The Texas Newsroom (collaboration) - Coverage of El Paso Walmart shooting
The Texas Newsroom
04/27/2020
On the morning of Saturday, August 3, 2019, a man who’d driven 600 miles from a Dallas suburb to the Texas/Mexico border pulled out an AK47 and began firing at a Walmart in El Paso. What resulted was the nation’s worst death toll from a mass shooting in 2019 – and the deadliest attack on Latinos in modern American history. Twenty-two people lost their lives. Another two dozen were injured.
The tragedy came just as the public radio stations of Texas joined forces in a new journalism collaboration called The Texas Newsroom. KERA in North Texas, KUT in Austin, Texas Public Radio in San Antonio and Houston Public Media joined with NPR and smaller stations across Texas to create a statewide partnership, designed as a model for future regional collaborations across the country.
This horrific event forged that alliance.
Almost as soon as the shooting died down, public media journalists from Marfa hopped in a car three hours away. Editors in Dallas hustled a reporter on to a plane. Digital journalists in San Antonio raced to chronicle the breaking developments. The Texas Newsroom’s single El Paso-based reporter canceled a vacation in New Mexico, turned her car around and headed home.
Over the next two weeks, reporters, producers and hosts in Texas produced an astounding range of coverage, shared by stations across Texas and feeding NPR’s national airwaves:
The Texas Newsroom contributed at least 47 newscast spots, 29 digital stories and 15 features that aired or published locally and statewide. Six months later, El Paso-based reporter Mallory Falk continues to cover the aftermath and suspect’s legal proceedings.
At least 28 reports aired on national NPR newscasts. At least four radio features and five reporter interviews aired on national programs (Morning Edition, Up First, Here & Now, All Things Considered).
Eight Texas reporters from four public media stations covered the story in El Paso (from KERA, Marfa Public Radio, Houston Public Media and Texas Public Radio in San Antonio).
The statewide newsmagazine Texas Standard, based at KUT in Austin, produced 10 hours of El Paso coverage. The statewide talk show Think, based at KERA in Dallas, produced a national call-in special that aired in 57 markets nationally, including Boston, San Francisco, Seattle and St. Louis.
And long after national reporters retreated, these Texans stayed on the story, exploring the outpouring of grief, the mental health impact on survivors, the racial hatred lacing the manifesto the shooter posted online, and the precautions parents took as they sent frightened children back to school. Those reporters broke news about the shooter’s semiautomatic weapons and about “U visas” -- special visas that allow undocumented victims of crime to stay in the country. They chronicled a shattered community pulling together to bind its wounds.
In short, they exemplified the values of strong, compelling, fact-based storytelling and comprehensive public service.
LINK to content online
Submitted by Miguel Perez.