Meghan Mangrum is an experienced reporter, editor and educator currently living in Southwest Virginia. She has spent her career focused primarily on covering education and children’s issues, especially in the Southeast. Her work has appeared in The Tennessean, USA TODAY, The Dallas Morning News, Chalkbeat, The Atlantic, News From the States and more.

Meghan is currently a regional education reporter for Cardinal News, a nonprofit news outlet covering Southwest & Southside Virginia. She covers K-12 and higher education, local schools and statewide policy with an emphasize on how issues are impacting people in underserved regions of the state.

Before joining Cardinal News, Meghan was an editor for Piedmont Media, a nonprofit hyperlocal journalism organization that publishes the Fauquier Times and the Prince William Times in Northern Virginia. In her role, she was a typical local news guru – she managed a small reporting team and daily news coverage as well as the production of a weekly print paper, the paper’s digital and social media strategy, audience initiatives and more. All while attending local government meetings, writing breaking news and deep-diving into education issues.

Meghan enjoys coaching early-career journalists, collaborating with digital and audience team members, brainstorming story ideas and angles, and providing thoughtful editing, as well as managing innovative projects across the newsroom. She is passionate about serving as a trusted resource for the community and for her colleagues in the newsroom.

Meghan previously worked as a member of the Education Lab team at The Dallas Morning News, covering school choice, statewide policy and safety issues, as well as the impact of the post-pandemic culture wars on North Texas schools.

Before moving to Texas, Meghan spent five years covering education and children’s issues in Tennessee, first for The Chattanooga Times Free Press and then for The Tennessean, part of the USA TODAY Network.

Meghan’s work in Tennessee included extensive coverage of Gov. Bill Lee’s revamp of the state’s school funding formula, the legal fight encompassing Tennessee’s education savings account program, the Tennessee Department of Education under the leadership of then-Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn, Metro Nashville Public Schools’ response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the rise of the parent activist group, Moms for Liberty, and its ascent to national prominence.

Meghan’s award-winning work has examined the academic impacts of restricting what books are available to students, how schools and universities across the South grapple with teaching about slavery and race, the lasting mental health impacts of the pandemic, and how colleges prepare future teachers for the classroom – and how school districts keep them there. While working in Tennessee, she was named best education reporter in the state four years in a row in the Tennessee Press Association’s annual competition.

Her work has also been cited in “School Moms: Parent Activism, Partisan Politics, and the Battle for Public Education” by Laura Pappano of The Washington Post and “They Came for the Schools: One Town’s Fight Over Race and Identity, and the New War for America’s Classrooms,” by Mike Hixenbaugh of NBC News.

During her time in Tennessee, Meghan also covered historic flooding in Waverly, Tennessee; the devastating Easter Sunday tornadoes that wreaked havoc on Chattanooga and North Georgia in 2020; the summertime protests following the murder of George Floyd and a number of student movements, including efforts to combat gun violence after the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland, the 2022 mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde and the 2023 shooting at The Covenant School in Nashville.

Before moving to Tennessee in 2017, Meghan worked as a digital producer for the USA TODAY Network in Florida – helping man the breaking news desk during hurricane season. She interned for the national education news nonprofit, Chalkbeat, in Indiana and covered real estate and local government at a South Florida weekly newspaper, Miami Today.

A Florida native, Meghan grew up in Orlando and graduated from the University of South Florida in 2013. She attended graduate school at the University of Florida, where she managed undergraduate student journalists in a multi-platform newsroom and led the school’s Electionland collaboration with ProPublica during the 2016 presidential election. As part of that project, Meghan taught a team of student journalists how use a variety of online factcheck and verification tools and how to comb social media in real time for threats, misinformation and voter intimidation efforts on Election Day 2016.

Meghan also served with AmeriCorps from 2013 to 2015, working with ninth graders in two high-needs high schools and teaching adult GED classes in Apopka, Florida. Her commitment to service and passion for equitable education inspires her work as a journalist.