Press patting itself on back today . . .

. . . and every day, lately. Amid the self-glorification of U.S. media outlets comes today’s program at the Newseum, “The President and the Press: The First Hundred Days.”  In honor of the occasion, if not in the same spirit, re-posted below is the article I published in a small local community newspaper on January 21, 2002.

The topic: how the Washington Post Company benefited, to the tune of $billions, from the Bush ‘education reforms’, mainly standardized testing offered by Kaplan Learning–which the Post Co. had purchased during the last years of the Clinton administration.

Enjoy.

Washington Post Company to benefit from Bush education bill

By Margie Burns

January 21, 2002—Supporters of social programs may consider George W. Bush a grinch, but he’s been a Santa Claus for the Washington Post Company. With Bush’s “education reform” legislation, now signed into law, the company stands to reap a bonanza in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

As both critics and supporters have noted, this education bill chiefly promotes standardized testing in the schools, and certification programs beyond school, in every state and at virtually every level.

This is where the Post comes in. The company, most famous for its eponymous newspaper, has several subsidiaries in education and lists “provision of educational services” in public record filings among its “principal business activities.” One principal subsidiary is Kaplan, Inc, the tutoring and test-prep company, which “publishes course materials, books, software, and Web content to help prime students for standardized and licensing examinations.” Kaplan, Inc., in turn owns other education businesses, including Quest Education (acquired in May 2000), which provides post-secondary programs; Score! Prep, which provides tutoring programs; and (in Texas) Leonard’s Training Programs, Inc.

The numbers are impressive. In January 2000, operating revenues for the company’s education segment (Kaplan and the rest) were $240,075,000—third, behind revenues for advertising and circulation, but about 11 percent of total operating revenues of $2.2 billion. In December 2000, education segment revenues were $352,753,000—a 40 percent increase in the year, to about 13 percent of the total $2.4 billion. Operating revenues for 2001 are not yet filed, but sources including the Post have reported that its education segment is growing, while circulation and advertising have declined (a Business Wire in May, 2001, reported Kaplan as making “good progress,” with advertising businesses “weak”). Advertising has remained lower in the late-year recession and in the aftermath of the September attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Kaplan and its subsidiaries have been booming, comparatively speaking—perhaps with some help from the press; one Newsweek cover article touting the new era of standardized tests was titled “The Tutor Age.” As of December 2001, Hoover’s Company Capsule Database estimated Kaplan’s sales for the previous year at approximately $535.8 million. Press releases over the past two years have heralded acquisitions, publications, and additional software and training in states including Texas, Massachusetts, and New York. (Kaplan, which also has numerous part-time employees and no union, publishes books on the SAT, the PSAT, and ACT, as well as parents’ guides to proficiency tests including the Ohio test.)

Should the company’s education segment expand by a third, it will generate at least $110 million more in operating revenues, per year, for the company as a whole. However, the expansion will probably exceed 30 percent: with the acquisition of Quest Corporation in May 2000, Kaplan’s educational offerings are now eligible to participate in Title IV programs. According to a spokesman in the office of Rep. John Boehner (R-OH), who supports the education bill, current authorization for Title IV funding is “nearly doubled” by the bill, which will further increase it from $1.9 billion the first year to $2.1B, $2.4B, and $2.65B in the coming years.

No prediction is certain. But if the projected expansion in standardized testing continues for the next five years—accompanied by dizzying expansion in tutoring for the tests, software and publications for the students, teachers and parents preparing for the tests, and publishing and software for the tests themselves, etc.—then the Post stands to accrue the largest financial windfall for a single paper in the history of American newspapers, at least from legislation.

You can’t accuse the Post of bragging about it, though. The sole reference to the Post’s interest in the education bill occurred in two sentences about Kaplan on August 16, 2001, by reporters Michael Fletcher and Neil Irwin, who have yet to respond to phone and email queries. Media commentator Howard Kurtz has not mentioned the connection. Indeed, last May 7, Kurtz hosted a live online interview with Douglas Reeves, author of a book co-published by Kaplan that touts standardized tests, without mentioning the Post’s interest.

This is not to imply that the current federal legislation is the first time Bush education proposals have benefited the Post. Kaplan also offers publications and services for students preparing for the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS), a previously experimental program beefed up to mixed reviews by then-Governor Bush into an annual make-or-break for students.

The results? A quick overview (WATN)–

  • The newspaper that ran the column, the Prince George’s Journal, is now long defunct. The Clinton administration gave big media a pass on anti-trust concerns, and few small newspapers could compete well enough to survive. (The Post Co. bought up and destroyed the DC-metro Gazette chain of small newspapers. Meanwhile, the Reverend Sun Moon’s then-empire was gobbling up many other small chains around the U.S., a pattern not reported in the Washington Post newspaper. The erstwhile community papers became part of the then-powerful right-wing GOP noise machine, now fractured.)
  • Shortly after my column ran, then-media commentator Kurtz ran a counter-argument of sorts on the Post’s op-ed page, though without mentioning my name or the title of my article (or the Prince George’s Journal). Same page, same day, the Post also ran a column by a NYTimes editor–an apologetic for corporate newspaper parents’ owning other interests. Quite the response–if they had had the decency to name my column, and me. (I spoke briefly by phone with Executive Editor Len Downie, who embarrassingly suggested that the Kaplan purchase represented a loss for the Post Co.) Nothing from the Post’s ombudsman.
  • Sure enough, the Post Co.’s education sector became by far its biggest earner. While its newspaper was losing money, the company pulled in so many $billions from its education sector that it ended up re-branding itself as an education and media company. SEC filings tell the story. And by now, of course, the paper itself has changed hands.
  • The Post newspaper has run quite a few good articles on the ills of excessive ‘standardized’ testing. But to this day, the Post has still not acknowledged its financial stake in Bush’s federal education ‘reforms’–or in the Bush brothers’ lucrative deals to Kaplan, supported through their governorships in Texas and Florida. The late David Broder prodded the Bush administration, in print, to follow through on the education promises–without mentioning that the Co. owned Kaplan.
  • No other journalist in the D.C. region followed up in 2002–no one on the left, no one on the right, no one in the middle. I thought that this purportedly liberal paper’s stake in GWBush was newsworthy. I still think so. But while the Post gave Bush a pass (on invading Iraq, for example), other media largely gave the Post a pass. Then they wonder why people don’t trust the news media.
One hand washes the other

One hand washes the other

The Big Ho-Hum from Louisiana

From Louisiana, a big ho-hum for the primary fight

SHREVEPORT-BOSSIER  As was predictable,* Rick Santorum won Louisiana’s presidential primary Saturday. Also predictable, the word ‘evangelicals’ has been all over the air waves. Again predictable, almost all of the commentary has come from people who have not lived in Louisiana, not stayed here for any length of time, not come from any place near here.

I say ‘here’, because I happen to be in the western part of Louisiana this week. What I saw, in the lead-up to the GOP primary March 24, was no sign of political activity. None. Virtually no campaign signs/posters, even. No discussion, unless you count a couple of Limbaugh-listening cab drivers. No movement on the street–any street–or indoors, regarding any candidate. Newspaper reporting was decorous to the verge of tepid. Interest, in short? –Scant. Virtually the only sign of life, outside communities who gratefully turned out to give President Obama their endorsement, has been the Etch-a-Sketch. And even that has been touched on from a different angle than that on air, at least in my hearing. Where the news media  reported that stock in the company manufacturing the Etch-a-Sketch went up, in the wake of the breathtakingly candid comment, locals note that sales of Etch-a-Sketches in stores went up.

So much for all those hordes of bible-waving frothing-at-the-mouth evangelicals, running amuck down the main streets in a grand stampede to vote for the man of their choice–the ‘devout’ Santorum.

There is one thing the topics of religion, the South, Christianity, ‘evangelicals’, the ‘Bible Belt’ and kindred terms all have in common, much more strongly than any other objective (actual) common denominator including demographics: These are all topics on which commentators feel it legitimate to speak without knowing anything about them.

Someone who talks about basketball on television knows at least something about basketball. Someone who talks about fashion knows something about clothes. Someone who reports on the economy, health issues, commerce–you name it–usually knows at least something about the topic, in spite of flaming gaffes like overlooking the mortgage-derivatives debacle.

But someone on air who uses the term ‘evangelical’? With rare exceptions, you could safely bet your mortgage balance–if anyone offered to take the bet–that the speaker has never even met an actual evangelical. Ditto most of the speakers who sweepingly characterize the South, etc.

One simple point, kept short: Genuine evangelicals spend a lot of time trying to convert other people to their faith. In these parts, their interest in voting for either Santorum or Newt Gingrich–the two Catholics in the race–or in Mitt Romney has been consistently tepid, and getting more so.

Try to believe me when I say that most true believers, the overwhelming majority of same, are not parading an eagerness to vote for any of the GOP candidates above as a hallmark of faith, nor are they exacting a promise to vote for Santorum as proof of faith in their neighbors.

Media analysts are obsessed with ‘evangelicals’. It may be a form of xenophobia in our major media hubs.

Back to the prevailing commentary–It’s good that media analysts have waked up to the demographics separating Santorum supporters, by and large, from Romney/Gingrich/Ron Paul voters. But the logical step that should come next has not yet come–the question why far-flung unreached voters would be more willing to go for Santorum. This logical step is being blocked by the ‘evangelicals’ dodge, a fig leaf for journalism not informing.

The answer is not religion. There are plenty of devout African-Americans, Latinos, Caucasians and others not lining up to vote for Santorum. The same holds for income level, occupation and industry.

The answer has to do with level of information. The local newspapers try hard, sometimes, but are withering on the vine. USA Today, read more often than the local paper, is beating the drum for the co-called ‘oil pipeline’. Not all three traditional television networks even air a national evening news program in the Shreveport-Bossier City metro area. Bookstores are few and far between, found mostly in large malls–chain stores. Internet access is more limited than in larger, healthier metro areas. Rush Limbaugh dominates the radio, feeding his audience false stories–that Canadians have to wait “four months” for health care, for example.

In regard to the limited topic of the GOP primary race, there is just about no information on Santorum’s lobbying in D.C. over recent years. There is no detailed evaluation of what Santorum’s policies, including the Paul Ryan budget and more global bellicosity, would do to the average Santorum voter. Santorum goes out and feeds his limited audiences the line they want to hear–I’m one of you, and we are under attack. That’s his campaign, in a nutshell. And people who would be unduly influenced by this thin line are people suffering a dearth of information on the issues that affect their lives.

Take this simple question on health care: How many Americans would be able to pay a high-six-figure medical bill? How many, or what proportion of the U.S. population, would be able to foot big hospital bills for themselves, even if they have insurance (or think they have)? Regardless of income level–how many people could count on being able to keep paying their mortgages, keep their kids in college, take care of their older relatives, meet any of the other demands of ordinary middle-class life, if they abruptly faced hospitalization for serious illness or injury?

And yet we have exactly the people who would be very sadly off, in such a situation–among the millions of people, probably the overwhelming majority of the population–reluctant to have single-payer health care. Why? Because they see it as ‘paying for other people’. What would THEY do, themselves, if faced with medical necessity?

Uh.

btw these untapped reservoirs of obliviousness to the basic question on health care–What would you do–also tend to be people resistant to keeping their own health. These are not, by and large, your joggers, your soccer coaches, your non-smokers. Remember the ‘Thank you for smoking’ line being pushed by a youngish rightwing writer? Them. Driving without a seatbelt? Them. Fast-food junkies? Them.

And these are the people we’re all supposed to listen to, as salt-of-the-earth, backbone-of-America types? People who think they’re showing independence and self-reliance by not buckling up?

Back to the topics above: These people are not evangelicals. They are not born-agains. They are not ‘the base’. They are GOP voters, largely staying home from the primaries because they don’t care too much who wins and just don’t want to know too much about the candidates. And the candidates are pandering to them with all their might, with the exception of Paul.

Granted, most of us are not actuaries. But given the proven shortfalls when an insurance policy has to be relied on, the number of people who don’t even have insurance ‘coverage’ in the first place, the likelihood of hospitalization in the ordinary lifespan–you would think that the concept of sharing the risk, or spreading the risk, would be viable.

As to the remaining contests, so far everything looks going by the metric below. I thought Gingrich and Romney might pull more votes out of Louisiana, but the lack of interest is fierce here, far more fierce than the commitment to any candidate. Former Governor Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania has said he thinks Santorum will pull Pennsylvania; he should know. If it’s only the most abjectly ill-informed voters who go to the polls, the outcome is predictable in a low-turnout vote.  

*Run-down of contests by metro-versus-rural metric, re-posted

  • Missouri March 17 Santorum, 52 delegates
  • Puerto Rico March 18 Romney, 23 delegates Winner-take-all statewide
  • Illinois March 20 Romney, 69 delegates
  • Louisiana March 24 Close three-way race, one of Santorum’s better hopes, 46 delegates Proportional
  • DC April 3 Romney, 19 delegates Winner-take-all statewide
  • Maryland April 3 Romney, 37 delegates Winner-take-all combined
  • Wisconsin April 3 Maybe Santorum, 42 delegates Winner-take-all combined
  • Connecticut April 24 Romney, 28 delegates Winner-take-all at 50%+
  • Delaware April 24 Romney, 17 delegates Winner-take-all statewide
  • New York April 24 Romney, 95 delegates Winner-take-all at 50%+
  • Pennsylvania April 24 Romney, 72 delegates
  • Rhode Island April 24 Romney, 19 delegates Proportional
  • Indiana May 8 Santorum, 46 delegates Winner-take-all combined
  • North Carolina May 8 Close three-way, something for Santorum, 55 delegates Proportional
  • West Virginia May 8 Santorum, 31 delegates Proportional
  • Nebraska May 15 Santorum, 35 delegates
  • Oregon May 15 Santorum, 28 delegates Proportional
  • Arkansas May 22 Santorum, 36 delegates Proportional/mixed
  • Kentucky May 22 Santorum, 45 delegates Proportional
  • Texas May 29 Romney/Gingrich, 155 delegates Proportional
  • California June 5 Romney, 172 delegates Winner-take-all combined
  • Montana June 5 Santorum, 26 delegates
  • New Jersey June 5 Romney, 50 delegates Winner-take-all statewide
  • New Mexico June 5 Romney, 23 delegates Proportional
  • South Dakota June 5 Santorum, 28 delegates Proportional
  • Utah June 26 Romney, 40 delegates Winner-take-all statewide