Marquita Brown is joining Mississippi Today as its education editor. Brown, a Mississippi native, will lead a team of three reporters covering K-12 and higher education. Part of the K-12 coverage will be focused on the Mississippi Delta. 

Brown will lead a team that produces contextualized reporting on a range of topics ranging from school funding and postsecondary opportunities to curriculum and mental health in schools. The stories will be anchored in community-centered reporting with an eye toward racial justice and equity. 

She is looking forward to using her expertise to guide and shape coverage of one of the state’s most consequential topics. 

“Jackson is my hometown. As someone born and raised in the city and metro area, I was proud to serve my community years ago as a daily newspaper reporter,” Brown said. “Since then, I’ve relied on Mississippi Today for in-depth journalism that holds state and local officials accountable and uncovers issues important to Mississippians’ everyday lives. It’s an honor to join that team and serve my hometown and state again as a journalist.”

As a former education reporter and a graduate of Murrah High School and the University of Mississippi, Brown is intimately familiar with the successes and challenges of the state’s education system. She also has a keen awareness of how those issues fit into a national context. 

She has worked with national education groups such as the Education Writers Association and, most recently, on a contract with the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics. She also spent more than a decade as a reporter at newspapers in Mississippi, Virginia and North Carolina and received her master’s degree in interactive media from Elon University.

“I was impressed by Marquita years ago when she was an early-career reporter at The Clarion-Ledger, and I’m even more impressed with the leadership she has shown as her career developed,” said Emily Wagster Pettus, editor-in-chief of Mississippi Today. “She brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to her new role at Mississippi Today, and we’re happy to have her as part of the team.”