The Fresno Bee’s new donor-funded Education Lab launches next month; 3 of 4 hires made
I have big news to share about The Fresno Bee’s Education Lab: we’ve hired three of four new positions. In early December, the lab will be up and running, sharing stories, videos, newsletters and more on a daily basis.
The lab expands reporting on local education by creating deep, engaging journalism. We all know how important education is for our families and to the future of Fresno and the central San Joaquin Valley.
This is a milestone, and it’s exciting to see this project taking shape.
Please welcome the following Education Lab team members:
Isabel Sophia Dieppa will join the lab as its engagement reporter. Dieppa will move to Fresno from Chicago, where she has worked as a freelance journalist and social media manager since graduating from Indiana University. She spent the last year working on an investigation into property rights in Puerto Rico supported by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. Dieppa will spend much of her time in the community, connecting with sources and nurturing the lab’s outreach through social media and face-to-face contact. She is fluent in English and Spanish and can speak and read Portuguese.
Monica Velez will join the lab as its early education/K-12 education reporter. Velez currently works as a reporter at Valley Public Radio, a role she took in 2018 after spending more than two years as a reporter at the Merced Sun-Star. She will cover issues involving K-12 education and also will focus on pre-kindergarten education efforts, which experts say are critical to student success. The Sacramento State graduate is fluent in Spanish and has experience producing audio and video, critical delivery mechanisms for the Ed Lab.
Rob Parsons, an editor and reporter with extensive experience in local news, will be the lab’s founding editor. Parsons has spent the last year in the newsroom of The Fresno Bee, where he oversees a group of reporters and also manages the reporting staff of the Merced Sun-Star, The Bee’s sister newsroom. His career also includes time at the Appeal-Democrat in Marysville as a reporter.
Prior to his career in journalism, Parsons worked as a counselor and teacher’s aide in group homes and schools in Alaska and community day school classrooms in Northern California.
•• Learn more about the Education Lab here.
With the addition of Parsons, Dieppa and Velez, we continue to recruit for just one position -- higher education reporter. We have excellent candidates for this job and hope to make an announcement soon.
We’re all eager to get started. And we need your help. What stories do you think the Education Lab should focus on first?
We also plan to host community outreach meetings and listening sessions with the lab’s reporters and editors -- and the public will be invited to attend. Stay tuned for more information as we set up dates, times and locations.
To be clear: Education Lab coverage will be a departure from what we have done previously. It will be more deeply sourced. And it will focus on solutions to the San Joaquin Valley’s educational challenges.
We’ve reached out to the Solutions Journalism Network, a nonprofit organization that helps newsrooms approach journalism that brings attention to stories about responses to problems. The Solutions Journalism Network will help us hone our reporting techniques to find how and where others are improving educational outcomes.
Funders make it possible
The first year of Education Lab is fully funded, and we’re well into fundraising for the second year. Our work would not be possible without the generous support of our founding partners.
Founding contributors include the Central Valley Community Foundation, The California Endowment, Central Valley Foundation, The James Irvine Foundation, State Center Community College District Foundation, Murray and Francine Farber, Paul Gibson and Joan Eaton, and Pete Weber.
These funders believe in the Education Lab’s work, and we thank them. However, all lab reporting — like any Bee reporting — will be free from outside influence. Our funders understand this is essential to our credibility and theirs — and even require journalistic independence as a condition of their financial support.
As I mentioned previously, we plan to expand the lab model to cover other topics. We will keep you updated on our progress.
As always, I welcome your questions and concerns. Please do not hesitate to reach out.
This story was originally published November 22, 2019 at 5:20 AM.
