Acknowledgement: This thesis is an adaptation of Glenn Greenwald's, a columnist for Salon.com. He writes about the national news media and Bush-Cheney. But in miniature, Nashville's information services behave in the same way.
A blogger has an advantage of not having to produce a story when there is no story. The reason they are called journalists is that they do it on a daily basis, no matter what.
A blogger does not have to please a commercial audience, either advertisers or customers. So the artificial "balance" which journalists create, for example, between flat earth and round earth believers, is unnecessary.
A blogger usually does not have the budget to do direct reporting. Therefore, the blog is more likely to be opinion, which is cheap, than news reports which are expensive.
The blogger does however, have the advantage of comparing news stories and research over more than a daily basis. The blogger can keep a story alive without having to find some "newsmaker" to give him/her a quote on that day.
With all of these points as preface, on Saturday, January 19, 2008, the news reporters and camera crews are staking out the Board of Education meeting areas trying to get quotations. They will get a "cover story," not the real story.
The real story is the "triggering event" which caused the Board majority to change. Observers of the board meeting noticed a marked change in the face of David Fox and possibly Steve Glover after Pedro Garcia put them through agony of rezoning the system and then changed his mind and pulled the whole plan from consideration. While her face did not show it, Marsha Warden's district has been trying for years to somehow resegregate Hillwood and she must have been crestfallen. There is no quote to support this thesis, only the inside knowledge of a former union president like Al Fondy.
After Karl Dean became mayor, the Tennessean carried a negative story about Garcia by Gail Kerr (December 11, 2007). This was the first time in six years that the editorial board had been anything other than cheerleaders. The change was so abrupt that the mayor's influence can be inferred. If Dean is as crafty as Bill Purcell, the insiders will be left only to comment, "His fingerprints are there, but his hands are clean." At the same time, this was the first public report of Garcia's attempt to change jobs by moving to the CEO position in the San Diego, California district. This act additionally could be the event which caused some school board members to change.
Rumor is that Board members were unhappy that Garcia kept them in the dark about a State "takeover" of Maplewood High School. This, by itself, is hardly new. For the past six years, Garcia kept the Board in the dark about everything that he could--if it were of a negative nature. But when negative news stories start, and then encouragement comes from the Mayor, then Board members become emboldened to take action.
Garcia continued to plant stories in the Tennessean. One related to how it would cost a salary of $250,000 per year to replace him. New school leaders are hard to find. That is all nonsense. The Pittsburgh superintendent, hired less than two years ago at $175,000 per year has a job equally challenging to that of Metro Nashville. But if you are the Education Reporter for the newspaper, and because no one will talk to you in Metro Schools except the central office public relations people, then you are captive of whatever quotations they will provide.