GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

Readers, we have some questions for you.

Should we export GothamSchools to other cities? Should we do more coverage out of Albany? Is the comments section a welcome forum for honest conversation and real accountability — or did reading that description make you laugh out loud? What about the Community section?

These questions and more are part of a new survey that we’d love for you to take. The survey, meantime, is part of our ongoing efforts to keep GothamSchools alive and well. Lately, we’ve been working with a partner in that endeavor: EdNews Colorado, a news site covering education in Colorado (think RockyMountainSchools-dot-org), and this survey is one of our joint efforts.

We believe strongly that we should not have any beliefs about education (and indeed, the last time we surveyed you, we found that a majority of you agree with us that we have succeeded at being objective). But the one belief that we and EdNews unashamedly share is that successful school improvement efforts will require high-quality, independent journalism. And we know that far too little such journalism exists today. But we need your help figuring out how to build up education’s Fourth Estate.

Please take the survey, and leave any other thoughts (as always) in the comments section.

These are scary times for the journalism business, and yet we wake up every day wanting to do good journalism, and you come here wanting to read it.

How will our site survive? How will we get better? How can you help?

I’ve already asked you for money. Now, in a new survey that you can find here and that will take just five minutes, I request your information.

This includes personal stuff like if you’re a teacher or a journalist or a reformer or a saint and what kind of office supplies you buy, but also fun stuff like what topics we’re not covering enough and what we’re doing right.

The idea is that we could use some of the information to help us pay for ads that would help us pay our rents. And we can use the rest to be better journalists. Everything personal will stay completely private.

One more reason to take the survey — which, again, you can take by clicking here: One lucky reader who fills it out will win a $100 Amazon.com gift certificate.

While the school system limps toward a new governance structure, we at GothamSchools are shaking things up, too. To mark our first anniversary, we’re adding new staff (have you noticed those shiny new bylines?), excessing old ones, paying the bills in a new way, and changing up our content delivery model. We also plan to throw a party, at which we hope you’ll help us celebrate our continued existence despite the tough times.

Finally — permit one more forced parallel? — this post marks a new era of transparency and reader input, because we are both telling you all about the changes and asking for your help in pulling them off.

Please begin by enjoying our revised design, in which we distinguish between shorter dispatches and full-blown, robustly reported daily news stories. The shorter dispatches are indented and touched off by arrows, as in the post below this one. The stories are in the same maroon-headed format that you’re used to seeing blog posts.

The goal is to hold ourselves to an even higher standard, truth-telling-wise, while still keeping you up to date on the minutiae of school news (who just went wild at a City Council hearing, what article we just read and recommend, a deep thought, a breaking news item). (more…)