On this episode I was joined by Daarel Burnette. Daarel is a senior editor for The Chronicle of Higher Education, where he's been for about 4 years. He's spent virtually his entire 20-year professional career in education reporting and editing for places like the Louisville Courier-Journal, The Minneapolis Star-Tribune, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Chalkbeat, and Education Week.
He's a graduate of Hampton University with a masters from Columbia University.
The thing I was most struck by was how thoughtful Daarel was in his answers. With 20 years experience, he's an expert and he's seen and done a lot.
Anyway, here's an excerpt of my interview with Daarel, lightly edited for context and space.
Your father was in the military, then went to work in leadership at HBCUs. Was your interest in higher ed inherited from him or something else?
Like most black folks, I come from a long line of educators. Most black professionals before the end of Jim Crow, their only job you could work at was as a postman or you could work as an educator. Most of the women in my family were educators.
When I was in undergrad, the internet had just started taking a hold of the media industry. And I had a professor who had a theory that journalism would switch into specialized reporting and that reporters should not focus on being generalists, but they should focus on one area. So when he asked me 'What would you like to focus on?' The obvious answer was education because I've been surrounded by education.
And education, I would argue, is the best beat in journalism.
Why?
It has all the elements that make for a great story.
It has money. It's where the vast majority of our tax dollars go toward.
It has personalities. In K-12 and higher ed, you have the concept of trapping hundreds of people in a building for hours on end, and crazy things happen during that day. So anytime you can get an insight into that thing that happens between adults and children, it's really fascinating.
It has politics. It's one of the largest political bodies in America. It's the most intimate form of democracy. Multiple times a month, people get up in front of a school board and voice their opinion. You can see it live.
And a lot of corruption. A lot of bad spending, a lot of bad decision making. It's just never ending. The best analogy is that it's like watching a house being built and then someone lighting it on fire and watching it burn down.
How would you describe what you do?
I manage three reporters now. I manage one of our fellows, a general assignment reporter, and our reporter who covers race. I'm working a little bit with the business team too to figure out how to build more revenue.
A lot of my day-to-day goings on are helping them figure out what to write about, editing stories, pairing reporters with photographers or with visual artists, writing headlines, and trying to figure out what is happening in the higher-ed world. Big decisions like: some of our reporting efforts have been here, should we move out of there. Looking at traffic numbers. It's a variety of things.
What are conversations like as stories progress?
One of the bigger challenges in journalism today is that reporters are being inundated with a lot of information. One of my roles is helping them synthesize what they're learning and moving the target.
Oftentimes you go into a story thinking it's one thing, and as you're reporting, you realize, okay, this might be something totally different. For example, yesterday I was talking to one of the reporters who was writing about an anti-DEI law in Idaho. We went in thinking that the legislature was upset about one thing and they ended up being upset about another thing.
So, it was just constantly trying to figure out what are you learning. Is our thesis statement still true? Do we need to pivot? Do we need to do more research? Do we need to publish now or do we need to wait a little bit.
These are big decisions that are really complicated.
Do you like editing better than writing?
I've learned to love editing mostly because I see my job more as how can I remove all the barriers to executing journalism, to committing journalism? So that's what I really work with reporters. How do I remove these barriers? Everything from like writer's block to reporting dilemmas, to figuring out how to get certain data to how to organize your story. These are all hurdles to executing more effective journalism. And I see my job as one of the interventionists.
Switching gears: For a few months in 2023 you reviewed theatre for DC Theatre Arts. What was the process of writing a review like for you?
It was so cathartic because I hadn't written in such a long time, and writing is a muscle, just like editing is a muscle. You learn so much more about the writing process as an editor because you're reflecting more about structures, being succinct, deadlines.
I got into acting as a post-pandemic thing because I was looking for things to do. I started taking acting classes, which led me to the review world.
One of the things that I fell in love with in the acting world is that they are very, very cognizant of audience needs. They constantly talk about how your actions are going to impact the audience.
It was a sober reminder of what journalists should do. We can sometimes be very insular and very be very obsessed with our stories and not think of the reader. As a critic, I really thought a lot about how I was reacting to the things that were happening on stage and what kinds of devices actors use to stimulate certain emotions.
We need more critics.
What's something that someone entering the profession should have their eyes wide open to?
Daarel gave a long answer to this with examples. I'm abridging it to get to the point … and hopefully you're motivated to listen to the episode.
Journalists should keep their eyes wide open to what's around them. Journalists, especially now in the post-pandemic moment in which a lot of journalism is being conducted via phone and Zoom, we're writing a lot about, we're writing a lot about vibes and not about actually what is actually happening.
A lot of reporting is absent of data. It's absent of actual like experiential journalism. Grabbing a notepad and walking out on the street and saying, I saw this thing happen. You're seeing a lot of that in Minnesota right now because politicians are saying, everybody pull out your phone and record. But also because the Star-Tribune, which is one of my former employers, is just dispatching people out into the streets. That's where the best stories come from.
Reporting is not just trying to capture the vibes. Reporting is actually witnessing and witnessing, conveying what you witnessed in a compelling way.
If you liked this interview, I'd also recommend my interview with veteran education reporter Tara Garcia Mathewson that I did last May. She approached her work in a similar way. It’s a good companion to this interview.
The other thing I liked about talking to Daarel is that in talking to me about the podcast, he mentioned how he'd been looking for a replacement for the podcast Longform, whose founders have gone on to other projects.
This podcast is a great replacement! If you know anyone who is looking for a journalism podcast to replace Longform, send them here, please!!
In 2025 we had a new episode each week and featured more than 60 guests. I don’t know that we were the most diverse journalist interviews podcast out there, but we certainly tried to be.
We look forward to bringing you more journalist interviews in 2026 but we can use your help. Tell a friend, a relative, a colleague about us and let them know that our episodes are worth their time.
A reminder to professors and teachers
You can find episode guides that you can use if you wish to integrate the podcast within your classroom. There are more than 50 available. Each one has suggested questions for discussion and activities a class can do.
I’m also happy to help you find an episode that would be appropriate for what you’re teaching. Reach out to me at [email protected].
Additionally, I’ve curated some of the 2025 episodes into groups. If you’re teaching a class or unit in any of these subjects:
- Investigative Journalism
- Feature Writing
- Covering government policy
- Social justice, immigration, and identity
- Local News
Check out the sets of episode guides that would be useful to you. I don’t have a good term for them, so I’m borrowing from Bluesky and calling them “Starter Packs” - sets of 5-8 episodes in each category that may be useful in your classroom.