The In's and Out's of this Study of Second-tier News Media and Education Policy: Part Two

What news organizations am I not considering in this particular exploration?

OUT:

Obvious national first-tier news media outlets: Dow Jones & Company*-owned Wall Street Journal; Sidney Harmon and IAC-owned Newsweek magazine;  New York Times Company-owned New York Times, International Herald and Boston Globe; Time Warner-owned Time magazine; Turner Broadcasting System**-owned CNN; Washington Post Company***-owned Washington Post.

* Dow Jones & Company is a News Corporation (Rupert Murdoch-controlled) company.

**Turner Broadcasting System is a Time Warner company.

***Since 1984, the Washington Post Company also has owned Kaplan, Inc., test preparation and education company. WPC also owns CableOne, among other businesses.

Obvious local first-tier news media outlets: News Corporation-owned and Fox-affiliated WTVT-TV Channel 13; Gannett-owned and CBS-affiliate WTSP-TV Channel 10; Media General-owned outlets The Tampa Tribune, TBO.com, and NBC-affiliate WFLA-TV Channel 8; Scripps-owned**** and ABC- affiliate WFTS-TV Channel 28; and Times Publishing Company-owned St. Petersburg Times, tbt* (Tampa Bay Today), and TampaBay.com.


****E. W. Scripps sponsors the National Spelling Bee.

Not-so-obvious news first-tier media outlet: Gradebook is an online blog written by the education reporters at the St. Petersburg Times. While it offers much in the way of convenience -- gathering in one spot news articles about education in five counties and at the University of South Florida -- and while it offers the combined talents of six education reporters, it is still part of the St. Petersburg Times.

Some second-tier news media outlets: 
These fall into roughly two categories: 

• The Tampa Bay area has a number of other-than-English-language news media outlets. Some of these are owned by first-tier outlets, and some are independent. These news outlets collectively are an extremely important factor to consider, but it would be presumptuous of me, knowing only functional German and less Spanish, to try to comment on their coverage.
• Any news outlet without a fully functional Web site. Again, these outlets collectively are an extremely important factor to consider, but the logistics of collecting these publications are prohibitive for this particular examination. 

Third-tier media: Admittedly an arbitrary decision on my part, I am excluding all locally published magazines.


For the most part, these are the Out's, the news media outlets I am excluding.

What's In?

Stay tuned.