T-Squared: The Texas Tribune is joining FRONTLINE’s Local Journalism Initiative

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We are honored to share the news that FRONTLINE, the investigative documentary series distributed by PBS, has selected The Texas Tribune as a partner for its Local Journalism Initiative.

Through this partnership, the Tribune will analyze immigration and politics along the U.S.-Mexico border. We’ll look at Texas' accelerating confrontation with the federal government and its origins and consequences: the loss of life along the Rio Grande, the strain communities experience from uncontrolled migration, the financial costs of the state’s massive National Guard deployment, the hardening of views on immigration, and more.

Launched in 2019, FRONTLINE’s Local Journalism Initiative provides newsrooms with resources and financial support that includes paying journalists’ salaries and sharing FRONTLINE’s expertise on investigative techniques, video storytelling and audience engagement.

Other newsrooms in this new class include the Chattanooga Times Free Press, which will explore health care disparities in Tennessee, and the Portland Press Herald, which will undertake an accountability investigation into Maine’s deadliest mass shooting and work in partnership with Maine Public (PBS). FRONTLINE also continues to support The Post and Courier of Charleston, South Carolina, which will turn its lens on rural voters in the state. We at the Tribune are honored to be in such distinguished company.

The Local Journalism Initiative is funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, which has also been a major supporter of the Tribune. The initiative aims to promote sustainable, public-interest journalism in communities where local news organizations have been hit hard by financial pressures.

Much of the vast borderland region in Texas is both a topographical desert and a news desert. In partnering with FRONTLINE, we hope our reporting will clear away the myths and rhetoric around the border and center the voices and experiences of those who live, work, and pass through the area.

This partnership will build on the Tribune’s collaborations with FRONTLINE following the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde in May 2022.

Last May, FRONTLINE released a documentary film, “After Uvalde: Guns, Grief and Texas Politics,” in partnership with the Tribune and Futuro Investigates, led by award-winning journalist Maria Hinojosa. In December, FRONTLINE released a second film, “Inside the Uvalde Response,” in collaboration with the Tribune and ProPublica.

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