JOB SEARCH: In its coverage of the search for a new public schools superintendent in Los Angeles, The Los Angeles Times asked Paul Hill, a research professor at the UW’s Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs, what effect the oftentimes short job stints among superintendents have on a district. Hill said the result is often to scrap the predecessor’s initiatives and start the reform process from scratch with little or no advance in academic achievement.

WARMING TREND: John M. Wallace, a UW professor of atmospheric sciences and the chairman of a recent panel that considered the issue of global warming, told The Washington Post that contradictions between two sets of measurements - temperature at the earth’s surface and temperature at the upper atmosphere - were essentially insignificant. “The difference between the surface and upper-air trends in no way invalidates the conclusion that the Earth’s temperature is rising,” he told the Post.

HIGH PRAISE: In announcing his appointment with the University of Washington School of Drama, The Chronicle of Higher Education had plenty of praise for theater veteran Jon Jory. “Few theater directors have had as big an impact on the American stage,” Lila Guterman and Scott Heller wrote in their column, “Peer Review.” Jory will join the UW faculty in the fall of 2000.

GOOD NEWS, BAD NEWS: More than 90 years since Sigmund Freud made his first and only visit to the United States, psychotherapy continues to percolate into new areas of American life. But has it made a positive or negative impact on society? A recent Los Angeles Times story put that question to UW sociologist Pepper Schwartz. “It’s a mixed blessing. We’ve hugely increased our sensitivity to each other. We understand, for example, how much damage words can do. More people take responsibility for their actions, and if they don’t, someone makes them,” Schwartz said. “But we’ve also created whole new categories of what people should worry about, hundreds of new ways in which we can fail or people can fail us.” ¶

Newsmakers is a periodic column reporting on coverage of the University of Washington by the national press and broadcasting services.