The Chronicle misses the real story
In what is not an isolated case, the Chron took a story and buried the real lede. Slampo has the details:
Take this fer instance we stumbled across in the weekly Alief/Southwest section of Thursday’s Houston Chronicle, in a story on the latest get-together of the Alief school board. The story opened with the “news” that the district trustees had voted to nominate their superintendent for the “Superintendent of the Year” award given by the Texas Association of School Boards. The board deemed the super to be deserving of the honor partly because of the district’s acclaimed welcoming response to the flood of Katrina evacuee students into its schools.
The story ambled on in this vein until the 17th or so paragraph, when it allowed that one “concern” of the Alief Community Coalition, an area support organization for the school district, is Alief’s “burgeoning homeless population.”
That one pulled us up short, but we hit the wall at the next paragraph:
According to [an Alief ISD administrator], the influx of hurricane evacuees elevated Alief’s homeless population from 435 in 2005 to more than 4,000 in 2006.
Jumpin’ Jesus, stop the presses! If that were true---and we’re skeptical---shouldn’t that be all over the front page of the daily paper, rather than buried inside a story in a zoned section that no one but us and 12 or 13 other damned souls will bother to read?
You know, there is so much the Chron could have done with that...
Where's the interview with city leaders asking what they are doing to help these people? Where are the interviews with homeless advocates and others who run homeless shelters to ask how they are coping with this huge increase? How is Alief ISD dealing with the homeless children? Is this happening in other parts of Houston and its surrounding communities? Is anyone looking out for the libraries? (That one's for Laurence.)
We have long lamented the Chron's lack of in-depth local news coverage (and lackluster editorial leadership). Yes, the "This Week" sections are nice, but too many times we have seen stories hidden in those that really should be in the main paper, getting to a much bigger audience. One solution (as Kevin has pointed out often) is to shutter the weak DC bureau and redirect those resources, but the Chron doesn't appear interested in that.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 03/26/06 08:07 AM | Print |
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