Focus The Nation, Hit--And Miss

America's colleges and universities focused on the environment yesterday, but what about the rest of the country?

First, the good news. Higher education largely heeded the call of the environmental advocacy group Focus The Nation: 1,200 colleges and universities hosted events, as did 300 K-12 schools across the country. So many users tried to watch the group's Webcast, "The 2% Solution", that the site crashed. Collegiate publications did a bang-up job covering the event. By the goals that FTN had set for itself, it was a big hit.

But the mainstream media? Not so much. OK, it is tough to command front-page space on a day when Microsoft makes a $44.6 billion bid for Yahoo! As you might have expected, FTN made the California papers with staff-written stories in The San Jose Mercury News, San Diego Union Tribune and Los Angeles Times. The FTN story didn't make the print edition of The New York Times, although its Web site ran a dispatch from the Associated Press. USA Today had the story only in print, though it's hard to tell how many editions ran it.

Did the big press miss the big story? Only time will tell.