I\u2019m excited to announce two major moves in our newsroom that will boost our ability to cover topics hugely important to our state: education and the Houston region.<\/p>\n
First, we\u2019ve hired one of the leading education reporters in Texas: Megan Menchaca. Megan joins us from The Houston Chronicle, where she\u2019s led coverage of the Texas Education Agency\u2019s historic takeover of Houston ISD \u2014 scooping the competition with critical news such as the state\u2019s extension of the intervention<\/a> and the sudden replacement<\/a> of state-appointed managers. <\/p>\n Megan\u2019s coverage is additive as our excellent K-12 reporter, Jaden Edison, remains in place. Growing the team allows us to tell the story of education in Texas with more depth and resources. We\u2019ll continue focusing on the latest news while also digging into the biggest questions: Are our children being set up to succeed? Are our schools getting the resources they need? Megan is based in Houston, where there\u2019s no better place to explore those questions.<\/p>\n \nSupport Independent Texas News<\/p>\n Will you make a donation today?\n<\/p>\n But that\u2019s not all we have planned for the region. This summer, we added a Houston regions reporter. And we filled that role with a Tribune veteran: former mental health reporter Stephen Simpson. <\/p>\n Four years ago, we created our regions team around the idea that you can\u2019t tell the story of government and politics in Texas exclusively inside the halls of power. You must spread across the state to explore the impact our leaders have and to hear the needs of Texans that are worthy of policymakers\u2019 attention. That work started in less populous areas with regional reporters in East Texas, the Rio Grande Valley, the Permian Basin and the High Plains. But Stephen\u2019s new position expands that work in the Houston area, a region more populous than most states and whose diversity, economy, weather and culture create impact far beyond its borders.<\/p>\n Stephen moved to Houston last month, and his impact is already on display. He helped anchor our coverage of the fatal shooting<\/a> of a Houston man by an ICE agent \u2014 our team has written nearly three dozen stories on the topic \u2014 and he\u2019s penned a moving feature<\/a> about how a youth soccer club for at-risk youth is threatened by federal cuts. <\/p>\n Stephen and Megan grow an already strong reporting presence in Houston, joining our general assignment reporter Colleen DeGuzman, climate reporter Emily Foxhall and investigative reporter Lomi Kriel there. <\/p>\n These moves are made with our broader mission in mind: Seek the truth so Texans can govern themselves. We want to fearlessly tell the story of this state with nuance, complexity, expertise and authority. We hope you\u2019ll keep reading and sharing that work. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I\u2019m excited to announce two major moves in our newsroom that will boost our ability to cover topics…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":404466,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[163,56,58,1686,57,287,101670,2810],"class_list":["post-404465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-education","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-isd","tag-houston-news","tag-politics","tag-t-squared","tag-texas-education-agency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=404465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404465\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/404466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=404465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=404465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=404465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}