This week marks two months since The Waco Bridge launched its website and expanded newsletter to cover Waco news on a regular basis.
Since then, our scrappy six-person team of Waco old-timers and newcomers has begun to gel and get down to the business of building a nonprofit local newsroom from the ground up.
Now is as good a time as any for our founding team to ask you, our founding audience, for feedback about what we’ve done and what we should do. We want to be a newsroom that listens to the community we aim to serve. So let’s go. We’re listening.
I believe that in our short existence we have made a good down payment on what we set out to build: a resource for people who want to get more engaged in their community.
We want to deliver stories and guides that give people a better understanding of how local systems work, as well as events that introduce strangers and allow them to talk through their diverse viewpoints. Ultimately, I hope the information and stories we provide will lead more people to show up at City Council meetings, volunteer in schools and vote in local elections.
Building a foundation
Our “Texas Decisions, Waco Impact” event this summer drew 175 people this summer for a dialogue among local leaders and a state legislator about the local impact of this year’s legislative session. We launched a weekly local news show with KWBU-FM, called “Friday Forum with The Waco Bridge.”
We have produced about 40 original pieces for the web, mostly around our focus areas of education, growth and government, and community.
Our varied output has included an explainer about local flood hazards, photo-video tours of new schools, in-depth examinations of local school and city budgets, and a feature on a Jamaican restaurant owner rebuilding after a fire.
We have produced a free newsletter three times a week providing a quick read on local issues, plus first-rate photography from Justin Hamel. (Please urge your friends to sign up with the button at the top of this page).
Starting this Tuesday, we will expand our newsletter to include a fourth day, with a Tuesday newsletter alternating between photo essays from Justin and Dominic Villa’s Waco Voices feature on ordinary people who make our community a better place. We are also putting effort into using social media to reach nontraditional news audiences.
That said, we’re just beginning. Our two reporters and one photographer are new to Waco and still learning about the community’s institutions, people and history. They’re going to meetings of neighborhood associations, nonprofits and local governments, as well as punk rock shows, cafes and pubs.
We’ve also begun an in-house training series that includes visits from community experts, such as Jeremy Everett of the Baylor Collaborative on Hunger and Poverty, who recently gave us an excellent survey of food insecurity in Waco.
The roots they are planting in our community have already begun to bear fruit. Their connections have allowed us to not only report the news but show how it affects people. Like the mom who is navigating the closure of Alta Vista Elementary School as she chooses between two other schools for her children. Or what the city’s plans to build an inclusive playground at the new Alice Martinez Rodriguez Park mean to the family of a child with disabilities. Or what the state’s school cellphone ban means to University High School students.
I find that our journalists who are new to Waco have given me a fresh perspective on a community I have covered for nearly three decades. They are approaching Waco with curiosity and beginning to understand the complexity of this often-misunderstood city.
Handling hot-button topics
Their focus is on local affairs and local decision-makers, but sometimes national issues become local issues.
Like other local news outlets, we have given some coverage to the plight of Noe Guerrero, a Waco construction worker and father whose July arrest and detention by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in July sparked multiple protests.
We also added local context to a national story about Baylor University’s rejection of a grant meant to help churches provide pastoral care and belonging for LGBTQ+ congregants.
Some readers appreciated how we covered those stories, while others questioned why we did them. We appreciate it when people care enough to read and respond to a story, and their feedback helps us think more deeply about how we’re serving Waco.
Our vision of serving the whole Waco community means we’re careful not to align with any party or cause, especially on issues that inflame partisan passions.
I don’t think our readers want us to avoid controversial issues, but we won’t write about them just to spark outrage (sorry, you’ll have to read elsewhere about Cracker Barrel and Bud Light). In the rare cases we see a need to localize flashpoint issues, we will seek out credible sources on all sides of the debate and present their points of view fairly.
But mostly I expect to keep providing more coverage of distinctively local stories and issues that will help make people better residents of Waco, regardless of their political outlook.
Your turn
I’ll stop there and turn it over to you, with a few questions to get you started.
- Do you agree with our priorities of covering education, growth and government and community? What other subjects would you like to know about, assuming we have the staffing for it?
- Whether it’s in-person events, social media or some other form of engagement, where do you see opportunities that we can help connect Wacoans and help them be better-informed about this community we all call home?
- What are some guides and explainers you’d like to see that provide a quick overview of issues?
- What in our coverage has been useful to you, and what is of less interest? What would you like to see more of?
Send me your thoughts at [email protected]. Thanks for joining us on this adventure.
Let’s keep building together,
J.B. Smith,
Editor-in-chief, The Waco Bridge
