Tuscaloosa spin

The Fordham Foundation's Education Gadfly with a more nuanced view of the Tuscaloosa rezoning covered by the NYT (accompanied by breathless outrage in a previous email by yours truly ;-)...

 It's no small thing to ascribe racist motivations to public officials.  New York Times reporter Sam Dillon, generally a model of careful education journalism, came close to doing just that in a
front-page story <http://ent.groundspring.org/EmailNow/pub.php?module=URLTracker&amp;cmd=track&amp;j=163632089&amp;u=1616359>  on the rezoning of students in  Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
 
Dillon's first sentence: "After white parents in this racially mixed city complained about school overcrowding, school authorities set out to draw up a sweeping rezoning plan." He continues in this vein, focusing on race, even noting (in case you forgot) that George Wallace once stood in Tuscaloosa, in a University of Alabama doorway, to stop the college from integrating.
 
Controversial, sexy leads and images of a racist South are proven ways to transform news into front-page material. But they're lousy ways to tell a complicated story such as this one.

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Tuscaloosa spin

It's no small thing to ascribe racist motivations to public officials. New York Times reporter Sam Dillon, generally a model of careful education journalism, came close to doing just that in a front-page story <http://ent.groundspring.org/EmailNow/pub.php?module=URLTracker&amp;cmd=track&amp;j=163632089&amp;u=1616359>  on the rezoning of students in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.