Chalkbeat

Chalkbeat
Formation2014
FounderElizabeth Green
Founded atNew York City and Colorado[1]
Merger ofGotham Schools, EdNews Colorado
TypeNon-profit organization
Region
Chicago, Colorado, Detroit, Indiana, Newark, New York, Philadelphia, and Tennessee[2]
Official language
English
Jill Barkin, Elizabeth Green, Kang-Xing (KX) Jin, David Rousseau, Ann Sardini, Gideon Stein, Becca Van Dyck, Karen Wishart, Roberto Yañez[2]
Websitechalkbeat.org

Chalkbeat is a non-profit news organization that covers education in several American communities.[3][4] Its mission is to "inform the decisions and actions that lead to better outcomes for children and families by providing deep, local coverage of education policy and practice."[5] It aims to cover "the effort to improve schools for all children, especially those who have historically lacked access to a quality education".[2] Its areas of focus include under-reported stories, education policy, equity, trends, and local reporting.[6]

Chalkbeat was founded as GothamSchools in 2008 by Elizabeth Green and Philissa Cramer. It merged with EdNews Colorado, founded by Alan Gottlieb, in 2013, and then redesigned and relaunched the website as Chalkbeat one year later.[5][7][8] Chalkbeat has eight bureaus where it reports news regularly: Chicago, Colorado, Detroit, Indiana, Newark, New York City, Philadelphia, and Tennessee.[2]

In New York City, Chalkbeat's competitors include three daily newspapers and a public radio station with an education-focused blog. Another key competitor is Capital Education, owned by Politico.[9]

In 2016, Chalkbeat clarified its expectations, standards and editorial practices by unveiling a formal "code of ethics" that covers all its bureaus.[10] Chalkbeat has also introduced an open-source impact tracking platform called MORI (Measures of Our Reporting's Influence).[11]

  1. ^ "What We Talk About When We Talk About Impact" (PDF). Chalkbeat. Retrieved January 15, 2021.
  2. ^ a b c d "About Chalkbeat". Chalkbeat. April 6, 2020. Retrieved January 15, 2021.
  3. ^ Peck, Gretchen (December 6, 2018). "Using Venture Philanthropy, American Journalism Project Seeks to Sustain Vital News Coverage". Editor & Publisher. Archived from the original on November 14, 2019. Retrieved November 14, 2019.
  4. ^ Peiser, Jaclyn (September 26, 2018). "Website Revs Up, With New York Magazine's Help, to Cover More Local News". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved November 14, 2019.
  5. ^ a b Yang, Nu (March 10, 2014). "Lesson Plans". Editor & Publisher. Archived from the original on November 14, 2019. Retrieved November 14, 2019.
  6. ^ Steussy, Lauren (July 19, 2016). "How Chalkbeat is trying to build a bigger audience for education news". Columbia Journalism Review. Retrieved November 14, 2019.
  7. ^ Bhuiyan, Johana (January 7, 2014). "GothamSchools grows, goes national". POLITICO Media. Retrieved November 14, 2019.
  8. ^ O'Donovan, Caroline (January 13, 2014). "Start small, plan big: How two nonprofit education sites came together to build a network". Nieman Lab. Retrieved November 14, 2019.
  9. ^ Walsh, Mark (August 4, 2015). "Chalkbeat Wields Web to Boost Local Ed.-News Coverage". Education Week. Retrieved November 14, 2019.
  10. ^ Cite error: The named reference CodeOfEthics was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  11. ^ Cite error: The named reference MORI was invoked but never defined (see the help page).