Offering insights and ideas for school leaders, the news media, and the public to consider, this book examines how the print and electronic media portray one of the crucial news stories of our time: the education of 50 million American youngsters. The book maintains that, while the school-media connection should be "a natural" for both sides despite the underlying incompatibility of a slow-moving story and a fast-breaking profession, the media provide only infrequent and perfunctory acknowledgment of the nation's school children and are poorly informed about education and schools. Chapters are as follows: (1) Dilemmas and Dimensions; (2) Journalism's Dirty Little Secret: Everybody's Wrong; (3) Crusaders, Paladins, and Their Civilizing Mission; (4) Names Make News; (5) The National Storyteller; (6) Television's Endangered Species; (7) The Indifferent Pundits; (8) The Great Cable Caper; (9) The Business Connection; (10) Between Two Hard Covers; (11) More Than a Newspaper, Less Than a Book; (12) Constant Companion, Minor Medium; (13) Message Pix Gotta Be Good; and (14) Learning about Learning in the Nineties. An epilogue, 121 references, and a 63-item bibliography are attached. (RS)