I can’t even remember what the controversy was all about, just what it felt like to be covering a story for the local paper and see a hostile crowd fix its gaze on me: The Media.

It was back in the early 1980s in Petersburg, Va., where I got my first full-time reporting job. I had been covering some highly charged city council dispute and one night found myself in a hotel ballroom where one side’s supporters were being entertained by a small vocal group.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, the lead singer stared at me and announced to the crowd, amid derisive laughter: “This next song … is for the reporter!” He did not mean it in a nice way.

What did I do? I thought.

No sympathy for me? I can understand. No doubt you, on the other side of the media divide, have felt the same way when you were slammed by your local newspaper or TV station.

I thought about that night in Petersburg recently when I read a report in School Board News on What We Think: Parental Perceptions of Urban School Climate, which was recently published by NSBA’s Council of Urban Boards of Education. According to the survey, parents who rely on newspapers for their information have more negative views of their schools than those who get their information from their child or their own experiences with the district itself.

For example, 76.1 percent of responders agreed or strongly agreed with the statement, “My child’s school is a safe place,” when their information came from “self-experience.” When it came from TV, it dropped slightly to 73.8 percent; and when their information came from the newspaper it fell all the way to 61.5 percent.

I can’t explain the reasons for these discrepancies, but I can guess. Much news follows a conflict model; that is, conflicts or controversies make news. This generally works OK when you’re covering, say, the war in Iraq or the latest outburst from Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. But it’s less useful in conveying the myriad events that occur in a school district. How, for example, do you describe that critical yet elusive process we call learning?

I could go on, but that would take more than the space I have here. Let me just say that the media -- never monolithic -- are getting more diverse every day. On the one side are responsible newspaper reporters (me? biased?) who try earnestly to just “get it right.” They can be a very collaborative group. For example, the Education Writers Association has a listserv on which reporters from around the country help each other sort through the many complex issues that come up in school districts.

There’s also, to be sure, poor and sensationalized reporting out there as well. And as news gathering expands into the ever-burgeoning blogosphere, there will no doubt be more of this as well.

Finally, let me put in a plug for ASBJ’s Communications columnist Nora Carr, the chief communications officer for the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools. As a former newspaper reporter, I thought I knew everything about communications, but reading, and at times editing, her excellent columns over the past several month has taught me a tremendous amount about how school districts can “tell their story.” Her April column deals with much of what I’ve been discussing today: It’s called “Setting the Record Straight.”

Lawrence Hardy, Senior Editor