Meetings and More

Being on the education beat has taught me a lot so far; there is much to learn and lots of meetings happening.

On Wednesday night, I attended the Columbia Public Schools Finance Committee meeting. Since the tax hearings went down last month, this meeting consisted much of summer school statistics.

Being a journalist, you are tasked with the responsibility of deciding what is newsworthy. In consuming the information at this meeting, not much was pressing. I toyed with ideas but the issue of timeliness crossed my mind constantly.

Timeliness is one element journalists must consider when deeming an issue or item newsworthy, alongside proximity, conflict, human interest, and impact to name a few. Timeliness was my main issue in trying to cover this meeting, after all it’s called news for a reason.

The CPS summer school statistics highlighted that enrollment was at its highest since starting summer school programs. However, the numbers were insignificant as the number has steadily increased over time, there wasn’t this surge of enrolled students. Additionally, CPS added many programs this summer that seem interesting. However, summer has came and gone. It would have been timely to cover the programs as they had been created or as they were being carried out for example.

Attending this meeting made me realize how much there is to consider when deciding to cover certain topics, meetings, items, etc. A journalist’s job is to deem what is newsworthy and those traditional elements are crucial to consider.