By Ben Boychuk If newspapers are indeed dying, at least a few seem willing to die fighting. Consider the Los Angeles Times (ward of the bankrupt Tribune Co.), which on Sunday published a surprisingly bold piece of investigative journalism on arguably the most pressing subject of our day: Public education. The story should serve as an example of how a cultural institution—even one as embattled as the mainstream media—can use transparency to influence society in a positive way. In case you missed it, Times reporters Jason Felch, Jason Song and Doug Smith used California’s public records law to obtain seven years of math and English test scores from the Los Angeles Unified School District. They asked Richard Buddin, a well-respected analyst at the RAND Corporation, to run the numbers and estimate teacher effectiveness — just as many states around the country are considering, and in a few cases starting to do. The story is an eye-opener. The Times didn’t just present the results; it named names. Much of this sort of data never sees the light of day. What’s more, according to the story: “The district has had the ability to analyze the differences among teachers for years but opted
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