Job Title: Reporter, education beat

Reports to: Editor-in-Chief, Managing Editor
Position Status: Regular, Full Time, Exempt

Date Revised: January, 2026

Salary range: $65K – $70K 

Summary:   
The education reporter is a critical part of the newsroom’s content team and reports directly to the managing editor and EIC. They are responsible for producing daily accountability coverage, along with enterprise stories that dig deep across the education landscape in Akron. They serve as a community watchdog, highlight innovative work in the schools, and tell stories that help inform residents’ understanding of the critical work educators are doing — and the roadblocks they may face in doing it.

Akron residents deserve to know the facts because education in the city affects all residents, whose tax dollars go to pay for the Akron Public Schools, whose future employees are graduates of the district and whose children are learning in its classrooms. If the school district works better, the city works better.

While the reporter’s main focus will be the Akron Public Schools, they’ll also report on the estimated 17 public charter schools in the city. Their coverage will be useful, impactful, proactive, rigorous and prioritize the issues residents and students care about most. This could include topics related to student success, safety concerns and disciplinary practices, school administration and finances, the digital divide, academic programs and more. They will also occasionally write stories on the University of Akron, one of 13 public, four-year universities in Ohio that anchors the University Park area adjacent to downtown and serves nearly 15,000 students.

The education reporter will work in close partnership with the Signal Akron Documenters, who attend and chronicle public meetings, so community input and priorities are integral to the news and information produced by this reporter.

About Signal Ohio:

Signal Ohio’s network of independent newsrooms delivers in-depth, community-centered journalism. Our coverage spans the arts, education, health, government accountability, public safety and economic issues, ensuring residents have the information they need to engage civically. 

Signal Ohio newsrooms bring to light the most critical issues affecting communities across the state, raise awareness about the resources available to local residents and help residents make informed decisions about the issues that shape their lives. Our unique reporting model, anchored in community perspectives, has elevated the standard of news coverage and amplified the voices of underrepresented and underserved communities to highlight nuanced perspectives and enrich civic and community engagement and dialogue.

Launched in 2022 with Signal Cleveland, Signal Ohio expanded its network of newsrooms into Akron in 2023, which has since grown to a newsroom of nine reporters and editors.

Signal Statewide, the third newsroom in the Signal Ohio network, covers policy and politics for all Ohioans. The first phase of the Signal Cincinnati newsroom launched in 2024 with the launch of Cincinnati Documenters.

In addition to a team of editors and beat reporters, our Akron newsroom incorporates audience engagement and social media expertise, social media and multimedia production and the Akron Documenters program, which trains and pays Akron residents (more than 300 to date) to document local public meetings and participate in broader news gathering and distribution efforts.

Essential Functions:

• Produce a steady stream of local accountability reporting related to education that will serve Akron residents as a primary source of information they need to understand their schools and empower them to hold decision-makers to account.
• Deliver a combination of day-to-day coverage and ambitious, high-impact and authoritative journalism that demonstrates Signal Akron’s reporting on education will empower Akron’s residents to make schools work better for them.
• Develop a voice for your coverage that is solutions-focused, and inclusive of formats needed to make information accessible to all residents, including guides, explainers, and other service journalism that translate reporting from the newsroom into content that helps people take action. 
• Work collaboratively with other Signal Akron reporters to report on ongoing education issues that cross into other areas of the city. Work with our multimedia editor/producer and community/service reporter to make sure our content around education is visual and easy to understand for all our audiences.
• Work with the EIC and managing editor to develop an editorial strategy for the beat and what will be prioritized. This will include producing content for our website, newsletters, social media and other formats as part of the newsroom’s overall mission.
• Work within a daily newsroom operation that is deeply collaborative, relies on teamwork and centers on a community reporting program that partners directly with residents to help inform coverage priorities. 
• Collaborate and learn with the Signal Akron Documenters; leverage the work of the Documenters, along with the newsroom’s community gathering spaces to make education reporting deeper and more grounded in community voices.
• Attend school board meetings, community gatherings and other education-related events to gather information for story ideas and research purposes.
• Develop a deep understanding of local and national education policies to provide context for stories.

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