Mack Carmack
Mack Carmack is a digital content producer at LEX 18 who focuses on fast, document-based coverage of public institutions, including education systems and the justice system. Her work stands out for its emphasis on how policies, official decisions and allegations of misconduct affect families, students and communities, often tying individual incidents back to broader questions of accountability.
Education power structures and accountability
Carmack covers education by following the actions of senior school leaders, lawmakers and investigators rather than staying at the level of classroom features. In her reporting on Dr. Demetrus Liggins being accused of slipping a manufactured legal threat under a lawmaker’s door, she tracks the paper trail and focuses on how a superintendent’s conduct intersects with legislative oversight and public trust. She approaches education stories through the lens of governance, documenting who knew what, when, and what formal responses follow. That approach makes her coverage especially relevant for stories involving investigations, ethics questions, or conflicts between school leadership and elected officials.
Crime and the justice system
A large portion of Carmack’s recent work sits at the intersection of education, public safety and the courts. She reports on serious criminal cases, such as the conviction of a Hazard man for sexually assaulting children and receiving three life sentences, highlighting both sentencing outcomes and the underlying allegations in clear, direct language. She also covers developments in ongoing cases, including a judge waiving the case of a man accused of assaulting a child to a Fayette County grand jury, where she tracks procedural steps as the case moves deeper into the court system. Her crime coverage often centers on offenses involving children or vulnerable people, aligning with her broader interest in how institutions respond to harm.
Breaking news and public safety incidents
Carmack regularly handles breaking news involving fatalities and major incidents, with an emphasis on what authorities can confirm and what remains under investigation. In coverage of a vehicle collision that left two people dead in Adair County, she anchors the story in verified details from the coroner and law enforcement, outlining time, location and official statements while avoiding speculation. She applies the same disciplined, fact-first structure to transportation disasters, including new information released by the NTSB about a fatal plane crash in Jessamine County, where she foregrounds the agency’s findings and any identified causes or contributing factors. Across these stories, she treats public-safety news as part of a continuum of institutional accountability, not as isolated incidents.
Digital newsroom role and format
As a digital content producer at LEX 18, Carmack works primarily in short, hard-news pieces built around official documents, agency releases and on-the-record statements rather than long-form features. Her articles tend to be concise and heavily sourced to police, courts, coroners and regulatory bodies, reflecting a workflow designed for timely online updates. She has a background in multimedia journalism and broadcast communication, which shows up in the clean, telegraphic style of her copy and in the way she frames stories so they can travel easily across digital, social and on-air formats. Her body of work is most distinctive where these skills converge: fast-turn, institution-focused reporting on education leadership, crime and public safety, grounded in records and the language of official findings.
4 more education journalists.
Abdul Latif Jameel
Abdul Latif Jameel publishes long-form, research-led pieces on how emerging technologies and scientific advances reshape education, industry, and society. He writes for the Abdul Latif Jameel masthead at the intersection of learning, innovation, and applied science, with a focus on technology, skills, and the future of learning. He explains complex fields such as quantum sensing in clear, accessible terms, breaking down frontier science and tying it to real-world applications. His coverage links breakthroughs in sensing, data, and automation to training, curriculum, and lifelong learning. He treats education as an applied system connected to industry, policy, infrastructure, and human development. He reports in an analytical, explanatory style, using research, pilots, and large-scale initiatives to examine how technologies are implemented, evaluated, and scaled in learning and training environments.
Adria Iraheta
Adria Iraheta is a community-focused reporter at Denver7, distinct for centering students, families and residents in every story about schools, neighborhoods and public services. She covers how decisions by school districts, local agencies and public institutions land in daily life, with a particular focus on Aurora and Arapahoe County. Her beat sits at the intersection of education, community issues, public services, safety, infrastructure, health and climate, from job cuts in a school district to a new transit safety app, DMV outages, street changes and record heat waves. With a decade of local television reporting experience, she reports on the ground in specific local scenes, using plain language, direct questions to officials and clear explanations to show how policies, programs and changes affect the people who live, study and work in Colorado communities.
Alan J. Borsuk
Alan J. Borsuk stands out for connecting what happens in schools to the policy and political decisions behind them. He writes in-depth K-12 education analysis for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and serves as a senior fellow in law and public policy at Marquette University Law School. His work focuses on Milwaukee Public Schools, school choice, literacy, teacher pipelines, and school accountability. He uses long-range perspective, detailed reporting, and structured analysis to explain how reforms unfold, why they stall, and what they mean for students and leaders. He has also written on vouchers, Teach for America, discipline, and teacher evaluation, drawing on decades as a reporter and editor on education and public policy.
Alexandra Hardle
Alexandra Hardle brings a watchdog lens to K-12 schools, using concrete incidents to map how district power, oversight and accountability work in real life. She covers K-12 education for The Arizona Republic, focusing on school systems, governance and the lived impact of policy on students, families and educators. Her reporting shows how school governance can fail students and staff and what that reveals about district culture. She often covers flashpoints, such as the Nazi salute fallout in the Deer Valley district, as windows into deeper dysfunction, tracking how leadership responds, how trust breaks down and how conflicts unfold in public meetings. Her work sits at the intersection of accountability reporting and community stories, grounded in public records, formal rules and multiple stakeholder perspectives, with clear, direct language that explains how institutions make decisions and how ordinary people experience them.