EDITORIAL: Great Journalism Only Happens 'On the Road'
Fredericksburg City Schools is this year launching the CIP program. To better understand how it works, we're going to the source. We're going 'on the road.' Why? Ask Charles.
By Martin Davis
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
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Of his early years at CBS News, North Carolina native and reporter extraordinaire Charles Kuralt’s fondest memories were of the “little green card” that allowed him to jump on a plane and travel anywhere in the world, at anytime. As Charles Osgood said of his friend and CBS colleague, Kuralt never “stayed anywhere long…. He was a traveling man.”
Is it ironic that the man who captured the beauty and the unique character of his beloved home state, North Carolina, as well as anyone in the 20th century, could never settle in the state he loved? Who was happier “on the road” than at home — wherever home was? No.
There’s one trait all good reporters share; the passion for travel. Kuralt just did it better than most.
Travel sharpens the eye and — in the illiterate language of edu-speak — helps “scaffold” knowledge that broadens one’s understanding of the human condition.
Whether one reports internationally, nationally, or locally, one can’t build that scaffolding with books and education alone. These are simply the screws and nails that hold together the timbers — direct human experience of something — that reporters harvest when they travel.
And that’s why I spent Thursday evening sitting at the El Dorado Grill bar in Wise, Virginia, eating chicken taquitos, sipping a cold Blue Moon in an iced beer mug (much needed after seven straight hours of driving), and chatting with Tammy — the bartender — about the people and life in Virginia’s coal country.
The vast majority of those people she talked about are graduates of Wise County Public Schools. “People stay here,” she said. “We take care of one another.”
Tucked away in southwest Virginia less than 10 miles from the Kentucky border — where coal is still the dominant industry, where the poverty rate is just under 20%, and meth remains the region’s most daunting social challenge — Wise County is home to the third-highest overall SOL passing rate in the commonwealth of Virginia.
The program that has led Wise to that remarkable achievement is the Comprehensive Instructional Program, started by Matt Hurt whose name regular readers of the Advance will know.
When Hurt invited the Advance to come see first-hand how the program works, we jumped. Not just because the editorial team at the Advance is — quite honestly — led by a couple of education nerds, but because Fredericksburg City Public Schools is this year launching the CIP program in a move to accelerate the district’s performance on SOL exams.
Next week, we will bring you a special report on how Wise County did it from the mouths of those who day-in and day-out carry out the operation that delivers the third-best overall SOL pass rate in Virginia, despite the socio-economic challenges it faces.
That will give you, our readers, an opportunity to understand exactly how this program should run.
Sure — one can report such stories using email, phone, text, zoom, and the internet. One can even report such stories by talking with people like Hurt when they come to town, as the Advance has done.
But to really understand something, one has to go on the road, open the mind, and see for oneself how things get done. Sit at the feet of the master and learn. And then write in a way that opens the minds of those we answer to — our readers in the 540 — and help scaffold their minds and imaginations to better understand the community we all share.
In an age where we have the world quite literally at our fingertips, thanks to Google, and are increasingly turning over our understanding of the info Google provides to Artificial Intelligence, the importance of travel is amplified.
Charles Kuralt knew its importance. Call us old-school, but we think he was on to something.
And that’s why we’re going “on the road.” Today, and more — much more — in the near future.
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