Nothing funny happened on the way to the forum, so there goes my excuse for a trite and cliched lead (well, maybe not).
Little that was funny happened at the forum either, but something disappointing did. As one reader, Robin Taylor, put it, the Meet the Bee forum in Sacramento last Tuesday was “hijacked.”
The forum was conceived as a town hall-style meeting at which readers had the opportunity to question Bee executives, presumably on a wide range of issues from a cross-section of the readership. But some members of the Sacramento City Teachers Association had other plans.
What was supposed to have been an hour and a half of questions and answers turned into more than an hour of remarks from speaker after speaker, or more accurately, teacher after teacher. Few audience members with different issues to raise got an opportunity to approach the microphone.
Certainly, the teachers, like any other readers, had every right to come out and speak their minds. The forum was an open invitation, and the teachers took the opportunity to make it clear, in no uncertain terms, that they believe The Bee is unfair in its coverage of their union and remiss in digging into what they charge is misconduct and malfeasance among the board members of the Sacramento City Unified School District.
Their somewhat hostile takeover of the forum presented me with a bit of a dilemma. The teachers are readers of The Bee just like anyone else, and that obligates me to look into their concerns. But the fact that they expressed their views by usurping much of the time at the forum that others could have used to raise different issues was troubling – and not just to me.
Taylor, the reader who said the forum had been hijacked, said she believed the teachers’ comments should have been delivered to a public agency like the school board, the City Council or the Board of Supervisors.
“This was not the appropriate forum for that,” said Taylor, a retired teacher. She added that she was disappointed that she did not get a chance to publicly voice her opinion that The Bee’s editorial pages should establish a voice-mail comment line for readers like herself who find it difficult to type, although she said she was able to speak with Executive Editor Rick Rodriguez about it after the forum.
Speaking of the teachers, she added, “I can understand their anger. If my kids were still in school or I were still teaching I guess I would be just as angered. But I just did not understand how they could fault The Sacramento Bee for its coverage.”
In some ways, I can understand that. No matter what tactics they use to get their point across, the teachers are right when they say The Bee’s education coverage could go deeper. (Let me pause here to remind you, as I stated in my first column, that my wife supervises The Bee’s education writers.)
After the forum ended, one former teacher told me that he believes The Bee’s education coverage often doesn’t go far enough, that it comes up “one step short,” as he put it. After reviewing some recent education articles, I found that he has a valid point.
While he didn’t bring up any specifics, here’s an example: an article last week about the possibility of a teacher’s strike quoted the school district’s chief of staff saying that an impartial panel’s recommendation of 2 percent salary increases retroactive to July 2002 is not feasible because of fiscal restraints. That may be so, but The Bee would have better served its readers by using whole numbers, not percentages, to illustrate the fiscal impact on the district and analyze whether the panel’s recommendation would indeed be financially devastating to the district. Taking the chief of staff’s word for it isn’t enough.
But I find it hard to advocate for readers whose comments descend to demagoguery, like the one teacher who said The Bee fabricates its articles and supports fraud and corruption within the school district. Another described Bee articles with terms like “fairy tales” and “fantasies.”
Peggy Alexander, a teacher at Kennedy High School who did not attend the forum, called to question the effectiveness of some of the union activists’ tactics after she heard accounts of what went on.
“I’m afraid all this negativity weighs on people,” she said.
In my view, the teachers would have been better served had they taken their cue from several advocates for the homeless who showed up to discuss what The Bee could do better. They pointed out that homeless issues often don’t fit neatly into government or media cubbyholes and as a result they get little attention. One sent a follow-up note by e-mail.
“I am an ex-con with over four years clean and sober,” wrote David Husig, a counselor at Sacramento Cottage Housing, Inc., which runs a number of programs for the homeless. “I have been to prison a few times and have turned my life around. I now work as a counselor and have dedicated my life to giving back to the community what was so freely given to me. I don’t see many stories about people like myself who have reached deep down inside themselves and done the right thing. So please let Sacramento know that some of us do succeed.”
Good idea, and one that did not require a show of force.
So after all that, what was the most interesting comment of the night? It was the one from a reader who asked whether he was in the minority in his view that the Classic Peanuts comic strip should be retired. Based on the groans of the audience and a show of hands, he was.
* * *
