Moriah Balingit is an Associated Press reporter who has written about young people and schools for nearly a decade. Prior to joining the AP in December, Moriah covered education for The Washington Post. Her coverage focused on how gun violence, natural disasters, racial inequality and the pandemic affected schools and students. Her coverage included writing about college admissions from the perspective of students in poverty, including Asian Americans who did not fit the “model minority” archetype. For a magazine cover piece, she returned to her hometown of Sacramento to write about what the end of affirmative action would mean for Hmong students aspiring to be the first in their families to attend college.
The daughter of a Filipino immigrant, she was born and raised in Sacramento and studied journalism at the University of Oregon. She spent six years at the Pittsburgh (Pa.) Post-Gazette. In 2014, she joined The Washington Post as the American University fellow, working in the newsroom while earning a master’s degree in investigative journalism.
She joined The Associated Press last year as its first early education reporter, where she is focusing on how trauma and poverty affect young minds, and exploring the challenges of caregiving.