Get to know education reporter Rory Linnane

Yahoo

20-02-2025

Rory Linnane's journalism career launched in high school, where she was on the staff of the Shorewood Ripples. Her work at the student newspaper, fighting for information to be more accessible to those most affected by it, shaped her approach to covering education today.
Linnane is in the midst of the O'Brien Fellowship in Public Service Journalism at Marquette University, reporting a project focusing on Milwaukee Public Schools. (Her work is overseen by Milwaukee Journal Sentinel editors; O'Brien officials have no role in the editing or presentation of the work.)
More: Milwaukee Public Schools saves millions leaving positions unfilled. Students pay the price.
I grew up in Shorewood and graduated from Shorewood High in 2008. Thanks to a strong student newspaper, the great Shorewood Ripples, I knew I wanted to head directly for the journalism school at UW-Madison.
After college, I got a job in the Communities section of the Journal Sentinel for a couple years, mainly covering Wauwatosa. I then landed a statewide reporting position at the Appleton Post-Crescent, where I led a series on youth mental health. Finally, I got a job at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. I started in the Ideas Lab, then applied for the education reporting job when it opened up in 2020.
I owe it all to the experiences and mentors I had through my high school student newspaper. The staff adviser, English teacher Mike Halloran, adamantly protected our autonomy as student journalists to cover any topic without censorship. Between chronicling our sports teams with the gusto of Packers writers, we welcomed opinion pieces on global politics. We covered school board meetings, and we wrote editorials that challenged school policies.
In addition to sparking my interest in journalism, my experiences at the student newspaper made me passionate about all students having the power to produce autonomous journalism, build student movements and shape the institutions that ultimately impact them more than any adults.
I'm surprised that after a decade in journalism and four years in education reporting, I still feel like a beginner. Every day, I learn something new that I can't believe I didn't know. Between the bleeding of local journalism jobs, the proliferation of public relations professionals who shield school officials from our questions, and the general inscrutability of school budgets and metrics, it's hard to see how busy families can be expected to meaningfully engage in budget and policy discussions, or even make informed decisions on what schools to attend.
In the last four years, I've witnessed how voids of information can lead to booms and busts of public attention. Some are choreographed less by local realities and more by talking points on national news programs. Others rise and fall when there's a crisis, sending reporters chasing school board members for answers one month and leaving an empty boardroom the next. It's a sign that we need more accessible information and meaningful engagement all year round.
When I tell people I write about schools, people are often surprised that there's enough to write about. In fact, there's never enough time in the day to cover all the strong story ideas that come our way.
Earlier this month while on a tour at Washington High School, I saw five things I wanted to write about: the orchestra teacher who said it's the first time after many years that the school was able to offer orchestra; the Black and Latino Male Achievement coordinator who showed us the hygiene bags she packs for students; the group of 70 men who want to volunteer as mentors at the school; the parent coordinator who makes home visits for students failing classes; and the computers set up in his room for parents to use for job searches.
The hardest part of my job is deciding how to triage the numerous worthy happenings and tips that readers send us. I don't always get it right. (But please, keep sending those tips!)
About a year ago, a few colleagues and I started talking about what we could do as a newsroom to support high school students who are interested in journalism.
Many journalists in our newsroom were deeply influenced by exposure to the field in high school. We believe every student should have those opportunities – and the future of our industry depends on it.
We set up four free opportunities for students: being paired with a mentor, having a journalist come speak at their school, visiting our newsroom for a field trip, and job-shadowing.
I'm proud of how many of my colleagues have volunteered their time to make this possible; we've already connected with over 30 schools.
In a full-circle moment last month, the student editors of Shorewood Ripples reached out about scheduling a field trip.
Two crises erupted at Milwaukee Public Schools last summer. In both cases – the finance office bungling key accounting reports, and the district's Head Start program losing funding and folding – there had been early warnings about understaffing in critical areas.
With understaffing a seemingly districtwide issue, it begged the question: Are there other departments on the verge of crisis, or undergoing a quieter crisis?
Families and staff had already been sharing anecdotes about understaffed schools: losing a music teacher, going without a librarian, seeing a special education teacher strained with an untenable caseload, having a math class taught by a remote teacher.
There's no regular public accounting of vacant staff positions. While school districts are required to report staffed positions to the state Department of Public Instruction, they don't report unfilled positions. Before starting this project, I'd never seen a list of vacant positions at MPS. If there is a full list, I still haven't seen it, but I'm working to piece together the full picture.
I hope my reporting contributes to a public understanding of the true staffing picture at MPS. Where there are students who aren't getting the attention and learning opportunities they deserve, I hope my reporting helps our city and our state find solutions.
Catch me three times a week taking advantage of the offerings of Milwaukee Recreation. Some favorite classes of seasons past include natural dyeing in the spectacular weaving center at Gaenslen, a meditative swim class (shoutout H2Flow), reflexology, pickling and landscape painting. May we all aspire to have the range of the MKE Rec course catalog.
Rory Linnane can be reached at [e-mail].
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Meet Rory Linnane, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel education reporter