Gersh Kuntzman is the editor of The Brooklyn Paper, and he has done an excellent job of just plain turning that paper on. We all want to read it every week. It’s got vigor and color and lots of local news. The paper’s coverage of the Atlantic Yards scandal has been pivotal and courageous. If the paper gets a little racy and edgy, well, we can bear it.

And as he would say at this point: “Uhoh. What’s the matter.”

Here it is: I have been very unhappy at The Brooklyn Paper’s slant in covering the controversies over the Kahlil Gibran International Academy and its future principal, Ms. Debbie Almontaser. It’s not that any of the information reported is wrong. My problem is with the way it’s pitched, the tone of the headlines, the rather sensationalist vocabulary, and the continued connection of two discrete issues: the school’s mission and the school’s location at PS 282.

The May 12 edition, for example, calls the recent events a “debacle”. That’s what I mean by slant and pitch. Well. I rather think it’s not a debacle but the opposite: a heroic achievement against great odds.

Disclosure: I am a member of the school’s advisory council (along with other pastors, rabbis, and imams). So I am hardly without interest in the matter. READ MORE AT OLD FIRST BLOG