Hi, I’m Kate Grumke. I’m an education reporter for St. Louis Public Radio, my hometown NPR station. I report quick and long-term radio and print stories about how education affects the lives of people in St. Louis. I love telling stories about how policy impacts people, from uncovering a widespread attempt to remove books from local school libraries to reporting on how pandemic learning could permanently change schools’ approach to snow days.
I’m also a data journalist — before taking the job with STLPR, I studied data journalism through Columbia University’s Lede Program, a 10-week, full-time professional program that’s basically a coding boot camp for reporters. I learned to use Python to do data analysis, web scraping, mapping, data visualization and much more.
I always wanted to work as a radio reporter, but I spent almost 6 years in Washington, D.C. producing and reporting public television and news documentaries. I was a politics producer with PBS NewsHour in Washington, D.C. and I’ve also been a documentaries producer and correspondent at Newsy.
Besides work, I'm a midwest girl at heart. I'm from St. Louis and have an obsession with Rust Belt cities and the dedication it takes to love places that are overlooked. In my free time, you can find me riding my bike, joining yet another book club or working on my film photography skills on an old 1970’s Canon.