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WBUR Launching New Education Vertical, Edify
Get Ready for Back to School with WBUR and Edify: Cutting-edge, Multi-Media Education Coverage from WBUR, Boston’s NPR News Station
WBUR, has launched an innovative new education vertical named Edify. It is the multi-platform, multimedia home for all of WBUR’s coverage of education and learning at every stage of life, from preschool to grad school, in Boston and beyond. Edify’s audio, video and text coverage appears on the air as part of special reporting for Morning Edition, All Things Considered and Radio Boston, as well as on WBUR’s website, across social media channels and through live events.
The Edify coverage includes compelling narratives, in-depth analysis and rich data-driven reporting, as well as inviting audience engagement both online and at live events. Edify is focused on human stories, not abstractions, and strives to tell local stories of national interest. As a leader in public education, a center for education schools and research and a hub of world-class universities, Boston is one of the best places in the country to examine education. And with a local team of two reporters and an editor, plus collaboration with NPR Ed, WBUR Newsroom journalists and other contributors, Edify seeks to advance the conversation both in Boston and on the national stage.
“With Boston’s great academic history and culture, we are thrilled to be bringing a new, cutting-edge approach to education reporting to our listeners,” said WBUR General Manager Charlie Kravetz. “We hope to advance the discourse on education both locally and nationally with Edify’s multimedia platform, which includes audio, video and written storytelling. Our goal is to provide our listeners with the latest news, topics and trends in education and to give them a roadmap to navigating academic life from preschool through postgraduate degrees.”
Edify is led by Senior Editor Louise Kennedy and Senior Reporter Tonya Mosley. A third Edify journalist, a full-time multi-media reporter focused on digital production, will be announced shortly. Kennedy is a longtime Boston journalist who has served as an editor, arts reporter and critic at The Boston Globe and as an adjunct professor of journalism at Emerson College. She is the co-author, with Linda K. Rath, Ed.D., of “The ‘Between the Lions’ Book for Parents: Everything You Need to Know to Help Your Child Learn to Read.”
Mosley is an Emmy Award-winning broadcast journalist. In 2015, she was named a 2015-16 John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University, where she created a curriculum for journalists on the impact of implicit bias. Previously, Mosley was a regular broadcast contributor to Al Jazeera America and created the nationally acclaimed public radio series "Black in Seattle."
“For Edify, we look for human stories – stories about the real people whose lives are touched by education,” said Edify Senior Editor Louise Kennedy. “We aim to go deeper, with fresh perspectives on where, how and why we learn. We won’t just look at what’s happening in education – we’ll try to figure out why. We hope to help create a conversation about learning and to fuel it with great journalism.”
Edify is made possible with major funding from Bob Hildreth, founder of Inversant (formerly known as FUEL Education). Hildreth is a social entrepreneur and economist with a passion for financial empowerment and higher education who serves on the WBUR Board of Overseers. Edify represents an expansion to the WBUR Newsroom’s ongoing education coverage.
Edify officially launched on Aug. 10, 2016, with a report on chronic absenteeism among students in Boston’s public schools. The platform grew out of an earlier WBUR project, Learning Lab, and will continue to build on the education coverage started there. Upcoming stories will look at how schools are teaching racial history and talking about race, what parents should know about financing their children’s education and what teachers must do today to prepare the next generation of adults. Edify also welcomes proposals for guest commentaries on current topics in education.