In the eye of the spin.

I started out as a daily newspaper reporter. Among the newsroom minorities I gravitated to, mutual support ran high to push for diversity in news coverage and hiring. A muckraking idealism also characterized many of the journalists I met. I remember one old-timer in particular, a Tijuana bureau chief for a San Diego paper, rousing a workshop of young journalists of color with his passionate invocation of a familiar reporters' mantra: "to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted."

I began covering an education beat at the San Diego Union-Tribune, eager to storm the ramparts of the journalism establishment. Or at least, that was what I thought I should be doing. In reality, my corporate foray turned into a mostly comfortable routine of attending school board meetings and filing my eight inches of copy for the night. That is, until I attempted to write a major feature, on the disproportionately high drop-out and failure rates among African American and Latino teenagers in San Diego's north county (well known for both its good schools and for being home to the KKK's Tom Metzger).

Without much of a political framework, just following my need to know why, led me into a story that didn't fit the standby liberal narrative of poor academic performance in disadvantaged "inner city schools." These were high-achieving, well-funded suburban schools that still managed to fail their students of color. Within a polarized setting of upper-middle class whites, and small but growing numbers of black professionals and Latino migrant farmworkers, academic performance could not be understood without taking into account factors such as recurring racist incidents (blackface in classroom theatricals), uninformed, mostly white teachers, or the precursor of zero tolerance disciplining. Making the case to my editors that this was news came right up against the wall of ...