Each of the five participating newsrooms — El Paso Matters, Fort Worth Report, Houston Chronicle, The Texas Newsroom and WFAA — will report on how power is wielded
DALLAS — This week, it was officially announced that WFAA has been chosen as one of five Texas media organizations to participate in a new investigative initiative with ProPublica and the Texas Tribune aimed at emboldening accountability journalism in local newsrooms all across the Lone Star Sate.
Over the course of the next year, the five newsrooms — El Paso Matters, Fort Worth Report, Houston Chronicle, The Texas Newsroom and WFAA — will report on how power is wielded in Texas in collaboration with ProPublica and the Texas Tribune. Each participating outlet is committed to contributing multiple pieces on this important, and often underreported, topic throughout the next 12 months.
“WFAA has long been committed to investigative journalism and the impact it can have on our community,” said WFAA Executive News Director Leslie McCardel. “This collaboration doubles down on truth and accountability for Texans. We are eager to work with these newsrooms on the power nexus in our state, and how it is impacting people in Texas.”
In 2020, the Tribune and ProPublica launched a first-of-its-kind collaboration to publish investigative reporting for and about Texas. Both organizations publish the team’s stories, which are distributed for free to other news organizations in Texas and beyond.
“Local newsrooms are primed to deliver accountability reporting because they intimately know the communities they cover,” said Vianna Davila, deputy editor of the Tribune-ProPublica investigative unit. “We hope to facilitate even more of that reporting at a critical time in Texas and are so excited to work with these five newsrooms from across the state.”
About ProPublica
ProPublica is an independent, nonprofit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest. With a team of more than 100 dedicated journalists, ProPublica covers a range of topics and focuses on stories with the potential to spur real-world impact. Its reporting has contributed to the passage of new laws; reversals of harmful policies and practices; and accountability for leaders at local, state and national levels. Since it began publishing in 2008, ProPublica has received seven Pulitzer Prizes.
About The Texas Tribune
The Texas Tribune is a nonprofit, nonpartisan public media organization whose mission is to promote civic engagement and discourse on public policy, politics, government and other matters of statewide interest. In addition to publishing at TexasTribune.org, it hosts live journalism events across the state and allows outlets to republish its work for free. It has journalists based in Austin, Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth, San Antonio, El Paso, Brownsville, Lufkin, Lubbock, Odessa and Washington, D.C.
