T-Squared: Jayme Lozano is joining us as a Lubbock-based regional reporter

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We are excited to announce that Jayme Lozano is joining The Texas Tribune as our first Lubbock-based reporter, covering the South Plains and Panhandle through a partnership with Report for America.

Jayme comes to us from Texas Tech Public Media, which she joined in 2021 as part of the Local Journalism Initiative of PBS’s “Frontline,” with support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Jayme reported on rural hospital closures and COVID-19’s effects on rural communities, in collaboration with The Texas Newsroom, the public radio journalism collaborative. A three-part series Jayme spearheaded as part of that work, “Rural Healthcare: The Other Texas Drought,” was recognized with a national Gracie Award.

“She is an incredible, committed reporter always striving to hold people accountable and tell the truth,” said Fernanda Camarena, who worked with Jayme on the rural hospitals coverage and is now manager of standards and practices at NBC News. “She is relentless and hardworking. Her ability to connect with people is unmatched. She has that great human quality that all journalists strive for.“

Before joining Texas Tech Public Media, Jayme worked for nearly four years at the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal and Amarillo Globe-News, where she started as a copy editor and page designer and later covered a variety of issues including health care, climate change and agriculture. Jayme has broad-ranging interests: In 2019, she came in third place for a Texas Managing Editors award for comment and criticism for her review of the movie “Joker.”

Jayme, who grew up in Levelland, is a journalism graduate of South Plains College and Texas Tech University. Her knowledge of the region will be a huge resource as she works to reflect the perspectives of communities there to a statewide audience.

This is our first-ever partnership with Report for America, the groundbreaking program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues and communities.

This is also the first of what we know will be several exciting announcements related to our regional reporting initiative. We will soon hire a regional editor and an East Texas reporter, based in Lufkin.

Disclosure: Texas Tech University has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.