Bringing new insights & voices to The Grade

The Grade’s newest columnist and editor describes how she found her way to journalism, why she left, and how she plans to approach her new role.

By Amber C. Walker

My unconventional path to journalism started in 2013, when George Zimmerman was acquitted for the murder of Trayvon Martin. I’d just finished my first year as an English teacher at Miami Northwestern Senior High School. Several of my students knew Trayvon; they felt the criminal justice system did not care about them.

My heart broke for the profound hopelessness these Black and Brown students felt. The verdict also made me fear for my future children growing up in a nation that consistently shows it would not value their Black lives. I took to my Tumblr to vent my frustrations about the verdict. A few hours later, an editor from The Huffington Post (now just HuffPost) contacted me for permission to publish the piece. This was the start of my journalism career.

Although I enjoyed journalism and was an avid consumer of news and commentary, I had never thought about being a journalist before The Huffington Post reached out, and, in retrospect, I am not surprised. Many stories about Black and Brown people are one-dimensional, devoid of context, and not written by folks who reflect their socioeconomic identity.

As the newest editor and columnist at The Grade, I plan to leverage my perspective to write frankly about issues that affect low-income students of color and their families, who are faced with the most roadblocks when it comes to accessing quality education. Ultimately, I hope my column and the voices I bring to The Grade will be an asset to my colleagues covering diverse communities and those who strive to do a better job centering them.

Many stories about Black and Brown people are one-dimensional, devoid of context, and not written by folks who reflect their socioeconomic identity.

As an inner-city public school teacher turned local newspaper reporter, I’ve been on both sides of the story as a subject and a journalist. My experience makes me intimately aware of the systemic shortcomings and opportunities for success in both classrooms and newsrooms.

Whenever reporters made their way to Englewood, the neighborhood I grew up in on Chicago’s south side, it usually meant something tragic had occurred. News focused on crime and blight, which felt more like a surface-level characterization than an authentic narrative of my hometown. The topics that were important to me, the lived experiences of people of color, didn’t seem to have a place in citywide media. Only niche outlets, like Chicago-based Ebony and Jet magazines, and the Chicago Defender, took the time to tell nuanced stories that represented Black life as I knew it.

When I reached high school and college, there was more of the same. My identity was not reflected among the white, upper-middle-class students that filled the ranks of campus publications, and they did not seem to prioritize amplifying diverse voices. The newsrooms came off as echo chambers, with the same people, teams, and organizations profiled. If you were not in this relatively small community of students, your stories did not get press.

My experience makes me intimately aware of the systemic shortcomings and opportunities for success in both classrooms and newsrooms.

After The Huffington Post published my Trayvon Martin piece, I started to consider journalism as a career option. I was an English teacher, so my writing and editing skills were pretty solid. I’d also spent my time in college as an undergraduate research fellow, so I loved deep diving to get to the root of an issue. I was a part of Teach For America’s first class of writing fellows for their official blog Pass The Chalk, where I was able to write about the work my colleagues and I were doing in our classrooms and the experiences of students and their families throughout Miami.

After relocating to Madison, Wisconsin, in 2014, I freelanced for several local publications until 2016, when I was hired to cover K-12 education at The Capital Times, a local paper in the city. I knew that I did not want my approach to journalism to mirror what I’d noticed as a news consumer. A few days before my first interview at The Cap Times, our publisher, Paul Fanlund, wrote an op-ed about active objectivity, the theory that “value-neutral, facts-only reporting,” especially on issues of race and social justice, can come across as tone-deaf at best or exclusionary at worst to people of color.

Journalists’ traditional approaches to reporting can lead to a lack of trust in publications (which are often read as elitist, predominantly white institutions), in turn making it more difficult for journalists to diversify their sources and paint a true picture of the race and social justice issues they seek to authentically report on.

This theory was put forth by the University of Wisconsin – Madison journalism professors Sue Robinson and Kathleen Barzen Culver in their article, “When White Reporters Cover Race: News Media, Objectivity and Community (Dis)trust,” on their in-depth analysis of race-based coverage in Madison following a series of stories in 2011 about a contentious debate for the district to sponsor a charter school for African-American boys.

Journalists’ traditional approaches to reporting can lead to a lack of trust in publications (which are often read as elitist, predominantly white institutions).

My publisher’s op-ed was my introduction to The Cap Times. In addition to discussing Robinson’s and Culver’s research, Fanlund laid out what the newsroom was doing to commit to diversifying its ranks and coverage, including providing space for African-American commentators, hosting community conversations about race and social justice issues, and actively seeking stories and sources outside of city talking heads, UW-Madison professors and other stakeholders in traditional power structures.

I didn’t feel like my lack of formal education as a journalist was a detriment to my newsroom, but an asset. Working in a city like Madison for a publication that was committed to an actively objective stance helped me build my foundation as a shoe-leather reporter. I garnered a lot of respect not only from my journalism peers but, most important to me, from the community.

Still, all of the good work my newsroom was doing would not matter much if community papers could not survive digital disruption. Similar to most local papers, hard copy subscriptions were still a significant revenue driver for The Cap Times. At the end of 2017, the paper celebrated its centennial in Madison with its subscribers. Looking out on the sea of gray-haired elders, I realized The Cap Times would not be around for another 100 years if these people were an accurate representation of our paying audience.

That was when I decided to go back to graduate school to learn more about emerging business models in journalism and how to create sustainable newsrooms that were still able to do community-centered accountability reporting.

Ultimately, I want The Grade to not only reach a greater share of our current audience of education reporters, but to bring the best of your journalism to the audience that matters most: the students and families you cover.

The Studio 20 program at New York University, spearheaded by longtime professor and media critic Jay Rosen, focused on how media organizations could leverage emerging technologies to innovate their newsrooms and ideally, increase sources and volume of revenue. If local papers go, so does the likelihood for watchdog coverage of local institutions, including school districts. I enrolled in Fall 2018.

While at NYU, I worked with publications that were doing well in terms of navigating new ways to create and consume news, while remaining financially viable and committed to deep reporting. These newsrooms run the gamut from early-stage, digital-native publications like Axios and Documented to legacy media companies like National Public Radio.

All of these experiences have led me here, to The Grade, an independent, nonprofit effort dedicated to amplifying the stories of education reporters and improving the quality of the beat’s coverage. I want my column to serve as a space to spark conversations that matter to education reporters. Ultimately, I want The Grade to not only reach a greater share of our current audience of education reporters, but to bring the best of your journalism to the audience that matters most: the students and families you cover.

I need to partner with you all in that charge, and hope that we can work together to get it done. My first question for you all is: As an education reporter, why do you read The Grade and what kind of coverage would you want to see from us? Please email me at ambercwalker@gmail.com or reach out on Twitter @ACWalker620 with the hashtag #TheGrade to share your thoughts.

Previous columns from Walker:

What it’s like being a rookie education reporter

Writing great profiles in the age of remote reporting

Related pieces from The Grade:

A brain drain in education journalism

A star reporter explains why she left journalism — and ways to fix education news