David Bloomfield, a professor of education at Brooklyn College was alarmed to read the following announcement by Education Week’s CEO, Virginia Edwards.
Learning Matters TV is acquired by Education Week.
FROM:
Virginia B. Edwards
President and Editor-in-Chief
August 11, 2015
Dear Readers,
It is with great enthusiasm and excitement that I share the news that Education Week has acquired Learning Matters TV.
With the acquisition of Learning Matters, a video-production company based in New York City, Education Week will greatly expand its visual storytelling around the issues, people, and news developments shaping American education. We look forward to producing broadcast-quality segments for the PBS NewsHour and other outlets as well as expanding the amount of digital video we produce and disseminate on edweek.org, YouTube, and other distribution platforms.
I am convinced that this acquisition is a game-changer for Education Week, even as our current and expanding audience will be the ultimate beneficiaries.
As the leading independent provider of news and analysis in pre-K-12 education, we have evolved over the years from a print-only publication to a 24/7 digital news operation. At a time when many news organizations have struggled to sustain their audiences, and even their businesses, the nonprofit Education Week is a success story. Our news operation has not only survived the media disruption of recent years, but leveraged it, catalyzing our authoritative coverage with even more engaging and diversified forms of journalism.
For more than two decades, the nonprofit Learning Matters has been celebrated for its award-winning video news segments and documentaries on education in America, from the preschool years through career training and higher education. As you may have heard, John Merrow, who founded Learning Matters in 1995, announced his retirement last month.
Education Week’s acquisition of Learning Matters unites the strengths and sensibilities of two trusted news organizations dedicated to improving student outcomes through better-informed policymaking and more effective educator practice.
Please be on the lookout for our new line of Education Week-branded video and please be in touch with suggestions about how we can continue to serve you better.
In response, Bloomfield wrote this letter to the Newshour:
From: David Bloomfield <davidcbloomfield@gmail.com>
Date: August 11, 2015 at 2:43:52 PM EDT
To: “Viewermail@newshour.org” <Viewermail@newshour.org>
Cc: “john.merrow@gmail.com” <john.merrow@gmail.com>, “gined@epe.org” <gined@epe.org>
Subject: Please Reconsider Carrying Learning Matters Content after EdWeek Acquisition
To NewsHour Management:
As a professional consumer of Education news and as a regular NewsHour viewer, I am disheartened by the purchase of Learning Matters by Education Week and the apparent intention, according to EdWeek, that Learning Matters will continue to be a primary provider of Education content to the NewsHour.
Education Week long ago stopped being an independent news source, having sold its editorial soul to its funders. They will tell you otherwise but in letting funders like Gates, Broad, Cooke, and Walton, among others determine the types of stories covered (generally tech, testing, and charters), EdWeek has allowed itself to be used as a promotion vehicle for these organizations’ “corporate-reform”, profit-centered agenda and systematically disregarded stories without specific funding streams that might otherwise be covered.
Until now, the NewsHour has done a pretty good job of not falling into this issue-based funding trap. I urge you to reconsider the NewsHour’s association with the new owners of Learning Matters who appear to have no such scruples.
Sincerely,
David C. Bloomfield
Professor of Education Leadership, Law & Policy
Brooklyn College and The CUNY Graduate Center
davidcbloomfield@gmail.com
718-877-6353
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The operative word being storytelling …
LikeLike
I’d appreciate it if Prof. Bloomfield could provide some evidence of his assertions about Education Week and its coverage. Has he coded the content of news stories in EdWeek and shown that the increase in funding from outside sources has slanted the content of the publication? If so, he should present the evidence—not a few cherry-picked stories here and there, but a systematic look. If he can’t provide that evidence, then his comment amounts simply to uninformed conjecture. I am glad to be an EdWeek subscriber and will continue to be one. I enjoy seeing multiple views aired across the numerous topics that the publication covers in it’s reporting and in its blogs, which routinely feature people who support the policy positions that I am sure Bloomfield himself would support. I would bet that EdWeek bloggers Peter Greene, Dave Powell, and Walt Gardner, for example, would be surprised to learn that they are simply shills for Gates, Pearson, and Walton.
Nobody at EdWeek paid me to say these things, by the way.
LikeLike
I feel the same way as Mr. Bloomfield does about the slant of coverage at EdWeek. I haven’t coded it and done the requisite analysis. But you don’t need a weatherman to tell you it’s raining.
LikeLike
I found EdWeek to be so slanted that I quit reading it.
LikeLike
Exacto.
LikeLike
See my post on the Edweek editorial topic control by the 17 foundations that are supporting EdWeek Editorial projects, one of the first ( no surprise) Bill Gates at
Laura H. Chapman: Why Ruinous Policies Won’t Go Away | Diane …
dianeravitch.net/…/laura-h-chapman-why-ruinous-policies-wont-go-away/ Jan 4, 2015 .
I have done several column-inch counts in EdWeek, print only, of the editorial content NOT funded by foundations. The bulk of the publication is now friendly to the topics each foundation has indicated as a preference. In fact the closest thing to straight news in EdWeek will be found in recycled reports not much different from those that have overtaken USA today–snippets of this and that. Politico does a better job of aggregating education news, and on a daily basis with links to sources.
I don’t relish counding column inches of news versus editorial matter. EdWeek maintains the pretence of being free of influence from funders, but that is not the case on the topics that are highlighted and that are ignored for lack of support from big money.
Bloggers hosted by EdWeek may receive payment from that organiztion. They certainly benefit in reputation and “hits” from that hosting environment.
LikeLike
I wonder if enough of the country watches Donald Trump share his “thoughts” they will “get” that all the games that involve big investors or philanthropists are rigged. Why did Hilary attend Trump’s wedding? Because he gave her money and he wanted her to attend.
LikeLike
Laura,
Bloggers are not paid at Edweek
LikeLike
Prof. Bloomfield is exactly right about the tilt of EdWk to its billionaire funders. I read EDwk each issue and you would never know that a national rebellion from the bottom-up is under way against CCSS/PARCC/SBA and the private looting of our public schools. This official journal for mainstream info on schooling downplays the terrible impact Teach for America has been having on teacher professionalism. If you see the world of education through the disorienting pages of EdWk, things are just moving along, here comes another school year, this and that event underway, nothing much to worry about, no sense of the desperate conditions many districts have been forced into b/c private charters are grabbing budgets and buildings. We are in a war, a private war on the public sector; we are being looted; we are being taken over by standardized testing; teaching has been made into a disfavored occupation and enrollments to teacher ed programs are down…EDWk helps hide the savagery of this private war on public education.
LikeLike
Well put, Ira.
LikeLike
Prof. Bloomfield is absolutely spot on in his evaluation of the content of EdWeek. Any analysis of their newsletter will demonstrate its corporate reform bias and its uncritical acceptance and promotion of the reform agenda.
We need to begin a petition to stop this and call even greater attention to this deception of EdWeek as a representative of what is best in public education. Would Diane be willing to circulate this petition on her blog?
LikeLike
Is Edweek like the Hechinger Report? Their editor, Sarah Garland, just published an editorial criticizing segregation in the NYC public schools in which she said “So, with New York City public school students returning Wednesday…” But the NYC public school students are NOT returning Wednesday or for weeks – as far as I know, the only school returning this week is a charter school and anyone who actually did a little reporting instead of just talking to the leader of that charter school should know that.
Instead of acknowledging this blatant error after I pointed it out to them in a comment, the Hechinger Report just changed it to now read “So, with the New York City public school students returning next month…” (Which doesn’t really make any sense since the original sentence was supposed to be the news hook.) And it is rather strange that they made this correction without noting it, as if they had never made the error. Legitimate news organizations acknowledge their errors.
If you google “So, with New York City public school students returning Wednesday…” the old link to their Daily News article still shows up (although the correction has been made in the Daily News too. But why make that change without acknowledging it? And why such a blatant error in the first place? How does an education not have a clue as to when NYC public schools are back in session (September 9, 2 days after Labor Day) and confuse that with the middle of August? And why not just acknowledge that she made that mistake. If anyone knows Sarah Garland, perhaps they can ask her.
LikeLike
Sorry for typos. I meant to say “How does an education REPORTER not have a clue about the fact that NYC public schools don’t begin until 2 days after labor day and make the error of thinking they begin this week?” If anyone knows Sarah Garland, perhaps they will ask her. And perhaps when Hechinger Report makes corrections, they will acknowledge them like legitimate news organizations do instead of pretending they never happened.
LikeLike
I would love to sign on to this letter… Is that going to be a possibility?
LikeLike
I find these comments interesting because I had not yet seen Ed Week as such a puppet and I hadn’t thought about where their funding came from. I like Politics K-12 and several of their other blogs and articles. I have noticed more positive notes about “reforms” in the last year or so but I don’t think about it much because I don’t pass subscription publications on.
So, can we generate a list of sources of reliable education news stories? What do we want the public to read about? Who could be our champions in the media? Rachel Maddow and any other MSNBC hosts are branded progressives. I like Bill Moyers very much but who else do we have? Can we find a counter Campbell Brown?
We really need to reach beyond the choir with media they’ll believe.
LikeLike