Changes — exciting ones! — coming to Chalkbeat

Dear Chalkbeat readers,

Exciting news: Come 2018, Chalkbeat Colorado will have a new bureau chief.

I’m thrilled to announce that Erica Meltzer, currently the assistant editor and government reporter at Denverite, will lead our coverage starting next year.

This is part of a series of changes we’re making as Chalkbeat expands. In early 2018 we’ll add Chicago and Newark, N.J., to our network of local sites covering education in Denver, New York, Indianapolis, Memphis and Detroit, and our national news site.

All this growth has caused us to re-think roles and responsibilities as we seek to strengthen and sustain our journalism.

I am turning over the bureau chief reins to Erica after two-and-a-half years in the job to take on a new role as managing editor for local news, working with bureau chiefs in all our markets to help plan our coverage. I’ll remain based in Denver.

Deputy bureau chief and state government reporter Nic Garcia is also taking on a new role, overseeing Chalkbeat’s engagement efforts to build a broader audience for our work. Nic, too, will stay in Denver, working with our local staff and journalists across the organization.

As our next bureau chief, Erica will be overseeing our local reporting team and covering the state government beat — just in time for the start of the legislative session Jan. 10!

Erica has a similar joint editor/reporter role at Denverite, a digital startup that has done terrific work trying to reinvent what local news looks like. Before joining Denverite when it was founded last year, Erica was a reporter for the Boulder Daily Camera and, before that, the Arizona Daily Star. She is fluent in Spanish.

Once Erica joins us, we’ll introduce you to her formally and get a conversation going about what we should be writing about as 2018 begins. So stay tuned!

We’re all excited about this next chapter for Chalkbeat. We’re confident these changes will strengthen our efforts to tell what we think is the most important story in the nation — efforts to provide a great education for all kids.

Happy holidays!

— Eric Gorski, Chalkbeat Colorado bureau chief