Key players in Newark education: Mayor Ras Baraka and Superintendent Chris Cerf with @Jamifloyd @WNYC pic.twitter.com/5XhcZnxNJk
— Jim Schachter (@jimschachter) September 29, 2015
My reflections on last night’s panel about Newark ended up focusing largely on what the two journalists there — moderator Jami Floyd (from WNYC) and author Dale Russakoff (a panelist) — could or should have done in response to evasions and unsupported claims being made by Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and/or appointed Newark schools superintendent Chris Cerf, so I’m cross-posting it here:
The two main grafs related to journalism are these:
By and large, Russakoff was woefully under-used during the 90-minute session, limited to a few initial observations and then left to the sidelines. It would have been especially interesting if Floyd had asked her to confirm or raise questions with the claims that Baraka and Cerf were making (several of which seemed possibly misleading or incomplete to me) or if she had just jumped in and said, “hey, wait a minute — that’s not right.” But neither of those things happened.
Wearing a cropped white jacket and fun glasses, Floyd was an enthusiastic and engaged moderator but seemed to struggle to keep panelist’s answers short (especially Cerf) and to deal with audience members who wanted to ask more than one questions or refute panelist’s answers to their questions. Though she’s spent a fair amount of time in Newark on this topic in the past few weeks, she also lacked the background information to question Baraka and Cerf’s claims herself. (She also apparently had a panelist bow out at the last minute, and was unable to convince the head of the teacher’s union to appear at the event though he did sit down for an interview earlier this year.)
You can read the whole writeup here.
