Open Campus has hired two veteran investigative journalists to lead its community college reporting initiative, which will establish partnerships with local newsrooms across the country to produce accountability reporting on the most local and least-covered part of higher education.
Pauline Arrillaga joins the newsroom this month as the managing editor of investigations. She spent more than two decades as an award-winning writer and senior editor at The Associated Press, where she helped oversee reporting that became a Pulitzer Prize finalist.
Most recently, she served as a professor of practice at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, where she launched the Southwest Health Reporting Initiative, served as executive director of the National Center on Disability and Journalism, and worked as executive editor of Carnegie-Knight News21, bringing top journalism students together to produce in-depth national projects.
Arrillaga started her own college career at Kilgore College, a community college in Texas, before transferring to the University of North Texas.
“There’s never been a more important time to invest in local investigative reporting,” Arrillaga said. “This effort allows us to expand reporting on – and accountability of – institutions that serve millions but that are undercovered and overlooked.”
Kate McGee joins the newsroom as an investigative editor, starting this month. Most recently an investigative reporter at The Texas Tribune, McGee brings deep expertise in higher education and a track record of producing consequential journalism in local and state contexts.
McGee, who has covered education for local audiences in Washington, D.C., Chicago, and Austin, was part of the Open Campus Local Network when she worked as a higher education reporter for The Texas Tribune.
“Community colleges across the country are under-scrutinized, despite their incredible impact on our nation’s workforce and the lives of students and their families,” McGee said. “I’m thrilled to help create an apparatus that enables reporters to hold local institutions to account and empowers students to make better-informed decisions as they work to achieve educational goals.”
Open Campus, a national nonprofit news organization, sees its community-college initiative as an extension of its mission to ensure communities and individuals have the independent information they need to support thriving local economies and lives. The project builds on the organization’s ongoing work placing higher-ed reporters on the beat around the country.
At a time of remarkable upheaval in work and education, 8.5 million Americans — two out of five of all undergraduates — bet their futures on community colleges every year. Yet coverage of these campuses is scarce, leaving many people with limited understanding about how to make smart choices or push for better outcomes. When these institutions fail students, entire communities lose pathways to prosperity.
More details on newsroom partners and products are coming soon. The community college initiative is made possible, in part, through a grant from Arnold Ventures.
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About Open Campus
Open Campus is a nonprofit news organization that ensures communities have the independent information they need about higher ed. By placing expert reporters in local newsrooms across the country, we help people understand and influence the institutions that shape their futures.
Founded in 2019, we now work with 18 newsroom partners. We’re supported by funders spanning journalism and higher education, including Arnold Ventures, the Lumina Foundation, and the American Journalism Project.