With a career that began with Teach For America and includes at least one early byline in the Valerie Strauss section of the Washington Post, Matt Barnum is one of the most interesting education journalist on the beat.
One of his earliest fulltime writing gigs was at The 74, following by a stint as a national education reporter for Chalkbeat. Now, with a Spencer Fellowship and now a book deal under his belt, Barnum has returned from two years as a K-12 national education reporter job at the Wall Street Journal to become the “Ideas” editor at Chalkbeat — a move that I think makes enormous sense for both Chalkbeat and Barnum.
In this new interview conducted just before Thanksgiving, Barnum compares his new role to being a Metro columnist — “news gathering with more of an analytical flair” — and discusses problem of education narratives that seem to overtake the evidence behind them. In some cases, he says, “the conventional wisdom has just been repeated, [and] the chain of custody of the actual evidence is not entirely clear.”
When it comes to the state of the education beat, Barnum seems more worried about dwindling newsrooms and less worried about journalism’s traditional story selection and framing. And he defends coverage of hot-button political controversies that may or may not directly or immediately affect schools and learning: “I think as a factual matter, there is a broader tent interest in some of these hot political USDE stories, including from perhaps non-traditional or marginally-attached news consumers.”
Watch or listen to the conversation above — or read the uncorrected AI-generated transcript.
Previously from The Grade:
Vaccine mandates, declining school closures, & Chalkbeat funding drama: 🏆 Best Education Journalism of the Week 🏆 (10/08/2021)
Did the Emerson Collective really defund Chalkbeat over XQ coverage?
