Scott Stephens has been an award-winning journalist for 30 years. He is currently a senior writer with Catalyst-Ohio, a quarterly, nonprofit news magazine that documents, analyzes and supports school-improvement efforts in Ohio’s urban school districts, with special emphasis on Cleveland, Cincinnati and Columbus. Previously, he worked at The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer for 18 years, the last 15 covering education. He has written extensively about issues such as testing, charter schools, school vouchers, desegregation and school funding.
Before coming to Cleveland, Stephens worked for newspapers in Pennsylvania, Florida and Ohio, and served as a stringer for United Press International in Mexico City, D.F. To many Clevelanders, he was best known as The Plain Dealer’s beer critic, establishing the paper’s first beer column. Stephens was also a long-time leader and activist in The Newspaper Guild-CWA, and served for six years as regional vice president on the board of North America’s largest media workers union.