Tara García Mathewson launched her newspaper career with two award-winning pieces produced during a three-month stint at the Kitsap Sun in Bremerton, WA. After graduating cum laude from the Medill School of Journalism, she joined the staff of the Daily Herald, Illinois’ third largest newspaper. Within four months she rose from a budding reporter covering a few small towns to a newsroom leader tasked with the bureau’s largest city. Later, on the education beat, García Mathewson produced in-depth analyses of major programs and policies weekly. Her work earned her regular guest appearances on ABC morning news, where she discussed local and regional issues with poise and authority.
Eager for the freedom to pursue bigger projects on broader issues, García Mathewson turned to freelance in late 2013. Her work focused on education, poverty, immigration and politics, and she continued to distinguish herself by producing deep, probing reports that explored overlooked or under-reported themes and firmly grounded present-day issues in their proper historical context.
She is now a staff writer for The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit newsroom covering innovation and inequality in education. She focuses on innovation in the K-12 space. Keep up with her latest work on Twitter or Facebook.