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.

Second-Tier News Media and Education Policy Discussions

Say 'news media' and most people think of the biggies: New York Times, Wall Street Journal, CNN, etc. People living in the Tampa Bay area of Florida might think of the St. Petersburg Times, the Tampa Tribune, and various local television stations.

But those news media organizations are only the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

Floating just under the surface of instant name-recognition status are a larger mass of smaller news outlets. Some of them are owned by the same companies that own the biggies. Tampa Bay Newspapers, for instance, which publishes several weekly newspapers covering mid-Pinellas County, is owned by Times Publishing Co. Others, like Creative Loafing, cater to other types of audiences.

Still others are not official news outlets at all, but they still serve to disseminate information and to provide a forum for discussion. Often, these types of sources, such as Saint Petersblog, are online blogs.

Then there is a third type of news source that studies news in general, such as Poynter.org, or that comments on news coverage about a particular topic. The Media Bullpen, operated by The Center for Education Reform, critiques education coverage by media around the nation. Poynter.org, by the way, is produced by the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, which owns Times Publishing Co., which owns the St. Petersburg Times and Tampa Bay Newspapers and a few other publications.

And who funds and runs The Center for Education Reform?

Good question.

That and other questions about the role second-tier news media outlets play in discussions about education policy will be the topic of the next few postings -- with maybe a random post or two thrown in for good measure.

Stay tuned.