ALUMNI IN THE NEWS
Alumni IN THE NEWS
Merrow Wins Peabody Award Reporting is very much like detective work, explains John Merrow ’59, a 25year veteran of the education beat whose latest television program, School Sleuth: The Case of the Excellent School, received
PeabodyAward-Winner John Merrow ’59 as the School Sleuth on PBS. After years of reporting, Merrow says he isn’t sure how he feels about winning the award for the first role in which he doesn’t play himself. 6
Taft Bulletin Summer 2001
a Peabody Award in May. The show aired on PBS last fall. In it, Merrow plays a private detective—complete with trenchcoat and fedora—who seeks out characteristics of excellence in schools, exploring different issues in each segment. The program tackles issues of school safety, both physical and psychological, as well as academics. Although the awards luncheon this year was at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York, the University of Georgia journalism school is home to the Peabodys. Thirty-four awards were given from 1,100 nominations, and although many go to news and public affairs program, The West Wing and The Sopranos were also among this year’s winners. Pat Mitchell, president of PBS, told the New York Times she’s a fan of the Peabody, because unlike other awards, there are no set categories, citing Merrow’s School Sleuth as excellent journalism that defies the usual labels. School Sleuth came out of a “whimsical memo” Merrow wrote about his own experiences as a teacher and education reporter, along with his suggestions for improving education. That evolved, in turn, into Choosing
Excellence: “Good Enough” Schools are not Good Enough (Scarecrow Press, 2000). “Choosing Excellence is vintage Merrow: thoughtful, engaging, and delightfully opinionated,” writes Jerome Murphy, Harold Howe II [’36] Professor of Education at Harvard Graduate School of Education. “With passion and common sense, he provides a tonic for parents fed up with the testing mania and looking for better ways to evaluate schools.” NEA Today says the book reads like one of Merrow’s “fast-moving education debates” on television. Combining expert testimony along with real-life stories from students and teachers he’s met over his quarter-century in the field, Merrow examines such issues as technology, charter schools, attention deficit disorder, and high-stakes testing. “We’re arguing that ‘good enough’ is the enemy of excellence,” Merrow says. “Not all award-winning schools have what I’d call excellence in all areas.” Merrow is executive producer/host and president of Learning Matters, the nonprofit production company he formed in 1995 that produces The Merrow Report and Making the Grade, which airs on PBS’s NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, as well as programs for National Public Radio. For more information on any of these programs, visit www.pbs.org/merrow.