The last week has given The Waco Bridge’s staff an energy boost and affirmed that a community is forming around our community newsroom.
On Oct. 2, a diverse crowd of about 90 gathered at Art Center Waco to celebrate the year since this nonprofit newsroom was formed with the vision of providing free, reliable and useful local news and information to Waco. (Our thanks to our presenting sponsor Waco Foundation for helping start this initiative.)
Supporters stuck around for a couple of hours to chat with our team about what we’re doing and hope to do. We noshed on charcuterie from University High School’s culinary program, listened to the strains of jazz and mariachi music, and perused a gallery of our photojournalism from our first three months of coverage, which started in July.
Then on Monday, Sam Shaw’s long-form story on the deportation of longtime restaurateur Sergio Garcia gave us our first taste of viral news. By Tuesday afternoon, tens of thousands of people had seen the story either from our website or that of our sister publication, The Texas Tribune, and hundreds of people were sharing it on social media.
We knew there would be local interest in Sergio’s saga because he was a beloved figure in the community who became a local celebrity while catering the international press corps in the years of President George W. Bush’s Crawford White House.
But we weren’t trying to go viral. Sam was just doing what we always try to do: old-fashioned shoe-leather journalism. He spent weeks interviewing multiple sources, verifying claims and sweating over the details of telling the story fairly and empathetically.
We do appreciate that the family trusted us to tell their painful story and that people found it worth reading. And we hope people who see value in this kind of diligent local reporting will support us by helping us sign people up for our free newsletter and considering becoming a contributing member.
In the coming months, we’ll work on more in-depth stories, mostly having to do with our emphasis areas of education, growth and government and community.
But we’re equally excited about doing great photojournalism and short-form guides and explainers that help our audience understand how to navigate their community. We’ll also continue to do more of the Waco Voices series on people working for their communities behind the scenes.
As always, we want to hear from you about what content you’d like to see.
We recently added a fourth newsletter in our weekly cycle to highlight our visual journalism, and we’re looking at adding a fifth day. To do that, we’re talking about other features that might give you a reason to open that 6 a.m. email in your inbox.
Here are some newsletter ideas we’ve brainstormed. Some would require partnerships, interns or part-time writers. Some elements could be combined in a single newsletter.
- A weekly local history feature with photos and/or a history quiz
- A local news quiz
- A feature highlighting small businesses
- A comprehensive listing of free local obituaries. (The nonprofit Fort Worth Report has found this is a popular feature.)
- A community events calendar
- A feature answering readers’ questions about life in Waco, like The Texas Tribune’s guides or The Dallas Morning News’ Curious Texas.
You can share your thoughts in a survey by clicking here.
We thank you for being the community behind our community newsroom.
Let’s keep building together,
J.B. Smith
Waco Bridge editor-in-chief
