Reporters from the Atlanta neighborhood most affected by the 2009 school cheating scandal look at how students are faring years later.
By Sarah Conway
Reporters Chandra Harper-Gallashaw and William King were two of three inaugural reporters with the Pittsburgh Journalism Project. (Photo: Courtesy of Max Blau)
In late 2018, Max Blau was bouncing around the idea of how to bring more equity to journalism back home. The longtime Atlanta reporter, who had spent years covering some of Atlanta’s most underserved areas for outlets like Atlanta magazine, was wrapping up a feature story for Politico on a journalism lab in Chicago that was reinventing local news.
In the process, he’d spent weeks talking with City Bureau reporting fellows and cofounders. Something felt spot-on about City Bureau’s approach in centering the community members that are traditionally underrepresented in mainstream media outlets by paying them to actually report their own stories.
Last spring, Blau launched the Pittsburgh Journalism Project in the Atlanta neighborhood of Pittsburgh with three citizen journalists and community stakeholders—Braddye Smith, Chandra Harper-Gallashaw and William “Mr. Bill” King—who he trained in the fundamentals of journalism and paid to do reporting with funding from the Center for Civic Innovation.
“Everything that has gone wrong in Chicago, with the closing of newspapers and lack of community voice and representation in newsrooms, has happened even more so here in Atlanta,” Blau says.
When residents were asked what topic they’d like covered in their community, schools were a top choice. In the last decade, Atlanta Public Schools were rocked by a cheating scandal where 11 educators were found guilty of racketeering charges after coordinating to cheat on state-administered standardized tests. The scandal brought national headlines and infamy to the neighborhood; long after the TV cameras left, the Pittsburgh Journalism Project sought to tell the more complex, nuanced story of how local schools were rebuilding and how children were faring four years after the trials. Their story grabbed the front page of the Sunday paper of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in late July.
City Bureau spoke with Pittsburgh Journalism Project citizen reporter Chandra Harper-Gallashaw, who is a former Pittsburgh resident, a Georgia State University researcher and a mother of four who was deeply impacted by the cheating scandal. She feels the project has been both healing and uplifting for herself and her community. It’s something she hopes can spread beyond Atlanta, as well. “Every community has a Pittsburgh, if you think about it,” she says.
How did you hear about the project?
Max was really one of the only journalists who came out to Pittsburgh during the cheating scandal and actually asked us how we were impacted about 10 years ago. He did a story about my daughters who were highly impacted during that time, and I felt very happy that he thought of me and came back to pick up this story with community members who were directly impacted as reporters. It put our neighborhood in a good light for the first time in a long time, and that’s what is important now.
What was appealing to you about the Pittsburgh Journalism Project?
I wanted to learn about the technical aspects of journalism, such as nut grafs and an inverted pyramid, and then soft skills, like how to be persistent with sources and the whole interview process. I got a kick out of interviewing because I’ve always liked to ask people questions. In fact, right now I’m just thinking about how now I’m used to being on the other side of the mic with you asking me all these questions. The whole experience was groovy.
How did you approach telling the story of the tangible long-lasting impact of the cheating scandal on children?
It was important to me that we recognized through our reporting that though the administrators were abe to walk away from this devastating experience, our kids never could. When I joined this project, my goals were to follow that paper trail to alternative schools and examine what happened through those most impacted: our children. For the community, we know that the cheating scandal had life-long repercussions for our kids, and some never recovered, but the media missed that.
I think of Diamond Coats, who attended Gideons during the cheating scandal and later went to Crim High School. She left the neighborhood to attend an alternative school but felt labeled because of the cheating scandal throughout the rest of her academic career. Or Dijon Brunson, who never graduated after transferring to Carver High School where he was called dumb and stupid by staff. When I was interviewing Dijon, he thought no one cared. I said, “Yes, Dijon, we do care. Somebody cares and that’s why we are here.”
How has Pittsburg Journalism Project impacted you?
Becoming a journalist was a lifelong dream of mine that finally came true with this opportunity. When my mom read the article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, she just cried and said, “You always wanted to go to school for journalism and you finally did it, baby.” But, I want to think this project will go beyond just me. What about those kids that had so much opportunity stolen from them by this scandal?
The more stories I heard throughout this project, the more heart-filling it felt. When you go through something like the cheating scandal, you are left feeling for so long like you are the only one impacted. However, doing this reporting I realized I wasn’t alone and I learned that journalism is a lot like organizing. You build community through knocking on doors and through interviews.
What’s your dream for the project?
Funding. Our community was hit really hard with the cheating scandal, but what about the other issues like air pollution, gentrification, disinvestment or how the media covers crime here? We could really rebuild the community’s trust through journalism. I think about those kids—what if we could bring them into the fold, help create some young journalists of them? If I had this opportunity, then they can. I’m getting hot flashes just thinking about it.
What’s one piece of advice you have for journalists?
Report the truth, not what you want to say about the community.
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