Details only a beat reporter could get will leave readers as  angry and energized about Baltimore schools as their tender, touchy leader.

The Baltimore Sun’s recent  three-part series on Baltimore schools chief Andres Alonso  is full of great scenes from his early life (bored with his job at a Manhattan law firm, reading “War and Peace” at his desk) and his life today as Baltimore schools CEO (he’s sitting in a school meeting and a rat scampers by.)

    The rat’s not a cheap shot, either. Writer Sara Neufeld earns it with nuanced descriptions of the Herculean task before Alonso… and anybody who cares about the city .   

   Only a beat reporter who did what Neufeld did — cover endless schoolboard meetings, develop sources over years, conduct hundreds of interviews — could have presented such an authoritative urgent set of stories.