Back to Business

“In deed if not in name, by 2000 America’s journalistic leaders had been transformed into businesspeople.  Half of newspaper newsroom leaders reported that they spent at least a third of their time not on journalism but on business matters” (70).

So write Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel in The Elements of Journalism.  As a teacher of journalism, I was struck by how closely this statement could apply to the field of education.  Just substitute a few words, and you’ll have a description of most educational leaders I know: We spend a great deal of our time on business matters instead of what really matters—the students.

Harry Truman's second grade report card (1894).  Harry S. Truman Presidential 
Museum & Library.  Independence, Missouri.  Photographed by Stephen Milligan 
(June 28, 2014).

The term “educational leaders” conjures up images of principals, assistant principals, and district office officials, but I would argue the real educational leaders are the teachers, the ones actually doing the work of education.

Unfortunately, it seems the real work of education, like the real work of journalism Kovach and Rosenstiel refer to, is increasingly moving toward the business end of things.  Like those newsroom leaders who spend one-third of their time on business, I would venture to estimate many teachers spend much more than a third of their time on endless paperwork, incessant meetings, and other administrivia.

And just like those journalists who don’t get to spend that time on journalism, those teachers don’t get to spend their time on educating the students.

January 16 was a teacher work day, one of those rare days all teachers hungrily look for on the district calendar because they know they will have time (that beautiful, elusive, ephemeral notion) unencumbered by meetings (we hope) to make a dent in some of that business work: lesson plans to be written; papers to be graded and recorded; handouts, tests, quizzes, exams, activities, and/or projects to be typed, formatted, and copied; guidance referrals, discipline referrals, attendance referrals, Student Intervention Team referrals, nurse referrals, and/or social worker referrals to be filled out; parents to call, e-mail, or send letters to; e-mail messages and phone calls to respond to…and those are just a few of the things all teachers do—throw in an extracurricular activity, club, organization, and/or sport to sponsor, and you add a whole other dimension of paperwork and business to take care of.

Now I know how those journalistic leaders—those newsroom leaders—feel because they don’t have time to devote their full attention to their craft, journalism.  I remember how elated I was when January 16 rolled around—I would have time to do my paperwork job without those pesky students hovering around needing attention and an education!

And as a teacher of journalism, I feel doubly put upon by this emphasis on business.  Each profession alone is evolving into a business…put them together, and you have big business.

What’s a business without customers?  District leaders love to throw that word around.  Students, parents, and visitors are “customers,” and we must practice good “customer service” when dealing with them.  Customers have become an important part of the journalist’s business, too:

“Bringing business accountability to the newsroom brought the language of business as well.  In some cases this meant applying the language of marketing to news, with readers and viewers becoming ‘customers,’ and to understand them became ‘marketing’” (Kovach and Rosenstiel 83).

So here I am—an English education major who stumbled into journalism and now has become a businessman.  Enough lamenting my fate for now, though—I have some customer papers to grade.

Reference
Kovach, Bill and Tom Rosenstiel.  The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect.  Third      Edition.  New York: Three Rivers Press, 2014.