Because we’re approaching our one-year anniversary, The Lab Report staff has spent the week around our newsroom conference table planning what we hope to deliver our readers over the next 12 months.
We emailed our first story to 1,025 people on July 9 of last year, wherein we sought to answer a question that seemed to bedevil most everyone with whom we spoke. In the wake of wanton federal funding cuts, how were the volunteers and nonprofit organizations in North Texas that rely on public dollars still doing their work?
Promised federal grants were slashed with much abandon and little notice. Nothing seemed safe. Not enormous programs like SNAP and Medicaid, nor the neighborhood helpers who provide summer lunches and vaccinations and home repairs for the elderly. Few would talk on the record — not even Indiana University’s Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, the first in America established to study the practice. But their stories coalesced into a sharp-focused snapshot of shared uncertainty. That piece, “The Safety Net Has Ripped,” ended with hope, that the people doing the work would not stop.
We spent the next few weeks exploring Dallas County’s attempt to keep people who need something other than punishment out of jail. We profiled a church that was grieving the death of a key pastor while trying to improve its South Dallas neighborhood. We wrote about the promise of a simple iron pill in reducing obstetric complications.
These subjects might seem unrelated. But they are all aligned in The Lab Report’s mission to use journalism to examine what’s working, what’s not, why, and critically, for whom. We hope our work helps Dallas understand itself, in the belief that this place can become more opportunity-rich for all its residents.
Our audience has grown from those 1,000 or so subscribers at launch to more than 17,000. (Not a subscriber? Head here to sign up. It’s free!) We’ve doubled our staff from two to four — that would be me and staff writers Sharon Grigsby, Kelli Smith, and Claire Ballor — and our full website is now live; that’s how you’re reading these words, after all. You can also find us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. We’re thrilled about our plans for year two.
Alan Cohen, our publisher and the CEO of our parent company, the Child Poverty Action Lab, began an essay last summer introducing our publication thusly: “Dallas is strengthened when it has journalism that goes beyond the news of the day.” That is what we have set out to do, once a week, for the past 52.
We have much more in store. Starting with another story, next week.
And for those who are not yet Lab Report habitués, today’s edition will end by highlighting some of what we’ve published since this newsletter began landing in inboxes one year ago. You can also find everything we’ve published on our site, right here. As always, we welcome and encourage your feedback. Have story ideas? Want us to look into something? You can reach us here.
We hope you have a wonderful July 4 weekend.
On Foster Care: Last spring, the state appointed a receiver to take control of the beleaguered system in North Texas after failures by its third-party operator, Empower, led to the deaths of multiple children. Our series includes courtroom testimony ahead of the ruling, an investigation into why kids aging out of the system hadn’t been offered housing vouchers, and what we learned from former and current Empower employees.
On Housing: Sharon Grigsby traveled to Charlotte to learn how North Carolina’s largest city launched a program to help its houses of worship transform unused land into housing. Back in Dallas, we used data to examine the only two city-led programs that are leading to new affordable housing developments; studied how developers, philanthropists, and city officials are developing strategies to make housing more affordable; and chronicled the effort to raise awareness of homestead exemptions to help owners afford to stay in their homes.
On Homelessness: We investigated the tension between police enforcement of encampments and the goals of nonprofit service providers who seek to help people experiencing homelessness find a place to live or receive medical treatment.
On Policing and Criminal Justice: We used Dallas Police Department staffing data to examine how resourcing decisions affect response times, particularly in parts of town with higher rates of violent crime. Our work has studied why a program intended to divert some individuals away from the jail and toward treatment hasn’t worked and the goals of another one that pairs criminal defendants with social workers to avoid convictions.
On Neighborhoods: County officials are transforming a shuttered school into a community center for the Esperanza neighborhood in Far North Dallas. Our story follows a family in the neighborhood to help explain why. Halperin Park opened over Interstate 35E, and we spoke to nearby residents to learn whether they felt included in its planning. South Dallas is getting a Starbucks as part of the Forest Theater development, and the reason that’s a big deal goes far beyond coffee.
We’ll be back with another story next week.
Matt Goodman is the co-founder and editor of The Lab Report. matt@labreportdallas.com.