Wow! Other Louisville media jumping on the Courier-Journal

Stirred by Courier’s inept editorializing about new school superintendent

Louisville’s only daily newspaper has a real knack for making enemies.

As an unabashed, ultra-liberal advocacy journalism house, the Courier-Journal’s biases invite opposition from a wide-ranging group of people who long for a little balance in the newspaper’s extreme editorializing.

A great case in point is the story about the recent selection of Donna Hargens to be the new superintendent in the Jefferson County Public School District.

The tale starts with the Courier offering astonishing evidence that its editors consider Louisville’s train wreck of busing for school integration to be much more important than improving dismal academic performance in many of the city’s schools.

While admitting some Jefferson County schools “have been labeled ‘failures’ by the state,” the editor claimed that busing was “the most significant issue facing our schools.”

That diatribe continued with the Courier’s editors trashing Hargens, claiming she was not a sound candidate.

Only days later, in what may be a hopeful sign that the Jefferson County Board of Education is finally starting to distance itself a bit from the Courier’s misguided busing first nonsense, Hargens was selected as the next superintendent in Louisville.

Somewhere along the way, 84 WHAS-AM’s morning talk show host Mandy Connell took flak from the paper about comments on the superintendent selection. Connell, true to form, is giving back better than she got, including lining up the Bluegrass Institute’s Jim Waters as a regular show guest to talk facts about education in Kentucky and Louisville (listen for Jim every other Monday between 9 and 12 AM, starting today).

Now, another shot has been fired at Louisville’s only daily paper. It comes from Business First, Louisville’s local edition of the Business Journal.

Business First writes to Hargens:

“You’ll be reassured to know that most Louisvillians aren’t as narrow-minded and judgmental as a certain daily newspaper that threw you under the proverbial school bus before you even were selected for the job.”

Great insight, BizFirst!

Get some balance, Courier-Journal.

Or, how about this suggestion, Courier editors? Start running point-counterpoints on your editorial page. You will wind up looking pretty silly, but you might start to swell your bottom line once the only daily in Louisville starts to offer some reason in at least some of its editorial page offerings.

After all, this point-counterpoint works for the Gannett Papers flagship, USA Today. Are egos too small in Louisville to stand the same sort of discussions?

I am sure the Bluegrass Institute would be happy to offer counterpoints for you, as would the Family Foundation of Kentucky. I’ll bet those Tea Party guys you like to trash can offer a little fact instead of fiction to offset your more outrageous offerings, too.

Don’t forget, it works for USA Today.