Shuttered schools: the backstory--updated!

Published Nov 27 2007, 04:29 PM by Adam Reilly

Kudos to the Globe for reporting the Boston Archdiocese's school-reorganization plan on A1, above the fold. This placement makes a strong statement about the paper's determination to serve Boston proper as well as the suburbs, some exceptions notwithstanding.

Having said that, readers who want a deeper look at the archdiocese's plan would do well to review earlier coverage in the Dorchester Reporter, which has been all over this story since February. Click here, for example, and you'll get an article that details recent pushback against the archdiocese from parents, students, and Boston politicians--and also explains the potential social cost of the archdiocese's plan.

Scroll down, meanwhile, and you'll find links to all the Reporter's previous coverage--including an editorial discussing the archdiocese's efforts to bar the press from a parent/parishioner meeting where the reorganization was discussed. Throughout, the Reporter's guiding assumption was that the archdiocese's deliberations needed to be covered before the plan was a done deal. As publisher Ed Forry put it:

It is our job--and our charge--to report on the Catholic school consolidation process now, not at a time of the Archdiocese's choosing in the "weeks ahead" or after a decision on school closings has been handed down by Cardinal O'Malley.

That's good community journalism.

UPDATE: The Herald's Laura Crimaldi notes that her paper got to the subject before the Globe, with a cover story (by Crimaldi) published on Nov. 18 and a column by Peter Gelzinis that ran on Nov. 21. I should have noted that in the original post.

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