gonna break. It has to change. I have my own ideas about how, but I haven't laid any of them out here. I do not think it should be a welfare state like Europe, I know that.

 

This was a crappy comparison for many reasons.