Media: Signs Of Life In Education Journalism?

Last weekend at an EWA conference in Minneapolis, I finally had the chance to meet Lauren FitzPatrick, the Sun-Times reporter who's been working on education along with Rosalind Rossi for the past few months.

According to her Linkedin, FitzPatrick was previously at the Daily Southtown and Gatehouse Media and went to Georgetown and Medill.  According to her Twitter profile (@bylaurenfitz) and in real life, she's got great glasses. Here are some of her bylines: Ex-U.S education official knocks school closings as ‘destabilizing’, Can teachers strike over evaluations?.

The addition of FitzPatrick is notable because most commercial news outlets have been reducing their education coverage, whittling down once-massive (or at least healthy) education teams to just one or at most two reporters. The (Portland) Oregonian recently moved Nicole Dungca to the Portland beat, freeing up Betsy Hammond to focus on state K-12 issues (though they also dumped higher ed on her).  The only other examples of expanding coverage that I can think of are nonprofits: the local NPR station in Chicago, which added Becky Vevea to the beat along with Linda Lutton, and EdSource Today, a California outlet that currently is looking for a 3rd reporter to join John Fensterwald and Kathryn Baron.  

Any others out there?  Let us know.