In light of Friday’s Back Talk discussion of the Dallas Morning News‘ coverage of DISD issues, here’s another story to ponder: On Sunday, the News ran a pretty lengthy story about DISD’s internal investigative unit, which reports directly to Supt. Michael Hinojosa and is charged with rooting out improper activities within the district.
So, the story begs the question: It is appropriate for the News to run this story in the paper’s premiere spot — right hand column, front page of the Sunday paper? Or should it have been in the Metro section, which clearly has less visibility than the front page? Or did it even need to be written at all?
I suspect there are opinions on all three fronts, and probably many more. But given what we heard at Friday’s Public School People meeting from News editor Bob Mong, I suspect this is one story that perhaps fits the "we don’t get them all right" category. There’s no new crime here to report, and despite that fact, the story takes 17 paragraphs to say that of the 75 cases closed so far, "a large percentage" resulted in the exonerations of the employees being investigated. Now, since DISD wouldn’t specifically identify the exact "large percentage", I’m sure the News editors and reporter decided to punish DISd a bit by burying that little tidbit since putting it in the 6th paragraph — where the 75 cases are first mentioned — would kind of take the air out of the story pretty early on.
