About six years ago, an apprentice training to be a machinist in Washington state told her supervisor she would probably have to drop out of the training program after having her baby: She couldn’t find child care that accommodated her shift. It was one of the first challenges Shana Peschek was tasked with solving when […]
Nirvi Shah
What I do: I oversee all of the journalism The Hechinger Report produces.
My background: I started writing about education at my hometown paper in Lakeland, Florida, a role that shaped the rest of my career. The American education system — and the students, teachers, parents and professors connected to it — continues to amaze and confound me, all these years later. I was drawn to The Hechinger Report because of the depth and nuance in the stories it produces about this system. Hechinger editors pushed me to be clearer, more engaging, and more revealing in my writing and reporting, and that is the approach I now take in my work as executive editor. I still occasionally report and write, including as part of a collection of stories about how college hopefuls represent themselves in essays now that race-conscious admissions practices are banned; an article on how the pandemic reshaped the lives of students, parents and teachers; and one on how some parents influenced the president's views on transgender students. My work has been recognized by the Education Writers Association, the Society for Professional Journalists and other organizations, and published in an array of local and national publications. I was also a Spencer Education Reporting Fellow at Columbia Journalism School for the 2021-22 academic year.
Journalistic ethics: I work to ensure that our stories are fair, nuanced and accurate. Part of my role is to interrogate how we choose who to interview for stories, which data and research we include and whether everything from our headlines to our captions are clear and correct. When we do make an error in a story, we immediately correct it. I do not accept gifts or favors from sources or potential sources, nor does my staff. I abide by The Hechinger Report’s ethics policy, which is informed by the Society of Professional Journalists’ code of ethics, whose principles including seeking truth, minimizing harm, acting independently and being accountable and transparent.
Phone: 212-678-3445
Signal: NirviShah.14
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