New episode: Education Reporter Tara García Mathewson Remembers Her Purpose
She covers the intersection of technology and education for The Markup and CalMatters
I had such a good conversation with Tara García Mathewson for the latest episode of The Journalism Salute but I felt like I only scratched the surface of her work as a reporter covering the intersection of education and technology for The Markup and CalMatters, two non-profits doing important work.
Tara, a Northwestern ‘10 grad, covers a lot of hot topics like artificial intelligence and student privacy and surveillance, often in multi-part, deeply-reported series'. The organizations she works for give her the time and space to do that. You can see the results of Tara's work at her website and I highly encourage you checking these stories out.
But I want to focus on two of her answers as I tease this episode in the hope that you'll listen to it (answers edited for clarity).
The benefit of newspaper reporting
One answer was on the importance of her beginning her career as a newspaper reporter for The Daily Herald in the Chicago suburbs and the dividends it paid.
" I started out covering local government and then after a few years, the schools beat became available. It seemed interesting to me. I had been hired in part in this bureau because I spoke Spanish.
I'm Puerto Rican. There was a very large Puerto Rican population there, and the editors were interested in someone who would be able to connect with that community and be able to reflect the community better in our stories. After a couple years covering local government, it started to feel a little frustrating because I was covering, the work of elected officials or people serving on boards. And there were not a lot of Latino immigrants in those positions.
When I was thinking about shifting to cover schools, I felt like parents care about their kids' education. If I'm willing to report more and bring more voices of Latino members of this community into the paper, covering schools could be a way to do that. I'd be covering their kids and I'd be covering them.
That was in late 2012 and I've been covering education ever since because there's so much to cover. I've continued to be interested and continue to find things worth exploring, worth bringing to the public.
I think it was really useful for me to spend the first three years of my career at a newspaper where I wrote a lot of stories. I wrote sometimes three stories or four stories in a single day. It just gave me a ton of practice at writing and talking to people and sourcing and moving quickly, and that, that work ethic that I developed at a newspaper early on has really stayed with me even as I've now shifted into doing work that takes, often at the least, three to four months and at the most, a whole year.
So I think it is useful for people who want to be investigative reporters to get the practice of just writing a lot and turning out a lot of stories."
Focus On The Purpose
I noted to Tara that she often covers subjects that are highly frustrating for the people she's interviewing. I asked her how she manages her mental health in taking in these stories. What she said was a reminder that journalists should remember when doing difficult work.
"I focus on the value (of the work). I'm highlighting kinds of harm, which puts me face-to-face with some really negative things. I did a couple years of reporting on punitive school discipline while I was at The Hechinger Report, and that was pretty dark, as I was the mother of two young children that were gonna end up going through public schools and I had concerns about what that would mean.
But I don't get stuck in a dark place about that because I at least feel like I'm serving a purpose. Journalism fills a constructive role. I think a lot of difficulty ends up when you feel like, 'The problem's too big. There's nothing we can do.' I feel like that sometimes, but it ends up passing because I can at least throw myself into some work that feels like, I'm contributing to a better world."
To my journalism friends: Remember your purpose. Hope you enjoy the episode.