Hey there,
We’re in your inbox today to announce that we’re a few weeks away from debuting a new publication. It’s called The Lab Report. And if you’re receiving this email, you’re likely familiar with at least one of us.
We’re Sharon Grigsby and Matt Goodman, the co-founders of this new venture and two veteran journalists who have spent our careers reporting stories about Dallas and North Texas. You know Sharon from her decades at The Dallas Morning News, most recently as city columnist. Matt was at D Magazine for 11 years, even though he’s from Houston.
Our mission is to transform how Dallas understands and addresses the complex financial, social, and political challenges facing our community. Our shop is incubated through the nonprofit Child Poverty Action Lab, and its CEO, Alan Cohen, is our publisher. His publisher’s note explains the organization’s decision to invest in journalism. We encourage you to read it here if you missed it last week.
We believe North Texas needs more, not less, local news. Our goal is to create the city’s next great (online) metro page. We’ll cover housing, criminal justice, healthcare, education, the environment, and plenty of other issues that shape how Dallas families live. We want to know what’s working, what’s not, and why. We want to introduce you to people doing exciting work in these spaces as well as those affected by the issues we’re covering.
The Lab Report is dedicated to telling data-driven stories that can spark meaningful change. What we believe sets us apart will be our unwavering commitment to rigorous, evidence-based journalism and storytelling that humanizes statistics. Behind every percentage point and graph is a real person, a real family, a real community struggling or thriving.
Our publication won’t just observe the city. We’re actively working to help Dallas understand itself. If this sounds of interest, we’re thrilled to hear it. You don’t need to do a thing; you’ll begin receiving our email newsletter when it launches in the coming weeks. Our website will debut later this summer. (It looks really, really good!) We also understand if this isn’t your bag, and you can unsubscribe below.
But if our educated guess was correct and this is something you’d like to follow, we’re excited—and grateful—that you’ve chosen to join us. We’d love to hear from you. Our emails are below.
More soon,
Sharon and Matt
Co-founders, The Lab Report Dallas
sharon@labreportdallas.com
matt@labreportdallas.com