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Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Matt Stiles Reporter

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Matt Stiles writes about government and politics with a focus on computer-assisted reporting. Previously, he was a government reporter at the Houston Chronicle. While there, he won the newspaper's Jesse Award for service journalism and beat reporting and was its reporter of the year in 2007. Before joining the Chronicle's staff, Stiles worked as a reporter for nearly four years at The Dallas Morning News. A native of Tallahassee, Florida, he has a degree in journalism from the University of Texas at Arlington.

mstiles@texastribune.org
512-436-0312

Recent Contributions

The Capital Gang

by Ross Ramsey and Matt Stiles  |  2/5/2010

The six Texas congressional candidates who ended the year with $1 million or more on hand are incumbents. Only two of the candidates with the 20 biggest bank accounts are not.

Twenty Who Gave Plenty

by Matt Stiles  |  1/26/2010  |   1

Houston homebuilder Bob Perry tops the list of the biggest donors to Texas candidates in the last half of 2009. McAllen developer Alonzo Cantu and Dallas businessman Ross Perot Sr. also gave large sums.

Mapping the Money Race

by Matt Stiles  |  1/20/2010  |   2

To better understand the geography of the money race, we mapped the candidates' contributions by city, using graduated symbols to highlight their most lucrative areas. The bubbles in the maps get larger based on the percentage of a candidates' total take. 

Who's Funding the Governor's Race?

by Matt Stiles  |  1/19/2010

To find the most-common occupations among the thousands of people who've donated to the major candidates in the last year, we created word clouds, a visualization technique that boosts the size of words depending on their frequency.

Data App: Governor's Race Cash

by Matt Stiles  |  1/18/2010

Search more than $35 million in campaign donations and loans collected by the top candidates in the governor's race. You can also explore how they spent the money.

Data Apps: Best/Worst Public Schools

by Matt Stiles and Brian Thevenot  |  12/23/2009

Find the highest and lowest performers in Texas. Learn why nearly 500 campuses failed to meet minimum standards — and how the state inflated the rankings in the top category. 

Data App: Frequent Flyers

by Matt Stiles and Niran Babalola  |  12/21/2009

Search the privately funded trips taken by Texas congressmen and their staffs during the last two years.

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KHOU-TV companion story on congressional travel

by Matt Stiles and Andrew Kreighbaum  |  12/17/2009

KHOU-TV in Houston did a story using The Texas Tribune's analysis of Texas congressional travel.

Frequent Flyers

by Matt Stiles and Andrew Kreighbaum  |  12/17/2009

Members of the Texas congressional delegation took more than 200 privately funded trips, at a cost of more than $350,000, in 2008 and 2009.

Super Salaries

by Matt Stiles and Brian Thevenot  |  12/17/2009  |   2

School superintendent salary data offers a unique window into the vast diversity of Texas districts, from massive to miniscule, and the way they pay their chief executives. One new trend: Performance pay. 

More Than One Million Caught

by Matt Stiles  |  12/11/2009

Next time you plan on speeding through an intersection after the signal changes to red, remember this: A camera could be watching.

Data App: Red-light Cameras

by Matt Stiles and Niran Babalola  |  12/10/2009  |   2

Explore red-light camera intersections across Texas, or drill down to individual intersections to see images, crash figures and citation totals.

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Data explainer: Red-Light Cameras

by Matt Stiles  |  12/10/2009

Watch this video to learn more about our data application.

Show Us the Money

by Matt Stiles  |  12/8/2009  |   1

The Texas Ethics Commission wants candidates and elected officials to come clean about their spending, and it's adopted new rules that require them to do just that.

Debtors' Treadmill: Treasure Map

by Brandi Grissom and Matt Stiles  |  12/2/2009  |   2

Short-term, high-interest lenders are clustered in neighborhoods where the median household income is less than $50,000 a year.