Additions to AP’s Education Reporting Network

I’m thrilled to announce three of our AP coworkers are joining the Education team full time. First, please join me in congratulating Cheyanne Mumphrey, an editor on the West Desk, who will start a new job next month as an education reporter. In her three years at AP, Cheyanne’s byline has made regular appearances on the wire, reporting national stories for the Race and Ethnicity team, along with pieces on education and the pandemic. She writes passionately about areas of inequity – our primary focus on this team. Her story ideas are fresh, and her sourcing is strong – ranging from former teachers to kids and parents she meets out in the community. Cheyanne will begin education reporting full time on Oct. 3. She will continue to be based in Phoenix.

Veteran AP newswoman Jocelyn Gecker has covered education as a subbeat for several years, and she will join the team full time starting Sept. 12. On the education beat, Jocelyn has captured national trends such as a school laptop shortage in the early days of the pandemic, and she led this year’s student mental health coverage during back-to-school. In her career at AP, Jocelyn has spearheaded ambitious investigations, such as nailing a #MeToo scoop about sexual harassment accusations against Placido Domingo, one of most powerful people in opera. (The latest development in that story published last week, as Jocelyn and colleagues reported on Domingo’s alleged involvement in an Argentinian yoga sect accused of sexually exploiting women.) She is fluent in French and previously served as an AP reporter in Bangkok, Paris and Kuala Lumpur. In her new job, Jocelyn will continue to work out of San Francisco.

Finally, Collin Binkley has relocated from Boston to Washington, D.C., and has jumped right into his new role as AP’s lead education policy reporter. Few stories in Washington this summer were bigger than Biden’s decision on student loan forgiveness, and AP’s Best of the Week-winning coverage relied on Collin’s prep, enterprise and subject leadership. Collin also emerged as a national leader in coverage of federal COVID relief money for education, and he co-bylined AP’s most recent partnership with Chalkbeat that kicked off our back-to-school coverage. Collin has years of experience covering K-12 and higher education for AP and The Columbus Dispatch in Ohio, and it’s great to have him back on the beat full time. This completes AP’s addition of eight full-time journalists to the Education team, jumpstarted this year by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The team is led by News Editor Mike Melia and me. Accountability reporter Bianca Vázquez Toness in Boston and data reporter Sharon Lurye in New Orleans joined AP this summer. And Race and Ethnicity reporter Annie Ma continues on the education beat; she has transferred to Washington, D.C., and will start in that bureau next week.

The Education team will continue to be home to fabulous journalists such as Carolyn Thompson, Heather Hollingsworth, Kantele Franko and Carole Feldman, plus Report for America corps members including Arleigh Rodgers, Brooke Schultz and Claire Savage. And we’ll continue our partnership on breaking news and enterprise with our colleagues around the U.S.