2018 Beat Reporting (Large Staff) Finalist: Moriah Balingit

About the Entry

Moriah Balingit brings humanity and life to the most important education stories, such as the struggles of school shooting survivors, the impacts of low teacher pay, and a novel legal debate over whether students have a right to literacy.

Comments from the Judges

“This journalist is a great storyteller. I loved this lead: ‘When students return Wednesday to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High, they will start where they left off: fourth period.’”

“Her use of detail, language and character to bring to life the topics she writes about is extraordinarily powerful. She listens, observes and accumulates the details that she can deploy to give her stories an emotional punch, humanizing stories that are snapshots of important issues related to a broadly defined education beat.”

“The stories in this series were comprehensive, with angles I don’t read a lot about. For example, I heard a lot of stories about Puerto Rico and how it was affected by Hurricane Maria but not too many about the effect on schools.”