A source in Ukraine said she didn't want to bother me today because of the shooting, "in case you need to time cover and process it." Let me repeat: a source in a warzone was worried about disturbing me here in America.
I got tired of affirmative action stories that mostly centered on wealthy East Asians. So I wrote my own story on Hmong refugees and my Filipino father
There's a whole cadre of journalists of color who work tirelessly *for free* trying to diversify this industry: running youth journalism workshops, editing cover letters, being therapists for each other when we have to navigate racism inside and outside the newsroom...
Hey everyone! Realize there's a lot of big news today but a half-million schoolchildren could lose access to free lunch next year so maybe read my story too:
I want to scream this story from the rooftop: millions -- MILLIONS -- of kids cannot attend virtual classes because they don't have high-speed Internet. Even during the pandemic, Congress +
@realDonaldTrump
have done almost nothing to fix it
What's happened in just the last month with teacher uprisings...
WEST VIRGINIA: 9-day strike for a 5 percent raise
KENTUCKY: Teachers strike, forcing many schools to close
OKLAHOMA: Strike threat leads to $6k raise after decade-long freeze
ARIZONA: Teachers threatening strike
Hi friends, after nearly a decade at the Washington Post, I'm proud to announce I've made the move to
@AP
, where I'll be writing about early education and childcare. To mark the occasion, here's a baby photo of me with my mom.
I got rejected from UCLA, Cal, Brown, NYU and ... the Sutter Middle School newspaper staff. I'm tweeting this from my desk at the
@washingtonpost
, so needless to say, everything worked out.
Lot of high school seniors who applied early admission to college are getting news today that maybe they didn’t want.
Everything is going to be ok.
Rejection sucks but you can almost certainly end up someplace you absolutely love and get a great education. Hang in there.
When Kentucky barred transgender girls from playing on girl's team, there was only one transgender athlete in the state:
Middle schooler Fischer Wells, who can no longer play on the field hockey she helped start. My story:
Yes, if you're covering this, please please please ensure you understand context and history of anti-Asian violence, including how racists targeted and killed South Asians and Arabs in the wake of 9/11.
If you want to support black journalists/coverage of racial injustice, here’s the donation page for the
@IBWellsSociety
, co-founded by
@nhannahjones
:
Me talking about how racist housing policies are connected to wealth-building which is connected to economic injustice which is connected to segregation which is connected to schools which is connected to
“Kid Rock’s restaurant is closed. You can go home now.” Counterprotesters in Detroit are taunting militia members who have shown up at the convention center
TLDR: The government is giving advice to its own furloughed employees on how to pay off government loans they took out to go to college to get government jobs.
Are you a federal employee impacted by the partial government shutdown? Here are some options to manage your student loans while you are furloughed or not receiving pay. 👇
Ketangi Brown Jackson’s then-11 year old daughter wrote
@BarackObama
telling him to nominate her mother to the Supreme Court. May we all
raise daughters this empowered.
I talked to a high school principal who was trying to figure out how to run active shooter drills while also protecting students from coronavirus. These are the kind of insane dilemmas confronting school leaders.
Seriously y'all. I am so tired of the debate over school reopening disregarding this very basic fact: reopening school in a pandemic is REALLY EXPENSIVE.
In Oklahoma, I’ve spoken to teachers who consider themselves apolitical who have joined the fight for more school $$. And I’ve met Republican teachers demanding that lawmakers raise taxes. It’s a new world...
NEW POLL By the millions, Americans are taking to the streets in rallies and protests. Echoes of Vietnam
@sfcpoll
@emGusk
w/ powerful video by
@ZoeannMurphy
Hello Western Michigan! I'm gonna be your
@washingtonpost
reporter on the ground for Election Day. Please holler if there's something I should know, re: voter suppression, irregularities, etc.: moriah.balingit
@washpost
.com
Georgia Southern University decided it wanted to teach race and privilege. White students burned the book. A deep dive in to what happened in Statesboro, and what it means for teaching race in these times:
They sell plasma, wait tables, drive Uber and turn to food pantries. Read about what Oklahoma’s teachers, among the nation’s worst paid, are forced to do to pay the bills.
My 9-year-old niece, inspired after watching “On the Basis of Sex,” put on a dress and set up shop on an ironing board so she could write “legal briefs.”
You’ve read about the rich kids whose parents tried to scam their way into USC. Here’s a different story, about two teens from South LA working to get in the right way:
On a bus with teachers from Muskogee, Okla. headed to Oklahoma City so they can rally for education funding. Our driver? The AP US History teacher. He drives buses on the side b/c of a driver shortage.
Whether you love
@KingJames
or hate him, you'll root for the kids he's trying to help with his I Promise School after you read this
@EricaLG
masterpiece. Love that she quotes the kids more than the King himself:
I went home to Sacramento to write about how low-income AAPI's may become collateral damage in the battle against affirmative action. Please give it a read:
Some places to start. Learn about Vincent Chin. In Detroit in 1982, an autoworker yelled ""It's because of you little m—f—s that we're out of work" at Chin. The autoworker and his stepson later beat Chin to death with a baseball bat.
It drives me crazy when people look at the results of a presidential election and say “1/2 the country voted for x.” But there’s a long list of people who don’t get to vote, including:
-young people under 18
-currently + formerly incarcerated people
-non-naturalized immigrants
Focusing on slavery -- and adding to our understanding of it -- is good. But let’s not pretend that our media are suddenly, independently deciding to cover slavery 154 years after it ended.
I spoke to some extraordinarily brave Marjory Stoneman Douglas High students, who were in the building where 14 of their classmates were slain two weeks ago and return to class today:
Hey friends, some news: I've been named a Davis Fellow at
@Middlebury
and will head to Vermont Friday for a 7-week intensive Spanish language course. Ta-Nehisi Coates was a fellow in 2014, so I'm proud to be in his company in this extremely narrow aspect of his career.
I can’t express how meaningful it is to see
@washingtonpost
share the story of an Indigenous Filipino woman — and to see it translated into my family’s native language so my aunties can read it. I have never been prouder to work here.
Maura's story sparked this investigation into the Smithsonian's racial brain collection.
She was an Indigenous Filipino woman who came to St. Louis to be put on display at the World's Fair. When she died, an anthropologist likely took her cerebellum.
A gentle reminder to everyone everywhere that public schools are constitutionally obligated to educate every child regardless of their immigration status, according to the Supreme Court.
To give you an idea of the size of Pittsburgh: this shooting occurred just blocks away from a home of Steelers Coach Mike Tomlin, within a mile of the mayor's house, two blocks from a police station and across the street from the home of a friend where I celebrated Passover.
1)I do not think being in classrooms is the safest or best place for my staff and I did not sign up for this job to weigh the cost-benefit analysis of someone’s (potential) life vs being an economic driver for the country and making sure kids can read and do math on time
(8/)
... scouting talent when young JOC's often don't get the visibility they've earned, lobbying hard to get JOC's hired, writing our own diversity reports to convince our editors to hire more Black reporters (I did this once!), and on and on...
NEW: Asian American students in many cities are among the least likely to return to classrooms.
@hannah_natanson
,
@yutao_chen95
and I tried to understand why:
Get you a local editor who takes the entire department to a baseball game and then does this (cc:
@semelm
, the best editor in American journalism) 📷:
@ianshapira
You might think closing schools is a no-brainer. But when you hear about what some kids endure when school's out, you might change your mind. My story on child hunger:
OK, but many of us have literally produced nothing but coronavirus-related stories since March. We would love your help amplifying our coverage, because there's so much important stuff that's getting lost in the noise!
Hi friends, after nearly a decade at the Washington Post, I'm proud to announce I've made the move to
@AP
, where I'll be writing about early education and childcare. To mark the occasion, here's a baby photo of me with my mom.
Hi friends, if you're at
#AAJA20
and are interested in working at the Washington Post, or need advice on:
-education reporting
-resumes/cover letters
-navigating workplace discrimination
-chicken adobo
please hit me up! MoriahDB
@gmail
.com
I told a teen in Parkland that I worked for
@washingtonpost
. And she said "Oh, is that the one on Snapchat?" She had been keeping up with the gun control debate on Snapchat. "It's where I get all my news!"
Do you want to be the next Woodward? The next Bernstein? The next
@Fahrenthold
or
@seungminkim
? The
@washingtonpost
will be recruiting at the D.C. Journalism Job Fair this Saturday. Tickets here:
ON TODAY'S FRONT States dogged by persistent teacher shortages are trying something new: sending people to college for free. My story on the programs that could revolutionize teacher training.
Public school teachers occasionally engage in predatory behavior like molesting kids. Imagine if in reaction to these isolated scandals, the far right burned down schools, called for defunding/abolishing public education, leading GOP officials endorsed that movement.
A quick programming update: I’ll be the
@washingtonpost
’s 🇧🇷 Brazil 🇧🇷 correspondent for the next few weeks. Please send me story ideas, interesting people to talk to, etc.
The most astonishing thing about this story: even families living in shelters with no WiFi would rather do remote learning than send their kids back into school buildings.
Final note on the way out (for now): I was at the Lunar New Year celebration in Monterey Park just hours before, marveling at its scale and buying (probably way too many) skewers.
Keep in mind, too, that the system is already rigged for rich kids, who tend to come from college-educated parents, go to superior schools, can afford SAT test prep and have college counselors. The most brilliant kids often have none of these advantages.
I understand why college/scholarships applications do this but I wish people would recognize that asking some students about overcoming their toughest moments means dredging up horrible, unresolved trauma for them.
This is neat but also a real credit to the
@washingtonpost
editors who give me the freedom to chase stories all over the place. I still can't believe I have this job sometimes.
If you’re a white editor, think closely about which younger reporters you’re giving extra attention to. Do they remind you of a younger version of yourself? And does race have something to do with that?
This college graduate honored her parents in her graduation photos, standing in her cap and gown, in the middle of the fruit fields where her mother still works.
"Their sacrifice to come to this country to give us a better future was well worth it."
NEW: The new child tax credit program -- set to start sending out payments Thursday -- is expected to lift millions of kids out of poverty. Will it help them learn, too?
I'm spending the next month covering the pandemic from Michigan for
@washingtonpost
. Tell me what I should see, who I should meet (from a social distance, of course!) and the stories I should tell: moriah.balingit
@washpost
.com
People keep acting like schools are staying closed because they feel like it -- instead of considering that they might not be able to afford to reopen safely.
This fellowship gets you:
✔️a paid gig and bylines
@washingtonpost
✔️a master’s degree in journalism
@AmericanU
✔️a foot in the door in one of the most competitive newsrooms
✔️to hang out with me and
@FenitN
If you were confused by the reaction to a certain column, keep in mind that people have long used what immigrants and other marginalized groups eat as a way to denigrate them.
I just logged on to say exactly this. We should never forget that the horrible conundrum that's led to these ugly fights between unions and parents and public officials came because our government has failed to contain this virus.
This goes for a lot of things rn but about the school reopening debate: There are no great options because this is a terrible situation. Most of the people on all the sides wish it were different.
NEW: The Trump Administration + Congress have given more relief $$ to airlines than to our public school system, which is responsible for 50 million students. Without more relief dollars, we're looking at layoffs and entire school systems remaining closed.
Four years ago this same person wrote a story on the lack of diversity on the
@washingtonpost
education team, naming three white reporters but leaving me and
@DaniDougPost
off the list. We were erased.
Grocery store workers have been on the frontlines of the pandemic since the beginning. Now, with at least 100 dead and 5,500 infected by coronavirus, many workers say they're kept in the dark about the risk of coronavirus in their stores.
...I hope that one thing that comes out of this industry-wide reckoning is more allies, more people we can call on for help in doing this work. Anyways, happy Sunday folks. Did I thread this right
@anchorlines
?
In a country where medical bills can bring financial ruin, this was predictable. People are dying at home of covid-19 because they worry going to the hospital could bankrupt them, or get their loved ones deported. via
@MikeMillerDC
:
Important addendum: the children who would lose access are coming from households that would be getting cut from the food stamp program. So this will be a double-whammy for some families. My colleague
@lreiley
on the proposal:
One of the first times I met
@EricaLG
, I told her I was negotiating my salary. She immediately told me what she made, and said "OK, here's what we're gonna do ..." Then laid out how I should ask for a raise.
Sentimental programming note: It was six years ago today that I was hired to cover education for The Times. After overcoming my terror and impostor syndrome, I had a dream run covering the best beat --at any paper, period. But my time on the education beat has come to an end.
Maria's "Stars and Tsars" birthday party was an odd mix of older men and graduate students, and featured a vodka bottle shaped like a Kalashnikov rifle. More on the
@AmericanU
graduate now accused of spying:
Horseradish infused vodka shots at Russia House, a shirtless Putin emblazoned phone case and work space near the office of Susan Rice: Maria Butina's life as a student at American University. with
@ByMoriah
@shaneharris
@thamburger
The First Lady of the United States is a teacher, one who, as Second Lady, never stopped teaching. She intends to be the first FLOTUS in the role's 231-year history to pursue her career and keep a paying job while living in the White House. This matters.
I don’t normally like to share asinine comments like this. Except I’ve heard things along these lines in actual newsrooms, from people who are trying to excuse the dearth of diversity in our industry.