Houston Landing to expand team covering education

Houston Landing editor-in-chief Manny Garcìa announced Wednesday that the nonprofit newsroom will add four positions to its team of three to cover education in the greater Houston region.

“At Houston Landing, we view education as the cornerstone to success — for families, and for the city,” said Garcìa.

The team will be led by editor Jacob Carpenter, and will include K-12 reporters Asher Lehrer-Small and Miranda Dunlap. Three reporting positions will expand the scope of work and will especially focus on reporting, writing and translating work in Spanish, as well as grass-roots coverage of students, solutions to community needs and explanations of policies.

In collaboration with OpenCampus and support from the M.D. Anderson Foundation, Houston Landing is adding a Higher Education reporter, primarily to focus on the region’s vast community college system, a major economic driver, and a destination for Houston students. Two other reporters will focus on coverage to be based partly on audience input.

An audience engagement producer will embed with the team to ensure that coverage connects with key communities, and Adriana Rezal, the newsroom’s data visualization specialist, will be a core part of the effort to ensure this coverage meets the needs of all audiences.

“Education is a passion for the city, as well as for civic leaders, nonprofits, and employers across Houston, and this represents an opportunity for new partnerships in both audience development and fundraising,” said CEO Peter Bhatia.

“Since Houston Landing’s launch, our education coverage has brought together traits that are core to our organization’s mission — quality journalism that puts our readers first, accompanied by an innovative approach to reaching audiences through live events,” Garcìa said. “Today, we are building an education juggernaut at the very moment our community needs subject matter expertise and comprehensive coverage more than ever.”

Houston Landing is an independent news organization devoted to public service journalism that seeks to strengthen democracy and improve the lives of Houstonians one story at a time.