Green leaving MPS Schools superintendent William Green announced that he will leave the Minneapolis Public School system at the end of his four-year term in 2010, continuing what many see as a trend to one-term superintendents in major metroplitan school districts. According to the Star Tribune, “Green will have spent 4 1/2 years with the district when he leaves — 50 percent longer than the national average for urban districts.”
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News Day: Green leaving MPS / Ellison fires back / No new bushes – and get those eagles out of here / more
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News Day: Health care reform / MN pushes Medicare reform / Beautifying garbage / Honduras crisis continues / more
Health care reform President Obama used the “bully pulpit” of last night’s press conference ( transcript here) to push harder on health care reform. He denounced insurance companies, saying “”Right now, at the time when everybody’s getting hammered, they’re making record profits and premiums are going up,” and said that much of the cost of the health care reform package will be paid by saving “over one hundred billion dollars in unwarranted subsidies that go to insurance companies as part of Medicare.”
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News Day: Who’s running now? / Metro growing / WalMart in the news / SPPS school closings / Latest from Harvard
Who’s running now? With filing for municipal offices now closed, you can find the complete list of candidates for Minneapolis municipal offices on the city website. Among the candidates:
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News Day: Burnsville honkers / Broadband bust / MN science / War Reports
I spent a lot of time taking a longer look at health care, on the day before President Obama is expected to spend major press conference time on the issue. Take a look – and call your Senators and Congressmembers.
Burnsville cops don’t like peace protest Burnsville police have been watching a weekly anti-war vigil closely – and ticketing passing drivers who honk in support of the protesters, reports Jon Tevlin in the Strib. They have continued despite dismissal of the first anti-honking case and the existence of federal cases saying that honking is protected political speech. Police claim the protest causes traffic problems:
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Health care: Counting down to August recess
With the August recess looming ahead and the Sotomayor hearings no longer grabbing every headline, national and Congressional attention turns to the health care debate. The proposed national health care plan is long, with 1,000+ pages in the House bill and a 35-page summary (PDF). The debate is framed in many ways, including the old standard of universal health care vs. socialism. Cost is another buzzword, sometimes framed as (family) bankruptcy vs. (national) deficit, but also including the complex negotiations that have resulted in widely trumpeted health industry promises to cut some area of costs and to support the bill in exchange for less-publicized favors. A third area of (over)heated rhetoric centers on rationing, which seems to come down to the idea that any way of allocating health care other than “you get what you can afford to pay for” is evil “rationing.”
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News Day: Gang Strike Force ended / Somali Minnesotan homecoming? / Lighter than news / Obama NAACP speech
© BJ - Fotolia.com
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News Day: Gang Strike Force head leaves /Feeding the beast /Baby ducks, attack hawks, naked biking /MN budget blues / more
Omodt escapes from Gang Strike Force Hennepin County Sheriff Rich Stanek has called a news conference for this morning to explain why Hennepin County Captain Chris Omodt is leaving his post at the head of the Gang Strike Force. Omodt, who was brought in to clean up a bad situation, could just be giving it up as an impossible job. The latest revelations and accusations from the Strib:
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News Day: Unemployment numbers / Running for governor / White collar fraud / Rondo Days / Twitter hacked (why you should care) / more
I’m back in MN, after a Poynter Institute conference packed with lots of good ideas and good people … and long hours. Next up: the National Civic Summit, which started in Minneapolis yesterday. Mike McIntee of The Uptake and I will be presenting “Citizen Journalism: Your stories, your voices” on Friday at 3 p.m. — join us there at the Minneapolis Hilton!
Latest unemployment figures The Department of Labor reports seasonally adjusted NEW claims for unemployment insurance at 522,000 for the week ending July 11, down 47,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 569,000. New claims in Minnesota were up by 1,176, and MN unemployment for June rose to 8.4 percent, up from 8.1 percent in May. Although new claims are falling, total unemployment remains high.
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Poynter Big Idea: Building community through journalism
Did you know that most of the black press contingent was barred from the Staples Center Michael Jackson memorial? Neither did I – but The Skanner did, and so did thousands of people who clicked on their story.
The Skanner news group is a 34-year-old African American newspaper in Portland and Seattle, an area that editor Lisa Loving described as overwhelmingly and demographically white, white, white,” adding that The Skanner is one of the few avenues in Seattle and Portland for the African American community to get their message out to a wider (and whiter) audience. Among The Skanner’s Big Ideas:
• A Google cold case map, created in cooperation with Portland police, which gets “mega hits” — and four of the cases have been solved.
• A mission to build web-based community service projects “rooted in our local communities but with an appeal to wider audience.” Two examples: an emergency preparedness page and a soon-to-launch project to help bridge the digital divide, that has led to a partnership with local Sabin CDC to run computer skills training at five community locations targeting job seekers, senior citizens, teen parents, and more. The Skanner also has a job search page with tips and links to help for resume-building, computer skills classes and more.
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Big Ideas – and big work
As you may have noticed – no News Day summaries for a few days! That’s because I’m at Poynter’s Big Ideas conference, and reporting on media issues from there. Here’s the latest:
Big Ideas mean big work for somebody – and in today’s journalism / recession / funding climate, that means killer workloads and impossibly long days.
This morning’s presenters at Poynter’s Big Ideas conference got some push-back, with questions from the group arguing that the workload required for multimedia, social networking newsrooms requires journalists in those projects to be “on” for 24 hours, always ready to respond to breaking news, in an unending 24/7 (or at least 24/5) schedule.
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Mary Turck