In the last week, our newsroom explored the city of Dallas’ plans to transform the Medical District into a life sciences and biotech hub, the impact of our region’s shortage of Hispanic doctors, and why dozens of North Texas congregations are leaving the United Methodist Church.
There is never a shortage of important issues, questionable decisions, worthy programs or remarkable people to write about across North Texas. How we decide which topics to explore, and which stories we report and publish can often seem like a mystery.
That lack of knowledge and understanding can cause our readers — the very people we work hard to serve — to question our decision-making and intentions. Ultimately, it can lead to distrust.
That’s not something we want to happen.
Our mission to inform this community also includes a deep commitment to engage with you on the work we do.
After all, journalism is the practice of researching, verifying and collecting data from a variety of sources to inform communities. We do this by sharing with you where we gathered the information.
Recently, we began discussions on how we can take that transparency one step further, to shed more light on why we decide to report and publish the stories we spend the most time on.
Starting Monday, our enterprise journalism will include a “Why This Story Matters” box with a few sentences of context from the reporter and editor of the story. Our enterprise work is the journalism our newsroom publishes to explain important issues or to connect the dots on matters of significance. Enterprise stories often involve us talking to lots of people and reading and requesting more information through public records. These stories can uncover surprising or little-known facts. And they should explain more clearly why certain decisions by elected or government officials will impact you and your family in years to come.
We see this new feature as a way to better communicate with you. We hope you like it.
As always, please let me know how we can better serve you, and, of course, let me know what you think about the “Why This Story Matters” feature.