Some personal news✨
I'm thrilled to share that I'm staying at the Washington Post in 2024, following the money & covering the numbers of American democracy. Couldn't be more excited to dive into all things political data with the incredible people of
@wpdatateam
&
@postpolitics
!
data journalism is not about "coding" or "foia" or "visualization". data journalism is about developing an emotional relationship with the world's ugliest spreadsheet
Thrilled to share that I’ll be rejoining
@wpdatateam
as an intern this summer! Beyond excited to be a part of this team and learn from everyone in the newsroom & my fellow interns. See y'all in D.C.!
I'm thrilled to announce that I'll be serving as the 146th
@ColumbiaSpec
Editor-in-Chief. Spec's journalism and community have shaped me in so many ways, and I'm so excited to lead this paper with our fantastic new corporate & managing board in 2022!
Just wrapped my first week back as an intern with
@washingtonpost
! Thrilled to be learning from & with
@MeghanHoyer
@griffwitte
& the data & democracy teams this summer.
Stories TK — in the meantime, i’m at claraence.morse
@washpost
.com !
four years later... graduated with a B.A. in philosophy, a concentration in statistics, a full education from the school of
@ColumbiaSpec
, and a philosophy thesis on applied ethics in journalism!
see you soon, d.c. <3
Hey y'all. I've got some personal news — my time with
@AustinChronicle
is up.
It's been an unreal privilege to cover Austin education over this wild year, especially as a 2019 AISD grad myself. Thank y'all so much for sharing your stories with me. (thread)
We spent months collecting, standardizing, and cleaning data on homeschooling across the nation. Couldn't be more excited to share that data, which spans nearly 7,000 school districts and six school years, today.
Thrilled to share this story with
@danbalz
. From the Supreme Court to the Senate, House, and presidency, American democracy is cracking — and we have the data to show it.
Former president Donald Trump disclosed new details about roughly $1 billion in earnings in a revised financial filing covering 2021 through part of this year, including money from foreign ventures, speaking fees and a Florida golf course.
Her son's school ignored Black History Month. In response,
@A2Arnett
published a free 28-day K-12 guide to Black history, featuring figures who often aren't taught in school.
not gonna lie i cannot believe i’m going to be a PAID!! JOURNALIST!! this fall.. covering the school district I graduated from a year ago... this is an absolute dream come true & i‘m rly looking forward to hearing from and covering the AISD community :]
Incredible work from Spec’s university news team. Led by the inimitable
@isabellasrmrz
&
@esha_karam
and depped by
@SheaVance22
and Sarah Huddleston, they’ve dominated this enormously important story.
UPDATE: Rosberg confirmed that the decision to suspend SJP and JVP came from “senior leadership of the University,” including University President Minouche Shafik.
BREAKING: Disability Rights Texas is filing action against Austin ISD for its "refusal to address longstanding, systemic issues impacting its [special education] evaluation system"
What do Illinois Democrats and Texas Republicans have in common? They've both gerrymandered maps to give their parties 3 extra seats in the U.S. House.
Excited to share this deep dive on the House with
@sullivank
, ft. exclusive data from
@princetongerry
Well, this is goodbye. It's been such an honor to lead Spectator through 2022, and I'm grateful and proud beyond words for Spec's work this year.
More than anything, I'm proud to leave the paper in the hands of the kind, talented, brilliant 147th Board.
Super excited to announce that - after a quick break - I’m returning to Austin this summer to cover education and general news for the
@AustinChronicle
! Here’s my first story of the summer:
Thrilled to see so many
@ColumbiaSpec
journalists recognized for their work in 2022 by
@spj_tweets
— and to see the newspaper as a whole named a Region 1 finalist for Best All-Around Student Newspaper!
The first print paper of the 146th
@ColumbiaSpec
is here!!! Couldn’t be prouder or more excited to share this edition, celebrating Black History Month, with our community.
Meet the
@DJNF
Class of 2022 – 107 exceptional journalists ready to embark on a week of learning and growing, before heading to work for the nation’s top media companies.
#djnf22
Last year, Meta identified 150 artificial influence accounts on X. 136 were still present as of last night. One has a blue check and over a million followers. This & more on foreign influence ops on X, with
@josephmenn
@aaronjschaffer
@NaomiNixWrites
Two and a half years ago,
@CUSpecSports
was 1 person. Today, we accepted our fall 2021 trainee class and grew to 21 writers & editors, covering every corner of Columbia sports. So incredibly proud to lead this team.
Here we go! 64% of eligible voters have had their ballots counted in Travis County so far — that's 554K+ ballots.
224,806 so far (!!!!!!) have voted in the At-Large election. That's the highest turnout for an AISD board election ever, by 40K+ votes.
It’s almost time! I’ve spent the past three months analyzing NFL data with the amazing
@EmilyGiam
& guidance of
@MeghanHoyer
for this project. Over the moon to share it starting tomorrow.
In Columbia hockey’s best season in five years, only a couple dozen people had seen the Light Blue play—until now. Last week, the Lions skated out to the sound of cheers, trumpets, and the rhythmic banging of a wet floor sign.
ICYMI: SPJ recognizes the best collegiate journalism in the country with the 2020 Mark of Excellence Awards national winners. Congratulations to all the student winners who produced these outstanding works worthy of a national honor!
Words cannot describe how proud I am of the team
@princetonian
for the work that went into creating queer remembrances, queer futures. I'll thread more thoughts below, but I urge you to check out the beautiful web project and if you can, the print edition
one hundred and seventy five (and counting) pivot tables and several thousand lines of code later... our methodology! see emily's thread for more of the ~inside story~
Really intense moment from last night’s board meeting. Families affected by school closures were promised new resources — they won’t be getting them under current budget draft.
and yes, seeing this in print on a newsstand did absolutely make me cry walking down Broadway. thank you
@briannaschroer
for the beautiful design, including
@arturgalocha
's unreal graphics.
Who are the best hitters in the Ivy League from a sabermetric angle? Which Ancient Eight pitchers could bounce back for the rest of the season? Spectator looks at the underlying numbers around the Ivy League to explore what may lie ahead for the eight co…
“Where do you guys play?”Columbia athletes travel 5x longer to get to their home turf than their Ivy peers. Here’s how it’s shaped recruiting, performance, and sports culture:
Incredibly proud to be a part of the best student paper on the Northeast!!
And so excited that this article, with dataviz
@jenny_jyzhang
and newsdev
@hongsendude
, won our region’s big-school sports reporting MOEy!
On Saturday, Spectator won three Society of Professional Journalists Mark of Excellence Awards and had four finalists. The three regional Northeast winners will now go on to the national level.
Some Austin schools raise $500,000 a year through PTAs — others can’t find enough money to buy snacks for field days.
So, AISD banned PTAs from funding staff positions.
Now what?
SCOOP: U.S. News has dropped Columbia from second to 18th in their Best Colleges ranking, the lowest position in the Ivy League. From the indefatigable
@iriesentner
&
@ZachSchermele
.
My first-ever feature on Austin housing just dropped! It’s on Austin’s struggle to define historic preservation in the midst of an affordability & displacement crisis — and whose history gets preserved.
THREAD: let's talk about virtual learning!
Y'all, family interest in Austin ISD's virtual learning option is enormous. 7,312 students applied (10% of enrollment last year) and around 4,000 have been accepted.
New: These eight student journalists will receive stipends and mentorship from ProPublica’s staff as they begin to navigate careers in investigative journalism.
For years, Columbia has maintained the greatest gender discrepancy in sports funding in the Ivy League—a gap which has been widening for at least 10 years. Here’s a look inside the funding breakdown, and the efforts Columbia is making to close the gap.
The Thursday school board meeting is gonna be a doozy: winter storm damage, SPED, supt's scorecard, and a new equity-focused staffing formula, which marks a major change to the way AISD funds its schools. Check out the agenda here:
Travis County moving to Stage 4 of COVID-19 restrictions. Unclear what will happen with Austin schools. Currently, no capacity limits for on-campus attendance. Some schools have 15+ students in one classroom.
good news: the solution to writer's block is longform handwriting the entire story
bad news: the solution to writer's block is longform handwriting the entire story
when your scraper runs for six hours… and returns almost nothing… and you prepare yourself for friday evening debugging… and then you realize that it was bc of a three character typo 🫠🫠🫠
Some news: on the heels of Austin re-entering Stage 4, Austin ISD WILL be offering a virtual learning option for K-6 students this fall. More to come at board meeting at 5 p.m. this evening.
SO proud to publish this odyssey of bug juice, band brawls, and (of course) championship, from
@matt_kim9
. In an equally historic feat, this story actually converted some of our copy editors into football fans.
Seriously, give it a read.
In 1961, the Lions did the unthinkable by winning the Ivy League title. Sixty years on, here’s the inside story of Columbia football’s first—and only—Ivy crown, and why some of Columbia’s most legendary players are hopeful for the program’s future.
Around a hundred fans at Riverbank, exponentially more than Lions get at most home games. Lots of fun DIY decor also
“A”s names on the Zamboni
CU Hockey crest
Columbia crown on the glass
I finished my sophomore year of Columbia entirely online while reporting last year, and I'm hyped to study philosophy & statistics on campus in NYC this fall! Onto sports
@CUSpecSports
... and more ed/news content hopefully coming next summer ;)
Fascinating new data here, with 18,000+ responses in.
Respondents here are much, much, much more hesitant around returning to campus than past surveys/data indicated.
Thanks to everyone who has been taking our Polco polls! Here's what our families had to say about returning to school. Your input is essential. Let's keep the conversation going.
current enrollment is 75,075, a 7.2% decline — PK and early elementary are 41% of the decline. Side note, but the extension of hold harmless saved AISD from maaaaaasssive losses this spring.
These, about SPED evaluation delays, were just brutal to report. The latter piece was cited in a
@DisRightsTx
lawsuit, which is awaiting a hearing at the moment.
Trustee Rodriguez on enrollment: “We have 100,000 students that we serve, and we have failed 25,000 of them”. Talking specifically about Latinx students, says district needs provable student outcomes & increase outreach to parents.
Elizalde says a mobile enrollment center, school bus outfitted with laptops and assistance in English and Spanish, will go around to families this summer to enroll students into Pre-K and kinder. Innovation!
Quick personal note — it's incredible to see students, speaking for themselves, being featured so prominently at an AISD board meeting.
Support for students who want to get involved in AISD has historically been really, really sparse (as ik
@quinntuominen
remembers)
So grateful to so many people — in particular, profoundly thankful to my editors
@meghanhoyer
@anu_narayan
@griffwitte
for their incredible support, mentorship, and trust...
Next, the virtual learning & accomodations saga and
@EdAustin_TX
action last fall — thank you so much to the teachers who trusted me to tell their stories here.
still my favorite chart – most potential GOP primary voters didn't stay up to watch the debate last night! instead, they watched other tv, spent time w/ family, worked + slept
w/
@EmGusk
@sfcpoll
Ivy basketball is back—and for the first time in four years, Spec's basketball supplement is too! Check out our latest from
@CUSpecSports
for an in-depth look at Columbia men's and women's basketball in 2022.
"We have not seen anywhere in Texas... where anything like this has happened." Over 800 AISD teachers have already committed to teaching virtually until certain safety conditions are met.
Two years ago, Austin ISD employed 51 school psychologists; since then, 48 have resigned. Even with new hires, the exodus of overworked staff has had devastating effects on the thousand students still waiting for evaluations.
The Olympics opening ceremony is starting (again)! This year, 13 Columbia athletes & alums are competing — the most in school history. Get to know them here:
We're back!! It's Ivy League Football Media Day... and there's going to be a season.
@CUSpecSports
will be covering media day with
@kenziegeorge22
& our amazing football beat writers
@matt_kim9
@bernardw1011
, and I'll be livetweeting here.
Hahahahaha.
@aratisingh
just asked if AISD checks if callers who say they're AISD parents actually are. In other words: who are these people calling in? (Most only gave first names.)
Happy Election Day, y'all. I'll be covering Austin school board elections for
@AustinChronicle
today. Something to keep an eye on: with no incumbents and 3+ candidates in 3 races, runoffs are very likely.
After 52 straight weeks as Spec Managing Editor of the week, the resurrection of ShpecShports, and innumerable memes... happy CB retirement to Columbia Basketball’s # 1 Fan!!!! love you & can’t wait for the podcast 👀👀
Some personal news🎉
Yesterday was my last production night as
@ColumbiaSpec
’s managing editor.
The 17-year-old with no journalism experience who applied four years ago did pretty good for herself.
I want to use this thread to highlight a few of the stories from this past year that I'm proudest of.
First off, ACC nursing students fought through a pandemic to get their degree. (COVID data are worse now than they were then.)
SCOOP: A task force of faculty, University administrators, trustees, and College alumni appointed by University President Lee Bollinger has met several times each month since September to discuss potential changes to the current administrative structure.🧵
Amazing resource. Some highlights:
-tripling funding for Title 1 schools
-SEL
-community schools
-no fed funding for-profit charters
-if COVID spikes, local schools "should not be compelled to reopen against the judgment of local experts"
Foster says he knows it's a shock (lol) but he believes the district is heading in the right direction. "Band-aids are being pulled off that previous administrations never touched." Points to SPED reform as example, "details that make you cry" on SPED from Supt.