Hi, this is higher ed reporter Olivia Sanchez. For this week’s newsletter, my colleague Nichole Dobo interviewed our senior higher education reporter Jon Marcus about his story last week examining how and why rural colleges are closing programs and majors. What you need to know Jon partnered with reporters from the education news outlet Open […]
Nichole Dobo
What I do: I am the director of audience development at The Hechinger Report, where I manage audience engagement and innovation strategy.
My background: I have been a journalist for two decades, starting my career in local news, where I primarily covered education, local government and public policy, earning a variety of awards for my work. I am a graduate of Pennsylvania State University, where I majored in journalism, and was a 2021 Knight-Wallace Reporting Fellow at the University of Michigan. I joined The Hechinger Report in 2013, pioneering our first newsletter as I traveled the country learning about the ways schools were using technology in classrooms. We replicated this work to establish our portfolio of newsletters. (Please subscribe!) My role has evolved over the years to include overseeing our innovation and product strategy projects. My family has lived in a rural region of western Pennsylvania for generations, but these days I live on flatlands near Philadelphia, where my two children attend public school. I particularly enjoy hearing from readers, so please email me if you have a question.
My ethics: I adhere to The Hechinger Report’s ethics policy. I was mentored early in my career by Gene Foreman, the former managing editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer and the author of a textbook on journalism ethics, who shaped the way I approach ethical decision-making. It is particularly important to me to help ordinary people understand the ways journalists should work. I have devoted my professional life to accurate representations of issues and people, something that was shaped by my observation that the lives of rural people, especially in the Appalachians, are not often covered with depth or nuance.
Phone: 212-870-8954
Signal: Nicholedobo.11
