Meet our new reporter: Baltimore County native brings global experience to covering Maryland's digital divide
Maria Eberhart remembers when laptops arrived in her school district.
In 2014, in Baltimore County, a racially and economically diverse jurisdiction that stretches from the metro suburbs to rural areas along the state's northern border, that was not a given. Nor was the digital literacy program's success, as an outside evaluation found four years later.
Come this summer, Eberhart will be exploring how tech makes its way into school systems throughout the region and state as Technical.ly's newest reporter in Baltimore.
'I'm interested in tracking the expansion process of educational technology around Maryland and how students fall through the cracks in underserved areas,' she said.
Eberhart comes to Technical.ly via Report for America (RFA), a philanthropic initiative that places emerging journalists in local outlets to cover communities and issues underserved by the existing media ecosystem. During their tenure, corps members dive headlong into specific topics while receiving mentorship and training through the employer and RFA, which will match local funding to support the position. (If you or your organization wants to see more Baltimore and Maryland stories of innovation, contact CEO Chris Wink to help us fully fund this role.)
The University of Southern California journalism school alum joins our distributed newsroom, which has previously hosted RFA corps members in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and Baltimore. She'll work closely with this writer and lead reporter Kaela Roeder as she reports on Maryland's urban-rural digital divide, as well as the related tech, innovation and workforce development topics Technical.ly has been covering in Baltimore for nearly 12 years.
So much of our current tech discourse revolves around AI and new, world-changing tools. While these discussions have a place, it's vital to cover the communities that lack the fundamentals.
Maria Eberhart
The timing couldn't be more urgent. Digital equity in all its avenues — device adoption, broadband access and speeds, corporate oligopoly and government priorities among them — remains an issue in Greater Baltimore and Maryland. Its aftershocks ripple beyond schools into local economies, which suffer if their prospective workforce cannot access the resources needed to participate in them. The current federal administration's negative stance on net neutrality and the Digital Equity Act threatens to slow or even reverse progress on a situation that disproportionately hurts Maryland's rural areas and its redlined, largely Black and brown urban communities.
Eberhart has worked in both local and national journalism, as well as international education. She previously interned at the Baltimore Sun, where she covered topics ranging from disability services worker training to efforts to make the local skateboarding community more equitable for LGBTQ skaters. She served as an editorial assistant for the music media juggernaut Pitchfork and an administrative coordinator for New York Public Radio's newsroom. She joins Technical.ly following a stint teaching English in Bogotá, Colombia.
She marries this with a palpable passion for where she's from. Learn more about Eberhart's journey and reporting interests before catching her around town starting in July.
This Q&A has been edited for length and clarity.
How did you get into journalism?
I started writing for my high school's student newspaper and fell in love with storytelling. I went to a big school and loved how journalism introduced me to different parts of the student body. I spent a lot of late nights laying out pages and editing articles, but after catching the reporting bug, I couldn't stop.
What excites you about covering the rural-urban digital divide in Maryland?
I'm excited to connect with the lawmakers and activists working to tackle this digital divide in Maryland. So much of our current tech discourse revolves around AI and new, world-changing tools. While these discussions have a place, it's vital to cover the communities that lack the fundamentals.
I was a Baltimore County Public School student when the district introduced laptops into the classroom. I'm interested in tracking the expansion process of educational technology around Maryland and how students fall through the cracks in underserved areas.
What questions are you hoping to answer in your work here?
It's great to see Technical.ly reporting on emerging entrepreneurs in the Baltimore area. I'm curious to learn more about the tech industry's growth here. While it might not always make national headlines, there's a vibrant ecosystem developing.
In my work, I want to explore what role tech expansion has in shaping the city's economic future and whether its prosperity will address Baltimore's systemic inequities or further entrench them.
You'll be moving back to your hometown region — what did you miss the most?
I've missed the music scene in Baltimore! I grew up going to concerts, and I haven't seen the same energy in other cities at shows. There are so many great established and DIY venues that support a robust arts community. I'm always bragging to my non-Baltimorean friends about the wealth of musical talent from the area.
What do you like to do outside of work?
I'm a big fan of film photography and love shooting portraits of my friends and family in my free time. I'm working on my darkroom skills, and I hope to learn more about printing
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