Janelle Irwin Taylor
The Tampa Bay Times is launching its Education Hub, a move aimed at enhancing the paper’s commitment to local and state education reporting.
The hub will focus on all aspects of education, including K-12 and higher education, in the Tampa Bay area and beyond.
The Education Hub will include a dedicated reporting team of four primary journalists, a coordinating editor, and other roles. Its members include Jeffrey Solochek and Divya Kumar as education reporters; Lucy Marques as a higher education reporter; Nakylah Carter as a data reporter; and Jay Cridlin as the education and immigration editor.
Other Tampa Bay Times journalists will contribute to provide deeper and more sustained education coverage.
“Florida has one of the best education ecosystems in the nation and is home to some of America’s largest school districts. It also faces countless challenges,” Tampa Bay Times Editor Mark Katches said.
“Teachers are among the lowest-paid in the United States. And over the last decade, politics and culture wars have shaped districts and campuses like never before. There’s a lot of ground to cover. That’s why the Tampa Bay Times is announcing the creation of the Education Hub and defining the topic as a core area of coverage. The goal is to ensure that the Tampa Bay Times is always able to tell distinctive and meaningful stories to serve Floridians.”
The Education Hub will launch with an approximate budget of $500,000, with funds raised through grants and foundations, major gifts and community partnerships.
The Parallel Foundation has provided a three-year commitment for $80,000 per year. Open Campus, a nonprofit news organization that partners with newsrooms, is also supporting the hub’s higher education coverage.
